Tag Archives: Nbc

Media Applaud Teen Abortion on ‘Friday Night Lights’

NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” wants to tackle more than football players. In a bold move for scripted dramas, which usually shy away from taboo issues, the July 9 episode of the network drama featured a high school-aged character deciding to have an abortion, declaring it was “the right thing to do.” The plotline earned praise from many in the media. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker praised “Friday Night Lights” for delivering “one of its finest hours ever.” In a July 10 blog post , The Atlantic’s Tony Lee noted that he was impressed by the “nuanced, apolitical manner” that the writers used to convey the dilemma facing this pregnant teenage girl. Lee described the episode as “devoid of political posturing or grandstanding,” ignoring the fact that the writers’ decision to include a pro-choice decision is itself a political statement. While the characters did not deal lightly with the issue, the show’s justification for the abortion relied on several common pro-choice arguments, including economics and self-interest. The pregnant student, Becky Sproles, worried she wouldn’t be able to care for a baby. Her confidant, high school principal Tami Taylor, advised Sproles that she would tell her own daughter to “think about her life, think about what’s important to her and what she wants.” That position earned support from Slate . Writer Emily Bazelon said Taylor’s advice for Sproles to “think about her life” was “the perfect thing” to say in that situation.  New York Times writer Ginia Bellafante called the storyline “remarkable,” noting the rarity of abortions on television shows since the 1970s. Bellafante said that unlike more recent shows that presented both arguments in the abortion debate fairly, “Friday Night Lights” chose instead to hold to its “quasi-Marxist understanding that economics dictate everything.” The episode did include mentions of alternatives to abortion, including crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies. But Bellafante acknowledged that the “opposing view,” that is, the pro-life view, “was depicted as obtuse and out of touch.” 

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Media Applaud Teen Abortion on ‘Friday Night Lights’

Biden Tells Leno He Wanted To Send Rush Limbaugh to Russia in Spy Swap

Vice President Joe Biden on Friday told Jay Leno that he wanted to send Rush Limbaugh to Russia as part of last week’s spy swap. As a special guest of the “Tonight Show,” Biden was asked why we traded ten of their spies for four of ours.  “Well, we got back four really good ones,” joked Biden. Leno then showed a picture of Anna Chapman and asked, “Do we have any spies that hot?” Biden stammered, “Let me make it clear, it wasn’t my idea to send her back…I thought maybe they’d take Rush Limbaugh or something” (video follows with transcript and commentary, relevant section at 0:55):  JAY LENO, HOST: I want to ask about this Russian spy swap. We traded ten for four. Now, I know our math skills are not as good as they should be, but that doesn’t seem fair. Why, why did we trade ten for four? VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Well, we got back four really good ones. LENO: Yeah. [ Laughter ] BIDEN: And the ten, they’ve been here a long time, but they hadn’t done much. LENO: Are they just sort of like moles, they just sort of plant people here and say, “See what you can find out?” Or do they come with a specific mission, “You’re going to go work for Lockheed” or “You’re going to work for…” BIDEN: The former. LENO: Yeah. Okay. Now, show him, this Russian woman here, let me ask you something. And you would know this, Mr. Vice President. Do we have any spies that hot? [ Laughter ] BIDEN: Let me make it clear, it wasn’t my idea to send her back. [ Laughter ] Wasn’t mine. [ Cheers and applause ] I wanted, anyway. [ Laughter ] I thought maybe they’d take Rush Limbaugh or something. LENO: There you go. BIDEN: You know what I mean? That would have been a good — a good move. This would be a great joke if it didn’t have such underlying truth to it. After all, the way this administration has treated its adversaries in the media, you think they would ship all their detractors to foreign lands if they could. 

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Biden Tells Leno He Wanted To Send Rush Limbaugh to Russia in Spy Swap

TV Bites: Lee Pace Finds Life After Daisies

CBS Ignores Levi Johnston Admitting False Statements; Promoted Him in ’09

In an interview with People Magazine on Tuesday, Levi Johnston admitted: “I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true.” On Wednesday, the CBS Early Show failed to make any mention of the admission, despite having provided a media platform for Johnston last year by conducting exclusive interviews with him. On the April 8, 2009 broadcast , co-host Maggie Rodriguez conducted her first interview with Johnston, and introduced the segment by proclaiming: “He [Johnston], along with his mother and sister, sat down with me last night for an interview to clear up the ‘lies’ they say the Palins have been telling about them.” Rodriguez sympathized with the former boyfriend of Bristol Palin by wondering: “Did you get your heart broken?” During a September 3 segment on Johnston’s latest attack against the Palins, Rodriguez declared: “And shocking allegations that could shatter former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s conservative family image. If she chooses to believe what Levi Johnston is saying.” Rodriguez’s second interview with Johnston came weeks later on October 29 : “He is back on the offensive in this he-said-she-said battle that began shortly after the presidential election….he says he’s trying to show the world the real Levi.” In reaction to that interview, Sarah Palin called out the network for promoting Johnston: “CBS should be ashamed for continually providing a forum to propagate lies.” On the November 17 Early Show , Rodriguez touted an exclusive interview with Johnston on the CBS entertainment show, ‘The Insider’: “Levi Johnston says he is winning the war of words between Sarah Palin and him. We’ll hear from him.” Later, correspondent for The Insider, Chris Jacobs, declared: “Sarah Palin lashing out at Levi and now Levi fires back.”     In the Tuesday interview with People, after Johnston confessed to making false statements about the Palins, he added: “I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize.” One wonders when CBS will offer a similar apology for so aggressively promoting Johnston, despite his lack of credibility. At the very least, the network should acknowledge the fact that he now recants past statements he made on their air.

