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1. Nets See 'Political Censorship' in Cutting Emmy Anti-War Remark Fox cut out three profanities uttered by winners during the Sunday night broadcast of the Emmy Awards, but instead of simply seeing that for what it was -- protection against potential FCC fines for airing such expletives -- ABC and NBC portrayed dropping the end of Sally Field's anti-war comment, which was proceeded by a profanity, as a case of "political censorship." On Tuesday's Good Morning America, Dan Harris ominously insisted without any evidence: "Some say the Fox network, owned by well-known conservative Rupert Murdoch, was engaged in political censorship." Harris acknowledged that Fox cut other remarks, but returned to how "it's the Sally Field case that is provoking the real cries of political censorship because Fox cut off not only her expletive but also her entire thought." Tuesday's NBC Nightly News used the incident as a hook for an "In Depth" segment. Anchor Brian Williams intoned that "from anti-war protests to Sunday's Emmy awards telecast, the right of free speech can often seem to collide with other rights that people have or claim to have." Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales saw something more nefarious at work: "So to censor her, supposedly on the grounds of profane language, but perhaps on the grounds of what she said politically, that's a very dangerous thing to happen in America." 2. Matthews: Troops Force 'Fascistic' Notion of Democracy on Iraqis Upset that a University of Florida student was tasered by campus police at a John Kerry event, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, feared it was a result of the "fascistic notion" of American troops "forcing" democracy on Iraqis at "gunpoint", filtering back home. 3. NBC's Ann Curry Prods Chris Dodd to Bash Bush on Torture On to promote his new book, Letters from Nuremberg, about his father's experiences at the Nuremberg trials, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd, prompted by NBC Today co-host Ann Curry, accused the Bush administration of supporting torture at Guantanamo Bay. On Tuesday's Today show, after Curry spoke to the Senator about the book and the trial of Nazis after World War II, she pushed Dodd to contrast the fairness of the Nuremberg trials compared to the Bush administration's support of "tortures" at Guantanamo Bay: "You also write, in this, in the lead into this book, 'If for 60 years a single word, Nuremberg, best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment, Guantanamo.' Are you saying that the Geneva Conventions, as reinterpreted by the Bush administration, represents a loss of America's moral authority in the world?" 4. Sawyer Recycles John Edwards Gimmick During Hillary Interview On Tuesday's Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer interviewed Hillary Clinton about health care and recycled campaign talking points that her fellow 2008 Democrat, John Edwards, has been peddling. According to Sawyer, upon his election, Edwards will "cut off health care for Congress so that they don't have health care while the rest of America doesn't." The ABC anchor earnestly followed up by wondering, "Would you do that or is that a gimmick?" Clinton responded by observing the implausibility of the concept. She patiently explained to Sawyer that Edwards would "have to get Congress to vote for that, of course." The Sawyer interview did contain some surprises, however. The GMA host featured two clips from the 2008 Republican hopefuls challenging Mrs. Clinton. But she also asked Clinton emotional, softball queries. Over video of Clinton at a '93 health care event, the morning show host wondered, "What do you wish this woman we're looking at now on the screen had known then that you now know, since it went down in flames?" 5. Matt Lauer Hits Hillary Clinton from the Left on Health Care Delivering his best Michael Moore in Sicko impersonation, NBC's Matt Lauer hit Hillary Clinton from the left on health care reform on Tuesday's Today show. Appearing in the first-half hour of Today, Clinton was tagged repeatedly by Lauer as he worried that Hillary "watered down" her new health-care reform plan and feared Hillary had sold out to the insurance industry as he wondered: "Are you losing some leverage in asking these insurance companies to get on board and make tough choices?" 6. Hsu-In: Only NBC Asked Hillary About Her Crooked Donor Scandal Matt Lauer may have approached Hillary Clinton from the left (as if she were a centrist) on health care on Tuesday's Today (see item #5 above), but Lauer was the only morning show host to ask the former First Lady about her campaign-finance scandal surrounding the crook Norman Hsu. ABC, CBS, and CNN, which all interviewed her Tuesday morning, whistled past her campaign's decision to refund $850,000 in contributions that Hsu "bundled" to her campaign. Granted, Lauer simply asked: "How to you respond?" But in a follow-up Lauer also tweaked her campaign's claim that they used an "abundance of caution" in returning the money, asking if there was perhaps not so much caution in the original fundraising. 7. CNN's Roberts Prods Hillary Clinton on MoveOn's Anti-Petraeus Ad As if she were President already, Hillary Clinton went on CNN's American Morning as well as the morning shows of the "Big Three" networks on Tuesday to sell her new health care proposals, a day after their unveiling. At the close of the American Morning interview, however, co-host John Roberts at least brought up the controversial "Betray Us" ad by MoveOn.org. He twice asked the junior Senator from New York if she wanted to distance herself from the ad. Both times, she skirted the question by talking about General Petraeus and his record of service, instead of the ad itself.
