Free Republic

Quick: how much were Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps cut by the sequester? Zero, you say? Those programs were exempted from sequester cuts, and Medicare was reduced by only 2%? Correctomundo! So what was Andrea Mitchell thinking when she claimed on her MSNBC show that the sequester "gutted" social programs? You tell me. View the video here.

NBC announced today that it would be launching a week of programming to help Obamacare get off its feet, according to a press release sent out by the network. The law has been widely opposed by all Republicans and supported by most Democrats, including President Obama. The headline of the press release reads: NBC News Launches “Ready or Not, the New Healthcare Law,” a Multi-Screen Experience to Help Americans Get the Most Out of the Affordable Care Act Dr. Nancy Snyderman Answers Most Pressing Questions Across Social and Via New Video Series #AskDrNancy Interactive Tools and Resources Help Audience Navigate...

CNN Analyst: Many Companies Using Obamacare as 'Excuse' to Cut Employee Health Insurance By Matt Hadro Created 08/22/2013 - 4:35pm CNN's global economic analyst says many companies are just using Obamacare as an "excuse" to make employee health insurance cuts they already planned to make. "[H]health care inflation is between seven and ten percent a year. And that's with or without Obamacare. So I do think that you're going to see a lot of companies using Obamacare and the ACA as an excuse to make changes in their plan that they might have been planning to make already," said Rana...

"There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House...They hate not just his politics but him," says Chris Matthews. Let me finish tonight with this. I said it before and am now saying it again. There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills – even now – tens of millions of others. They hate not just his politics but him. Think about all the days we have...

...Network evening news viewers in 2012 never once heard the embarrassing prediction by Obama’s economic team that passage of the $787 billion “stimulus” would halt the rise of unemployment at 8%. (In reality, the jobless rate stayed above that mark for 44 months, the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.) There was just a single network mention last year (on ABC) of Obama’s broken promise of cutting the federal budget deficit “by half by the end of my first term in office.” Reporters on CBS and NBC never once brought up this inconvenient truth. All three evening newscasts buried...

According to Chris Matthews, pro-Second Amendment Americans are weird, not "normal," "obsessed" and probably racist. In a segment on Thursday's Hardball, the cable host played a new National Rifle Association ad attacking Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. Matthews lectured, "The gun people, they think about nothing else. And they never change their minds, never change their attitudes and never change the frickin' subject."

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell made the case this evening that the National Rifle Association is to blame for the slow investigation into the Boston bombings: Video here"There are new developments tonight in the bombing investigation here in Boston," said O'Donnell. "But that investigation could be moving faster were it not for the successful lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association. The NRA's efforts to guarantee that American mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murders in the world is not limited to murderers who use assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The NRA is also in the business of helping bombers get...

On the Monday broadcast of Current TV's "The War Room" network host Cenk Uygur observed Americans would not be as outraged if the Boston bomber turns out to be a "right-wing white guy" instead of a Muslim terrorist. "Now, if it's a right-wing white guy, those same exact people will turn around and say, 'Well, look, let's not over blow this. I mean it's just one crazy guy, he doesn't affect anything else. It has no other implications, let's just all calm down," Uygur said. Michael Shure, the host of "The War Room," said Cenk could be totally wrong about...

<p>Come on. Can’t even the media hacks stop the political BS for just a few hours while we pray for the people and victims of the bombings in Boston at the Marathon? Already, CNN leftist hack Wolf Blitzer is blaming ‘anti-tax’ groups or in other words the Tea Party for the explosions at the Boston Marathon. I’ll post video as soon as it comes out. Go F*ck Yourself Wolf Blitzer and CNN. Seriously!</p>

The gay son of Rep. Matt Salmon, Arizona Republican, told KPNX-TV in Phoenix on Sunday that both MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell” and CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” canceled interviews with him because he refused to attack his father on the air. Matt R. Salmon, the son, said MSNBC canceled his appearance because “they had intended to be critical of him and … I was unwilling to do so.” He also said CNN “seemed very gung ho about” an interview at first, but when he said he was supportive of his father, “they seemed to lose interest.”

