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Abortion | Afghanistan | Arctic National Wildlife Refuge | Peter Arnett | Augusta National Golf Club

Abortion
A Media Reality Check examined the partial-birth abortion debate and highlighted an MRC study that noted ABC and NBC Haven’t Described the Outlawed Horror-Movie Procedure on Air since 1998.”
(Media Reality Check, October 27, 2003)

Following the Senate vote to ban the procedure, morning network anchors and reporters resisted using the term “partial-birth abortion.” They distanced themselves from the term either outright refusing to say the phrase or making sure viewers understood it was the preferred term of abortion opponents. 
(CyberAlert, October 23, 2003)

The broadcast networks, especially ABC and CBS, framed the Senate vote against partial-birth abortion around the agenda and terminology of abortion proponents, while all but ABC, which did so only vaguely, avoided describing the procedure. This stood in stark contrast to FNC’s approach to the issue.
(CyberAlert, October 22, 2003)

“Sex and the ‘Glamour’ Girl,” a column by MRC President Brent Bozell, focused on the September issue of Glamour magazine. The Glamour issue contains advice about sex gone wrong, abortions, and details one clinic’s practice of having young women write letters to their aborted children. 
(Bozell's Entertainment Column, August 26, 2003)

Los Angeles Times Editor and Executive Vice President John Carroll issued a memo after a Times story about a new Texas abortion law. Carroll was insistent: “I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage....We are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times.”
(CyberAlert, May 29, 2003)
(Notable Quotables, June 9, 2003)

Newsweek spotlighted fetal imagery and fetal surgery. It also placed abortion advocates on the defensive over the killing of unborn babies their mothers wanted. The story suggested that “even the most hard-line abortion-rights supporters may find themselves questioning their beliefs.”
(CyberAlert, June 3, 2003)

When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews received an honorary degree from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., the Catholic bishop for the area did not attend because of Matthews’ support for abortion.
(CyberAlert, May 23, 2003)

Bill Moyers aired an eighteen-minute-long taped story on NOW claiming there was a conspiratorial "assault" on abortion rights, citing the “stealth strategy” of “anti-choice” people to "make the fetus the equivalent of people."
(CyberAlert, May 20, 2003)

PBS’s Brenda Breslauer asserted the term “partial-birth abortion” had been “invented by the anti-abortion community.”
(CyberAlert, May 20, 2003)
(Notable Quotables, May 26, 2003)

PBS’s Brenda Breslauer echoed liberal rhetoric by asserting that the rule reinstituted by President Bush that prohibits taxpayer dollars from going to fund abortions overseas was “often called the global gag rule.”
(CyberAlert, May 20, 2003)
(Notable Quotables, May 26, 2003)

“Abortion on the Air,” a column by MRC President Brent Bozell, focused on a recent episode on the WB network’s Everwood in which an 18-year-old girl seeks an abortion. The episode deals briefly with one doctor’s unwillingness to perform the procedure because he “can’t end a life,” but another doctor becomes the reluctant abortionist hero, honoring a pledge he made to his father to avoid the "horrific things" of pre-Roe America.
(Entertainment Column, May 8, 2003)

ABC’s Charles Gibson defended France’s treacherous acts toward the United States by comparing the situation to a pro-lifer with a “deep-seated belief that abortion is wrong” trying to stop a friend from having an abortion.
(CyberAlert, March 19, 2003)

Networks use almost identical language to describe partial-birth abortion.
(CyberAlert, March 14, 2003)

Boston Globe story on pregnant woman’s murder leads reporter to highlight pro-abortion group criticisms about fetal rights and how it could be problematic for legal abortion.
(CyberAlert, February 7, 2003)

ABC’s Linda Douglass regretfully noted that 87 percent of the U.S. counties don’t have an abortion provider.
(Notable Quotables, February 3, 2003)

Washington Post television critic Tom Shales berated President Bush for throwing a “sop to the far-right” by calling for the end of partial-birth abortions.
(CyberAlerts, January 30, 2003)

The networks reflected the concerns of liberal advocates of abortion in their coverage of the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
(CyberAlert, January 23, 2003)

Network reporting conveyed the misnomer that the Roe versus Wade decision legalized abortion that if overturned, abortion would become illegal.
(CyberAlert, January 23, 2003)

MRC study proved that networks had ignored the March for Life on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
(Media Reality Check, January 23, 2003)

Celebrity Jennifer O’Neill appalled the hosts of ABC’s The View with her pro-life opinions.
(CyberAlert, January 22, 2003)