Emmy Anti-War Remark Fox cut out three profanities uttered by winners during the Sunday night broadcast of the Emmy Awards, but instead of simply seeing that for what it was -- protection against potential FCC fines for airing such expletives -- ABC and NBC portrayed dropping the end of Sally Field's anti-war comment, which was proceeded by a profanity, as a case of political censorship. On Tuesday's Good Morning America, reporter Dan Harris ominously insisted without any evidence: "Some say the Fox network, owned by well-known conservative Rupert Murdoch, was engaged in political censorship." Harris acknowledged that Fox cut other remarks, but returned to how "it's the Sally Field case that is provoking the real cries of political censorship because Fox cut off not only her expletive but also her entire thought." [This item includes quotations of the bleeped profanities] Yet in showing how those in Canada heard the entire comment, ABC itself bleeped her "Goddamned," airing: "If the mothers ruled the war, there would be no [bleep] wars in the first place." Of course, Fields' point was hardly suppressed since GMA, all the entertainment news shows and numerous newspaper stories have made clear what she said. As the MRC's Scott Whitlock noted in a NewsBusters posting, during the ceremony Sopranos creator David Chase extolled the values of gangsters. In a halting speech, he asserted, "And hell, let's face it, if the world and this nation was run by gangsters- [pause] Maybe it is." Chase's political statement was not censored, nor were any of the numerous anti-Bush and Republican-slamming jokes that aired on the awards show. GMA though framed the Field incident as one of political censorship even though the other two cuts were for a "shit" and a "screwing." Diane Sawyer teased at the top of the show: "And how do you really feel about TV censorship? Emmy viewers in Canada heard everything Sally Field said about war. In the U.S., we heard this:" Sally Field: "If the mothers ruled the war, there would be no G-" Sawyer: "Do Americans want the reality?" Following the Harris piece, co-host Robin Roberts read how Fox explained that they cut out the words from Fields and other because "some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers." Nonetheless, she proposed to guest Glenn Beck: "But it's not just the language that she was using, it was also, some people feel, because it was the political statement." In fact, as a Monday TV Week story explained, it was the word "Goddamned" that got Field cut off, not her point: "Criticism is mostly being directed at the Federal Communications Commission for making the bleeping necessary. Some groups involved in the Washington fight over the FCC's crackdown on fleeting expletives said today that Fox's bleeps of a joke by Ray Romano and reaction to winning comments by Ms. Field and Katherine Heigl exceeded what was necessary by the FCC rules but indicated the kind of real world problems and chilling impact implicit in the agency's decision to begin imposing fines on TV stations that carry programming with profanity." See: www.tvweek.com Indeed, a Hollywood Reporter story outlined the particulars of the other two comments: Two other instances called for some creative camera selection on the fly. "Grey's Anatomy's" Katherine Heigl mouthed the word "shit" upon learning that she had won for supporting actress in a drama series, which prompted Fox to use a previously taped snippet of the audience in its stead. Early in the broadcast, Fox was forced to drop picture and sound during a stand-up monologue from "Everybody Loves Raymond's" Ray Romano. Referring to the new Fox series "Back to You" featuring "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer and his own former co-star on "Raymond," Patricia Heaton, Romano said, "Frasier is screwing my wife." Fox opted to eliminate the verb from the aforementioned sentence. For the entire article: www.hollywoodreporter.com Tuesday's NBC Nightly News used the incident as a hook for an "In Depth" segment. Anchor Brian Williams intoned that "from anti-war protests to Sunday's Emmy awards telecast, the right of free speech can often seem to collide with other rights that people have or claim to have." Reporter Bob Faw began with Field and noted "her language was offensive said Fox, aware of that whopping $550,000 fine the FCC levied against CBS for Janet Jackson's celebrated wardrobe malfunction." Yet Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales saw something more nefarious at work: "So to censor her, supposedly on the grounds of profane language, but perhaps on the grounds of what she said politically, that's a very dangerous thing to happen in America." In Monday's newspaper, Shales conceded the expletive fear, but still contended there was a political motive: Early in the program, comic actor Ray Romano and actress Katherine Heigl were both cut off when they apparently used four-letter words in remarks. The performers suddenly