Comcast is slowly but surely erasing guns from all its advertising, and shop owners in Georgia are the latest to be told their ads will be pulled if they don’t take out all reference to weapons. Ray Reynolds owns United Loan and Firearms, a pawn shop in Augusta. He told the Augusta Chronicle on Monday he was notified last week that his ads would be pulled from the local Comcast cable station unless he took out all references to guns — including in his shop name.

In a fresh New Republic story, reporter Rebecca Dana profiles Phil Griffin, the boss of a surging MSNBC. It’s a sympathetic look at the network exec, complete with a detailed rundown of how he and others happened upon the programming identity that has captivated liberal Americans across the land. One aspect of the piece that Griffin himself must adore is its disavowal of equivalence between MSNBC and cable top dog Fox News. Here’s how Dana makes the case that these outlets are distinct: Still, MSNBC isn’t an instrument of the Democratic Party in the way that Fox is of

MSNBC president Phil Griffin spoke to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Marisa Guthrie about his network, and the state of the cable news competition. Griffin was candid, saying that there is a certain Fox News personality he would love to poach: THR: Is there an on-air personality on another network that you would like to have? Griffin: Yes. I don’t know if I should say this. [Fox News anchor] Shep Smith. I just like his way. I like everything about him.

We seem to be in the midst of another one of our periodic battles over liberal bias in the media, as denoted in recent days by Paul Ryan and various other conservatives vexed with the tone of campaign coverage. "It goes without saying that there is definitely media bias," Ryan said on Fox News. "I think most people in the mainstream media are left of center and, therefore, they want a very left-of-center president versus a conservative president like Mitt Romney." I think so myself after more than four decades of membership in that same suspect category, the gatherers and...

Romney on now regarding yesterday's attacks on the US. Reporters are barking like mad dogs in their rage to hurt Romney, bombarding him with questions about his strong denunciation of the attacks yesterday and Obama's craven apology to the Muslim world. 'Do you feel you were wrong when you denounced the attacks yesterday?' 'Do you feel you were unfair to President Obama in your remarks?' 'How would a President Romney have acted?' Disgusting.

Ann Romney may not make prime time during next week's Republican National Convention. The three major television networks — NBC, ABC and CBS — are not airing prime-time coverage of the RNC on Monday, the opening night of the convention and the night that Ann Romney has been scheduled to deliver the keynote address. So in order to get Mitt's wife onto television, the campaign may have to scramble and reschedule her speech. CNN, which will cover the speech, first reported earlier this week that Ann Romney is expected to headline the kickoff. The three networks all confirmed to POLITICO...

As NewsBusters previously reported, ABC's Brian Ross on Friday falsely accused a Tea Party member of being the "James" Holmes that orchestrated the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado. "Jim" Holmes during an interview with the Daily Caller had some harsh words for his accuser saying, "What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?” “Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?” told the Caller's Alex Pappas: Holmes informed Pappas that ABC News didn’t contact him before Ross went on air. In fact,...

Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws. Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda. NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now...

REDMOND, Wash. — NBC News has acquired full control of msnbc.com and its digital network from Microsoft Corp. and is immediately rebranding the site as NBCNews.com. Many details of the arrangement remain to be worked out, and financial terms weren't disclosed. But NBC News President Steve Capus said the site — one of the news industry's earliest and most successful online operations — would become part of NBC News Digital, a new division led by Vivian Schiller, the former president and chief executive of National Public Radio. Schiller joined NBC News as chief digital officer last year.

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have a credibility problem with conservatives and Middle America. And it seems to be getting worse. It’s not just that ABC News hired Bill Clinton’s White House spokesman and counselor George Stephanopoulos as a journalist; it’s that the pack mentality at ABC News doesn’t see it as a problem. “The planning meetings [at ABC News] have little political diversity. Everyone is left of center and at ease with their liberal ideals. The other viewpoint is rarely raised and never fully represented,” a current ABC News producer told me last week. ,,,,, But the bias at...