A Media Reality Check examined how an NBC Today story portrayed pro-lifers as murderous and pro-choice groups as mainstream. 
(Media Reality Check, January 22, 2003)

MRC Study found the Big Three networks and the news magazines ignored pro-life stories in 2002.
(Media Reality Check, January 20, 2003)

ABC’s World News Tonight warned viewers that incoming Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee was a threat to abortion rights.
(CyberAlert, January 6, 2003)

PBS’s Bill Moyers claimed that the Republican victories in the Congressional elections meant pregnant women would be forced to surrender control of their own bodies.
(CyberAlert, November 11, 2002)

To the New York Times, supporting abortion rights is a “moderate” position, as they illustrated in this profile of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
(CyberAlerts, July 26, 2002)

A June 2002 labeling study by the MRC cited an earlier 1998 study that found pro-abortion groups almost never received the liberal label.
(Media Reality Check, June 25, 2002)

NBC’s Tom Brokaw found President Bush’s stance on cloning to be “hardline.” NBC White House reporter David Gregory claimed the President had aligned himself with “anti-abortion conservatives.” Cloning proponents were not called liberal.
(CyberAlert, April 11, 2002)

The Associated Press insisted on calling a live baby a fetus in a story about the Born-Alive Act.
(CyberAlert, March 14, 2002)

A Bush administration decision to expand prenatal health care coverage pitted “abortion rights supporters” versus “abortion rights opponents,” according to CNN.
(CyberAlert, February 4, 2002)

CBS profiled the Bush plan for expanded prenatal care from a distinctly pro-abortion angle. 
(CyberAlert, February 1, 2002)

Connie Chung headed for CNN and took her pro-abortion bias with her.
(CyberAlert Extra, January 23, 2002)

Special Report: Roe Warriors: The Media’s Pro-Abortion Bias (Updated and revised). 1998 report found media show a pro-abortion bias in five distinct ways. 
(Special Report, July 22, 1998)

 

Afghanistan
ABC’s David Wright trumpeted the cause of an American woman in Iraq on a quest to count the number of civilians killed by the coalition and to acquire compensation for their families. Wright also mentioned how she had “helped set a precedent by successfully lobbying the U.S. Congress to help innocent victims of the war in Afghanistan.”
(CyberAlert, May 29, 2003)

To the astonishment of HBO’s Bob Costa on On the Record, far-left movie producer Michael Moore alleged that Osama bin Laden didn’t plan the September 11 attacks from a cave in Afghanistan: “The guy has been on dialysis for two years. He's got failing kidneys… I think our government knows where he is and I don't think we're going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon.”
(CyberAlert, May 12, 2003)

NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards ranted about how reporters were too easy on President Bush at a recent press conference. Edwards listed the questions he would have asked, including: “When I interviewed your wife, Mr. President, she said the best byproduct of ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan was the liberation of Afghan women….If the liberation of Arab women is so important to your administration, then why is the United States not invading Saudi Arabia?” 
(CyberAlert, April 23, 2003)

ABC’s David Wright quoted Peter Arnett as claiming the U.S. had bombed Al-Jazeera in Iraq and Afghanistan, “leaving many in this region to believe the conspiracy theorists, that the U.S. is trying to silence its critics.”
(CyberAlert, April 9, 2003)

Leftist producer Michael Moore asserted that the U.S. has “been responsible for a lot of tragedy around the world.” In his Bowling for Columbine documentary, included giving Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in “aid” as a crime.
(CyberAlert, March 23, 2003)

In a piece for OpinionJournal.com, John Fund documented how hypocritical Hollywood stars who denounce President Bush for going to war in Iraq “were oddly silent when Mr. Clinton dropped bombs on Afghanistan…in 1998 in an unsuccessful attempt to deter Osama bin Laden.”
(CyberAlert, March 18, 2003)

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark accused President Bush of “impeachable acts,” including ordering a “first strike” war of aggression against Afghanistan, removing the government of Afghanistan by force and causing civilian casualties.
(CyberAlert, February 28, 2003)

MSNBC’s Phil Donahue recalled saying after September 11 that he hoped the United States wouldn’t bomb Afghanistan: “I really thought, holy cow, a third world country. People live in caves. We’re going to bomb. How’s that going to help?”
(CyberAlert, February 26, 2003)

Washington Post reporter David Segal was horrified by country singer Toby Keith’s song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” because it “unabashedly glorifies the bombing of Afghanistan.” The quote was a runner up for the “Damn Those Conservatives Award” in the MRC’s Best Notable Quotables of 2002.
(CyberAlert, December 27, 2002)
(Best Notable Quotables of 2002)