vanished for a few seconds and were replaced by static shots from elsewhere in Los Angeles's Shrine Auditorium, where the telecast originated. The program was on time-delay, which gives networks the opportunity to edit live shows. An arguably obscene word uttered even spontaneously can earn a network and even performers enormous fines from the Federal Communications Commission, re-activated as a national censor under the Bush administration. The third instance of censorship may have been political. Sally Field, making one of her long and rambling acceptance speeches (winning for best actress in a drama on "Brothers & Sisters"), was interrupted by silence when she used a God-related swear word in voicing antiwar sentiments. For the September 17 column in full: www.washingtonpost.com Grasping for examples of the supposed oppressive trend, Faw reached back to a policy in place for many years: "Increasingly more seems off limits, returning coffins of dead soldiers and sailors, for example, can no longer be photographed as they once were." # Good Morning America, September 17:
7:30am tease. The story in the 8am half hour: ROBIN ROBERTS: And now a look at what you did not see and hear at the Emmy awards. Producers cut away from best actress winner Sally Field during her acceptance speech. It was not the night's only bleep, as you know. Lately, the FCC has been cracking down on what it deems is inappropriate behavior on television. Yes, from Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction to Bono at the Golden Globes. Censorship appears to be on the rise. But are we going too far here? Well, here's ABC's Dan Harris. ABC GRAPHIC: Sally silenced: Do Censors Go to Far?
SALLY FIELD AT EMMY AWARDS: Surely this belongs to all the mothers of the world.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We're back here with NBC News In Depth tonight. It's about freedom of speech. We don't need to tell you it's a cornerstone of this country enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, something most everybody agrees on until you get into the gory details, like not being able to yell fire in a crowded theater. That tasered college student protester we showed you earlier is just the latest example -- from anti-war protests to Sunday's Emmy awards telecast -- the right of free speech can often seem to collide with other rights that people have or claim to have. Our report from NBC's Bob Faw.
BOB FAW: We are, we brag, an open society. But Sunday on Fox TV, when Sally Field swore about the war, her profanity was bleeped. SALLY FIELD AT EMMY AWARDS: Let's face it, if mothers ruled the world, there would be no-
of Democracy on Iraqis Upset that a University of Florida student was tasered by campus police at a John Kerry event, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, feared it was a result of the "fascistic notion" of American troops "forcing" democracy on Iraqis at "gunpoint", filtering back home. Matthews charged on the September 18 Hardball: "You know when we walk into those, every night on television you watch pictures of American soldiers risking their lives to break into homes in Baghdad, at gunpoint, telling people to go along with the government that we've set up over there. Democracy at gunpoint. I wonder if it's filtered back here at home. I wonder if it's drift back home? The idea that democracy is something you do at gunpoint. 'Either you behave and do it this way and show up by putting your fingers in the ink and doing it this way or you're an insurgent, therefore, we can round you up and if you resist we can kill you.' That notion it's a bit fascist and it's certainly a fascistic notion of democracy we're forcing, forcing on people over there. They didn't invited us into Iraq and I wonder now whether we are picking up some of the bad habits of the war front?" [This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday evening on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] A little earlier in the Hardball segment, that featured leftists Joe Conason of the New York Observer and Madea Benjamin of anti-war protest group Code Pink, Matthews was dismayed that Republican supporters of President Bush didn't engage in obnoxious, rude and disruptive behavior, as he compared them to "Stepford Wives." Matthews: "Let me ask you, Joe, about you've been covering this campaign, I'm in the studio here. It's a great job but I don't get out of here much. When you get out there and cover these presidential stops? Is it, does it feel like, like Truman-ville or something? Like, I look at the faces of the people who are watching the President. They have this passivity of, I shouldn't be cruel, but are they, are they Stepford wives and golfing Republicans? Who are these people that just sort of sits there, 'Oh that's interesting the war is gonna end positively, everything is going well and our troops are doing the job' and everything is so calm and collected, I don't get who these people are."
