NBC Skews Tax Cut Facts - Tell the Truth! 2004 - The Weekly Worst -- Media Research Center

The Weekly Worst

NBC Skews Tax Cut Facts;
No Time for Kerry's Cambodia Retreat

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

The so-called mainstream media never admit their liberal tilt, so the news analysts at the Media Research Center tirelessly document the media's bias and expose their left-wing agenda. The "awards" for last week's lowlights:

» NBC Skews Tax Cut Facts. Friday's NBC Nightly News presented a new report from the Congressional Budget Office as iron-clad evidence that liberals' anti-tax cut spin is uncontested fact. Reporter Carl Quintanilla began: "John Kerry's campaign still believes it's the economy, stupid, and today's report that the richest one percent of Americans received a third of President Bush's tax cut, in their view, came practically gift-wrapped." But NBC never disclosed that CBO's "gift" to Kerry came after a request from top-ranking congressional Democrats.

NBC Nightly News chose to highlight a Democratic campaign theme...

Instead, as Quintanilla spoke, NBC helpfully showed viewers a screen emblazoned with a Kerry campaign theme: "richest one percent received 1/3 of the president's tax cut." But the same CBO report showed that the "rich" pay a huge share of government's cost — the "Top 1 Percent" pay more than 20 percent of all federal tax liabilities, and the top 10 percent pay nearly half of federal taxes. And, as Fox's Major Garrett noted on Friday's Special Report, "the Bush tax cuts removed 14 million poor taxpayers from the income tax rolls entirely." That's a 100 percent income tax cut — a better deal than any wealthy taxpayer received.

...but Fox showed the rich pay a greater share of taxes now than before Bush took office.

For more, see the August 16 CyberAlert.

» No Time for Kerry's Cambodia Retreat. John Kerry often talked about how he spent the Christmas of 1968 being shot at in Cambodia, an event he said was a "memory...seared in me." But on Wednesday, Kerry's campaign withdrew the Senator's claim. "I don't know that anyone can actually say whether or not they were in Cambodia," John Hurley, a pro-Kerry veteran admitted on FNC's Special Report. ABC, CBS and NBC, which have done their best to minimize or denigrate those Vietnam veterans raising questions about Kerry's record, ignored the Democrat's backpedaling. Does anyone think they'd have done the same for Bush?

ABC, CBS and NBC all failed to report how Kerry backed off his tale of Christmas in Cambodia.

For more, see the August 12 CyberAlert.