ABC’s Bob Woodruff recounted the story of a Pakistani man who had gone to Afghanistan as part of an Islamic teaching group and was handed over to U.S. troops who flew him to Guantanamo Bay.
(CyberAlert, November 20, 2002)

As Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume recalled, BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson, who had been highly critical of FNC, got into Afghanistan by dressing up in a woman’s burka. Later, as the Taliban fled Kabul, Simpson got there ahead of the advancing Northern Alliance and said, “It’s an exhilarating feeling to be liberating a city.”
(CyberAlert, October 22, 2002)

Actor Ed Asner incorrectly claimed the attack on Afghanistan after 9/11 “was justified because the UN supported it.” Asner added that movement toward war with Iraq was “desecrating the America that I grew up in and believed in.” 
(CyberAlert, October 1, 2002)

Tim Russert prompted Hillary Clinton on Meet the Press: “Can we afford a war in Afghanistan or in Iraq and the Bush tax cut?”
(CyberAlert, September 16, 2002)

On a day filled with commemorations of 9/11, ABC’s Peter Jennings rued how it had been difficult to criticize the war in Afghanistan with such a popular president as commander in chief.
(CyberAlert, September 12, 2002)

FNC’s Brit Hume noted that the New York Times reported two contradictory stories less than a week apart about the fate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
(CyberAlert, September 4, 2002)

On World News Tonight, Peter Jennings set up a story about the Pentagon’s investigation into “allegations of a massacre in Afghanistan” and “accusations that America allies are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of captured Taliban soldiers.” John Miller then outlined how Physicians for Responsibility had charged that Taliban soldiers were left in shipping containers, with no air or water and claimed Afghan President Karzai and the U.S. were “turning a blind eye” to the atrocity. 
(CyberAlert, August 20, 2002)

Washington Times reporter Jennifer Harper reported that MSNBC’s Phil Donahue featured the author of "Forbidden Truth” on his show. The book contends that the Bush administration protected its "big oil" interests by maintaining secret diplomatic links with Saudi Arabia and the Taliban in Afghanistan, which ultimately caused the September 11 attacks. 
(CyberAlert, August 16, 2002)

MSNBC’s Phil Donahue noted a report about how U.S. bombing killed 400 civilians in Afghanistan and wrongly complained: “I don't see that leading anybody's newscast.” The claim had led ABC’s World News Tonight.
(CyberAlert, July 26, 2002)

After Rick Berke of the New York Times was promoted to Washington editor, the MRC took a look back at Berke’s liberal reporting, including the time he suggested U.S. troops in Afghanistan could become another Vietnam.
(CyberAlert, May 28, 2002)

Washington Post reporter Michael Powell trumpeted radical left-wing MIT professor Noam Chomsky’s “new bestseller,” 9-11, which argues that the war in Afghanistan was “morally and legally appalling, not to mention an act of state terrorism.”
(CyberAlert, May 6, 2002)

After Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker spoke at the Chicago Headline Club, Chicago Magazine’s Steve Rhodes posted a piece reciting Hersh’s diatribe, asserting that “no reporter in America has been more penetrating, illuminating, and controversial in reporting on the war in Afghanistan” than Hersh. Among Hersh’s comments, as reported by Rhodes was: "We didn't win the war in Afghanistan; I don't care what George Bush says…Right now, we're not being told very much.”
(CyberAlert, May 6, 2002)

On FNC’s FoxWire, actor and activist Danny Glover avoided the question when Rita Cosby asked, “Do you think the attacks on Afghanistan were justified?” and brought up his past anti-American comments, during an interview pegged to the actor’s fundraising for AIDS research.
(CyberAlert, April 16, 2002)

A parody in the Weekly Standard in the form of a fake memo from editors to news correspondents warned that U.S. action in Afghanistan and the Israeli invasion of the West Bank should be covered differently because the latter was “part of a tragic cycle of violence. The correct emotion in this case is that all violence is bad, whether committed by terrorists or against them.” The MRC provided examples of this practice by real-life journalists.
(CyberAlert, April 9, 2002)

From the April 1 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten April Fool's Pranks in Afghanistan."
(CyberAlert, April 2, 2002)

Former Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, author of the book, The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, asserted on CNBC that if Bill Clinton had been president during the September 11 attacks, the Republicans wouldn’t have been as patient with him as the Democrats were with Bush.
(Notable Quotables, March 18, 2002)
(CyberAlert, March 11, 2002)