Bush on Torture On to promote his new book, Letters from Nuremberg, about his father's experiences at the Nuremberg trials, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd, prompted by NBC Today co-host Ann Curry, accused the Bush administration of supporting torture at Guantanamo Bay. On Tuesday's Today show, after Curry spoke to the Senator about the book and the trial of Nazis after World War II, she pushed Dodd to contrast the fairness of the Nuremberg trials compared to the Bush administration's support of "tortures" at Guantanamo Bay: "You also write, in this, in the lead into this book, 'If for 60 years a single word, Nuremberg, best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment, Guantanamo.' Are you saying that the Geneva Conventions, as reinterpreted by the Bush administration, represents a loss of America's moral authority in the world?" [This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org The following exchange occurred on the September 18 Today show:
Ann Curry: "In one letter your father writes about the trial, 'Some day it will be recognized as a great landmark in the struggle of mankind for peace. Some day the boys will point to it, I hope,' you being one of those boys, 'to be proud and inspired by,' clearly you are inspired and proud. However you also write, in this, in the lead into this book, 'If for 60 years a single word, Nuremberg, best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment, Guantanamo.' Are you saying that the Geneva Conventions, as reinterpreted by the Bush administration, represents a loss of America's moral authority in the world?"
During Hillary Interview On Tuesday's Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer interviewed Hillary Clinton about health care and recycled campaign talking points that her fellow 2008 Democrat, John Edwards, has been peddling. According to Sawyer, upon his election, Edwards will "cut off health care for Congress so that they don't have health care while the rest of America doesn't." The ABC anchor earnestly followed up by wondering, "Would you do that or is that a gimmick?" Clinton responded by observing the implausibility of the concept. She patiently explained to Sawyer that Edwards would "have to get Congress to vote for that, of course." The Sawyer interview did contain some surprises, however. The GMA host featured two clips from the 2008 Republican hopefuls challenging Mrs. Clinton. But the eight minute and 19 second segment also continued GMA's habit of offering generous amounts of time to the New York Senator. In March, the ABC program featured Hillary for over 30 minutes during a town hall style infomercial. See: See NewsBusters: newsbusters.org And the March 27 CyberAlert: www.mrc.org During Sawyer's interview on Tuesday, she also asked Clinton emotional, softball queries. Over video of Clinton at a '93 health care event, the morning show host wondered, "What do you wish this woman we're looking at now on the screen had known then that you now know, since it went down in flames?" As noted earlier, Sawyer did ask Clinton some tough questions. In addition to featuring clips of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani expressing skepticism over universal health care, the GMA host began the segment by bluntly asking, "First of all, how would you enforce it and who is going to pay for it?" However, other pithy questions, such as querying, "Can you realistically keep [a universal health care plan] at $110 billion?" included no follow-up with additional questions about the difficulty of holding those numbers low with the government running such a program. [This item, by Scott Whitlock, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Finally, little moments during the piece tended to portray the proposal as bold. An onscreen ABC graphic read like a Clinton campaign slogan. It asserted, "Clinton Unveils Health Plan: New Century, New Plan"And Sawyer twice referred to the program as "headline-making."
A transcript of the segment, which aired at 7:10am on September 18: ABC Graphic: "Clinton Unveils Health Plan: New Century, New Plan"
Sawyer: "Let's get right to the question of insuring the 47 million people who do not have health care insurance. They wake up the morning after you're president and they're required to have it. First of all, how would you enforce it and who is going to pay for it?"
the Left on Health Care Delivering his best Michael Moore in Sicko impersonation, NBC's Matt Lauer hit Hillary Clinton from the left on health care reform on Tuesday's Today show. Appearing in the first-half hour of Today, Clinton was tagged repeatedly by Lauer as he worried that Hillary "watered down" her new health-care reform plan and feared Hillary had sold out to the insurance industry as he wondered: "Are you losing some leverage in asking these insurance companies to get on board and make tough choices?" [This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] The following are all of Lauer's questions, on health care, to the Senator from New York and her responses as they aired on the September 18 Today show: Matt Lauer: "Senator Hillary Clinton is in Washington this morning. Senator, good morning to you." [On screen headline: "Decision 2008, Can Clinton Fix Health Care This Time?"]