Dan Rather concluded the CBS Evening News by delivering a tribute to the U.S. servicemen killed in Afghanistan. After listing the name, rank and family status of all those killed in action, Rather related: "They were some of America’s best. They gave this country everything. We close our broadcast tonight thinking of them and of their valor."
(CyberAlert, March 6, 2002)

ABC’s Terry Moran reported that 76 percent of Muslims polled by Gallup say the American mission in Afghanistan is “not morally justified.”
(CyberAlert, February 28, 2002)
(Notable Quotables, March 18, 2002)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was hit with a series of hostile questions at a Pentagon briefing from reporters who assumed that U.S. soldiers guarding the prisoners from Afghanistan held at Guantanamo Bay were the real threat to human rights in the world. 
(CyberAlert, January 23, 2002)

Washington Post reporter Rick Weiss compared the “religious conservatives” who opposed human cloning to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, who were, Weiss said, “religious conservatives who were denounced for imposing their moral code on others."
(Media Reality Check, January 17, 2002)
(CyberAlert, January 21, 2002)

After playing a clip of President Bush shaking hands in a restaurant instead of a clip of him talking about Afghanistan, but calling it a clip of President Clinton in Scotland, Peter Jennings decided just to paraphrase and analyze the Bush’s remarks: “He basically said what he’s said many times before, is that they’re not sure exactly where Osama bin Laden is but they’re going to get him and they don’t know exactly where Mohammad Omar is, but they’re going to try to get him as well.” 
(CyberAlert, January 9, 2002)

Tim Russert used the war in Afghanistan as an excuse to oppose the tax cut: “Can we afford Social Security, improving our health care, aid to Afghanistan and the region, fighting the war on terrorism and the tax cuts as they are currently constructed?”
(CyberAlert, January 7, 2002)

 

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
ABC’s Barry Serafin warned, “With the White House and Congress now in Republican hands, more controversial environmental decisions are in the works,” citing drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and increased energy exploration in the Rockies. 
(CyberAlert, November 25, 2002)

Americans for Energy Security, a group of liberal Democrats and Republicans, ran a full-page ad in Roll Call opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite was a member of the group.
(CyberAlert, March 4, 2002)

CBS’s Eric Engberg claimed that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was “the oil man President's pet oil exploration plan” and held out hope that the House-passed bill approving the drilling could be undone by a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
(CyberAlert, August 3, 2001)

All three broadcast networks stressed how one environmental group gave President Bush a D for his policies. ABC’s John Cochran listed calling for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as one of Bush’s bad policies. CBS White House Correspondent John Roberts claimed of President Bush, “For every proposal he has made to preserve the great forests and wilderness areas…he has made another that could threaten them.” 
(CyberAlrt, May 31, 2001)
(Notable Quotables Extra Edition, June 11, 2001)

Charles Gibson plugged an upcoming story: “Gas prices are soaring and they’ll get even worse this summer." But, just a day earlier, Terry Moran had scolded President Bush for acting as if there were an energy crisis “even though there are no gas lines and the price of crude oil is actually declining.”
(CyberAlert, April 2, 2001)

ABC’s Terry Moran accused President Bush of pretending the country was in an energy crisis, “even though there are no gas lines and the price of crude oil is actually declining,” as a way to justify his energy agenda, particularly drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(CyberAlert, March 30, 2001)
(Notable Quotables, April 16, 2001)

Katie Couric pressed Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton from the left on her presentation to President Bush of a proposal to explore and drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, something that environmentalists said was “absolutely going to spoil that region." Couric pleaded, "But if it threatens the environment in any way, Secretary Norton, will you resist drilling?"
(CyberAlert, February 8, 2001)

CBS News criticized President Bush’s proposal of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a solution to California’s energy shortage. John Roberts allowed Bush to explain how using less foreign energy would bring price stability, but he stressed how Bush offered only long term proposals.
(CyberAlert, January 30, 2001)

CBS’s Jerry Bowen warned viewers of Secretary of the Interior nominee Gale Norton’s support for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Anchor Russ Mitchell quoted one environmentalist group as saying, “We're hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.”
(CyberAlert, January 2, 2001)

Vice President Gore criticized George W. Bush’s support of opening up “some of our most precious environmental treasures” like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling because “it would only give us a few months worth of oil.” A Media Reality Check pointed out that according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic Coastal Plain contains an estimated 16 billion barrels of oil, an amount equal to 30 years worth of imports from Saudi Arabia. None of the broadcast networks called Gore on his mistake.
(Media Reality Check, October 11, 2000)

CBS’s Bill Whitaker highlighted candidate George W. Bush’s “most controversial proposal,” to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling by oil companies, noting that “the spectacular, 19-million-acre preserve was put off limits to oil drilling by Congress two decades ago.” Whitaker then focused on the response from Al Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman, who called the proposal an “old but bad idea.” 
(CyberAlert, October 2, 2000)

 

Peter Arnett
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift claimed Peter Arnett was a good reporter and NBC should have overlooked his Iraqi TV interview. Among other things, Arnett told the Iraqis that the first U.S. war plan had failed because of resistance.
(CyberAlert, April 8, 2003)

Media Reality Check on Peter Arnett’s firing. Noted that he should have been dismissed earlier for other causes.
(Media Reality Check, March 31, 2003)

NBC fired Arnett for sharing his personal views, not for having them.
(CyberAlert Extra, March 31, 2003)

The same day Arnett was fired by NBC, the New York Times published a fawning article about the newsman.
(CyberAlert Extra, March 31, 2003)

NBC Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski had to some fast backtracking to counter Arnett’s unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. was using cluster bombs in Baghdad.
(CyberAlert, March 27, 2003)

Arnett passed on Iraqi claims that Saddam himself had ordered that American POWs be treated well.
(CyberAlert, March 26, 2003)

At the outbreak of war, Arnett relayed a spokesman of the Hussein government claim that the U.S.-caused U.N. pullout might lead to 10 million starving Iraqis.
(CyberAlert, March 20, 2003)

Arnett went to Iraq as a reporter for National Geographic, but on February 27, 2003, he filed a report for NBC’s Today show.
(CyberAlert, February 28, 2003)

Retired General Barry McCaffrey blasted Arnett for his reporting during the 1991 Persian Gulf War on MSNBC’s Hardball.
(CyberAlert, January 24, 2003)

Arnett, cut loose by CNN in 1998 for his role in the woefully incorrect Tailwind story, criticized his old employer for insisting that combat images from Afghanistan come with a reminder that 5,000 Americans had died. Such a notion was “ill advised,” he said.
(CyberAlert, November 5, 2001)

Read about Arnett’s official release by CNN.
(CyberAlert, April 21, 1999)

USA Today and the Washington Post reported that CNN had let Arnett go for his part in the Tailwind story. The story claimed that U.S. forces had used nerve gas in Laos in 1970.
(CyberAlert, April 19, 1999)

CNN’s former military analyst, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, argued that the network should have fired both Arnett and CNN President Rick Kaplan for their roles in Tailwind.
(CyberAlert, January 6, 1999)

Arnett claimed he only read the script for the Tailwind story but CNN’s former military analyst said that wasn’t true.
(CyberAlert, August 12, 1998)

Producers fired for the Tailwind story claim Arnett was “heavily involved” in the project. 
(CyberAlert, July 23, 1998)

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer noted that Arnett couldn’t find poisonous gas in Iraq but can find it 28 years later in an American warplane. 
(CyberAlert, July 13, 1998)

Arnett survived the initial fall-out from the Tailwind story and blamed the “right-wing media” for his problems.
(CyberAlert, July 10, 1998)

CNN staffers took shots at both Arnett and network president Rick Kaplan after the Tailwind story broke and the network was forced to retract it.
(CyberAlert, July 8, 1998)

A blast from the past. Arnett won a 1991 Notable Quotable award for telling Pat Buchanan that he wouldn’t relay information that would save American lives.
(Best of Notable Quotables, 1991)

 

Augusta National Golf Club 
ABC News joined the group trying to force the private Augusta National Golf Club to accept women as members. “Women can fight in Iraq,” the network said in a promo, “so why can't they play golf at the club where they hold the Masters?”
(CyberAlert, April 8, 2003)

After a barrage of criticism, the New York Times relented and ran two sports columns critical of the paper’s stance on Augusta National’s membership policy.
(CyberAlert, December 9, 2002)

Former CBS News President Thomas Wyman resigned from Augusta National over its membership policies and CNN’s Connie Chung made his Person of the Day.
(CyberAlert, December 5, 2002)

Newsweek claimed that the Augusta National campaign is just one of many the New York Times has undertaken since Howell Raines became Executive Editor.
(CyberAlert, December 3, 2002)

For more information on this subject, go to timeswatch.org, a MRC project dedicated to documenting and exposing the New York Times liberal agenda.

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