Hillary Clinton: "Good morning, Matt." To read more on the liberal-advocacy group that Lauer cited in attacking Hillary Clinton, visit: www.consumerwatchdog.org For more on coverage of Clinton's health pan, check Tuesday's Media Reality Check, "Network News Touts Clinton Care 2.0; All Three Morning Shows Host Hillary; NBC's Lauer Hits From Left: 'Have You Watered Down Reform?'" It was distributed as a CyberAlert Special and is online at: www.mrc.org
Her Crooked Donor Scandal Matt Lauer may have approached Hillary Clinton from the left (as if she were a centrist) on health care on Tuesday's Today (see item #5 above), but Lauer was the only morning show host to ask the former First Lady about her campaign-finance scandal surrounding the crook Norman Hsu. ABC, CBS, and CNN, which all interviewed her Tuesday morning, whistled past her campaign's decision to refund $850,000 in contributions that Hsu "bundled" to her campaign. Granted, Lauer simply asked: "How to you respond?" But in a follow-up Lauer also tweaked her campaign's claim that they used an "abundance of caution" in returning the money, asking if there was perhaps not so much caution in the original fundraising. Lauer did not remind the audience that the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996 was riddled with illegal foreign contributions that were returned -- but only after the news media started reporting on it. [This item, by Tim Graham, was posted Tuesday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] The MRC's Geoff Dickens did the transcript for the exchange on the September 18 Today:
LAUER: A couple of other questions that your campaign's been dealing with lately. Let me talk about Norman Hsu. He's in jail right now on, apparently he had a 15-year outstanding warrant. Your campaign returned an $850,000 contribution from him. Just so people understand, he's a bundler, that's not his money. This comes from 260 individual donors. The, the question is, you know there are a lot of red flags here. What happened? The New York Times writes this, "This hurried -- but not hurried enough -- giveback, one of the largest on record, lays bare again how easily campaign professionals can allow greed to trump healthy skepticism and good sense when supporters like Mr. Hsu arrive on the scene with eye-popping contributions." How do you respond? As soon as she found out? An editorial in Tuesday's edition of Investor's Business Daily could have been read by Lauer as a rebuttal: Hillary's presidential campaign knew since at least June that there were serious questions about China-born Hsu, her own top fundraiser now behind bars. Yet she agreed to return the $860,000 he bundled for her from mostly Asian donors only after the scandal broke in the press. Even so, she's declined to publicly identify the 260 donors, and may ask for some of the funds back. Now as then, Ickes is involved, this time as an adviser to her campaign. And the same guy who courted all the shady Asian donors in last decade's Clinton campaigns is heading Hillary's fundraising now. His name: Terry McAuliffe. Seems they're up to their old tricks. Hillary claims she had no reason to vet big Asian donors to her presidential campaign, no reason to be suspicious of them. She suggests critics who think she should have been more suspect are racist. "We reject the suggestion that suspicion should be based on ethnicity in America," her spokesman said. But the Ickes notes clearly show Hillary had every reason to check out Hsu, with whom she and Bill snapped photos and whom she let fete her campaign manager in all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas. SUSPEND Excerpt The editorial also explored a similar pattern in 1996, when the Clinton campaign planned to delay any return of funny money until after the election, despite knowing in April it had a problem: The smoking gun came in the form of handwritten notes taken by deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes. "Charlie Trie -- Money orders -- Don't report names if $ are returned," Ickes wrote. "Could return all $ & ask people to resend it if they want." Then this: "BC/HRC to put it out of his mind and wait until after the election." BC stands for Bill Clinton, HRC for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ickes cited "HRC" several other times in his notes. If this sounds like deja vu, it is. END of Excerpt For the September 17 editorial online: www.ibdeditorials.com Or deja Hsu?
MoveOn's Anti-Petraeus Ad As if she were President already, Hillary Clinton went on CNN's American Morning as well as the morning shows of the "Big Three" networks on Tuesday to sell her new health care proposals, a day after their unveiling. At the close of the American Morning interview, however, co-host John Roberts at least brought up the controversial "Betray Us" ad by MoveOn.org. He twice asked the junior Senator from New York if she wanted to distance herself from the ad. Both times, she skirted the question by talking about General Petraeus and his record of service, instead of the ad itself. Besides Roberts, Harry Smith of CBS News, ABC's Diane Sawyer, and NBC's Matt Lauer interviewed Clinton on Tuesday morning. Out of the four, Roberts was the only one who brought up the issue of the ad. [This item, by Matthew Balan, was posted Monday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] A transcript of the exchange between Roberts and Senator Clinton, which took place near the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour of Tuesday's American Morning:
JOHN ROBERTS: Senator, we've got to let you go in a second, but I just wanted to touch on other issue. You were one of the senators who voted unanimously for General Petraeus's confirmation. And we saw that MoveOn.org [ad] last week calling him 'General Betray Us.' Obviously, you didn't have that opinion when you voted for him. Do you want to distance yourself from that ad?
-- Brent Baker
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