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CBS Ignores Levi Johnston Admitting False Statements; Promoted Him in ’09

ABC, NBC and CBS Mostly Ignore Obama’s Recess Appointment of Pro-Health Care Rationing Doctor to Head Medicare

Barack Obama’s decision to make a recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to run Medicare has been vastly ignored by the mainstream news media, despite the fact Berwick has made controversial statements favoring rationing of medical care. As CNSNews.com’s Terry Jeffrey reported Dr. Berwick, at a talk celebrating the 60th birthday of Great Britain’s National Health Service, told the audience to be wary of returning to a free enterprise based system as he warned: “Please, don’t put your faith in market forces,” and urged them “I hope you will never, ever give up on what you have begun” and rallied the crowd: “I hope you realize and affirm how badly you need–how badly the world needs–an example at scale of a health care system that is universal, accessible, excellent and free at the point of care–a health system that, at its core is like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just.” Berwick even ominously told his audience at Biotechnology Healthcare, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” So given Berwick’s rather outspoken faith in socialized medicine the news that Obama is planning to circumvent Congress with a recess appointment, to have him head Medicare, had to be big news, right? Well not according to NBC, CBS and ABC news, as there was no mention of the President’s decision to make the recess appointment on Tuesday night’s NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News or ABC’s World News. In fact the embargo on the information continued through Wednesday morning as there were zero mentions on ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s The Early Show. Only NBC’s Today show mentioned the news as Lester Holt, in an 8am EST news brief on the July 7 show, told viewers the following: President Obama is expected to appoint his choice to oversee Medicare and Medicaid today, while Congress is in recess. This means Dr. Donald Berwick won’t have to undergo Senate confirmation hearings. Republicans had wanted to question the Harvard professor and healthcare policy expert about comments he made on rationing medical care. A scant 20 seconds from the NBC’s Today show, as of Wednesday morning, is all the three major broadcast news networks have devoted to the news that Obama has just named a health care rationing doctor to run this country’s Medicare system. To read more about Berwick please read CNSNews.com’s coverage.

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ABC, NBC and CBS Mostly Ignore Obama’s Recess Appointment of Pro-Health Care Rationing Doctor to Head Medicare

Examiner’s Byron York: The NASA-Muslim Outreach Story ‘Has Not Made the Cut’

At the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog  (HT Instapundit ), Byron York documents the results of some Lexis Nexis searching: Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on ABC World News: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on CBS Evening News: 0. As a supplement, here are the results of a search on “Charles Bolden” (not entered in quotes), NASA’s Director, done at 9:00 a.m. ET at the Associated Press’s main site: Additional AP site searches on ” NASA ” and Bolden’s last name only return nothing relevant to the controversy described at this Monday Fox News story (bolds after headline are mine; internal links are in original): NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations With Muslim World NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel. “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden said in the interview. The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo — in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part. For all the new media controversy Bolden’s outreach remarks have generated — which, by the way amounts to about 130 items in a Google News search on “Charles Bolden” (in quotes) done at 9:20 a.m. ET — this later paragraph in Fox’s report is in its own way even more offensive: He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. Apparently, that would be too “unilateral” or something. Maybe one of the early “beyond low-Earth” missions will be to the moon to remove that offensive American flag that Neil Armstrong’s crew planted there. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Examiner’s Byron York: The NASA-Muslim Outreach Story ‘Has Not Made the Cut’

Love Bites Bumped Back to Mid-Season, Loses Showrunner

Looks like you’ll want to keep an eye out for Love Bites in 20 11 instead. In a bit of a surprise, NBC announced that their buzz-y new anthology would be bumped to mid-season and replaced by episodes of The Apprentice on Thursdays at 10 p.m. this fall. The reason(s) for the change? Star Becki Newton is pregnant and — more important — showrunner Cindy Chupack is stepping aside, but will remain on as a writer. Says Chupack: “Launching an anthology series, which breaks the form in so many ways, is a huge undertaking, and I strongly feel that I can be most helpful not showrunning, but writing. It just became clear that for several reasons, some of them personal, this change (and a little more time) is what we need to launch this show properly.” In other words: Expect to see an anthology-less Love Bites hitting NBC in January! [ EW ]

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Love Bites Bumped Back to Mid-Season, Loses Showrunner

Jay Leno Logs His Worst Tonight Show Ratings Since ’93

This is either a sign that late night television is cannibalizing itself , less people are watching live TV or America just doesn’t think Jay Leno is as funny as he used to be — or all three! The Tonight Show clocked its lowest ratings this past quarter since 1993, when David Letterman premiered his Late Show on CBS. Coincidentally, this is also Leno’s first full quarter at the Tonight Show since Conangate. [ Deadline ]

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Jay Leno Logs His Worst Tonight Show Ratings Since ’93

Rosie O’Donnell Getting New Show On NBC?

The rumor mill concerning Rosie O’Donnell landing a new daytime show heated up Monday when Gossip Cop reported the comedienne is in talks with NBC. Apparently, the stumbling block is that the broadcasting company wants an out clause in case Rosie has a blow up like she did on ABC’s “The View.” As NewsBusters reported on May 23, 2007, O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck got into quite a fight about the war in Iraq that was so caustic it ended up being Rosie’s last day on the show. She and ABC agreed to terminate her contract days later. With this in mind, according to Gossip Cop, NBC isn’t taking any chances: The show, as we  previously reported , is looking to launch in the fall of 2011, and will be produced by  Robert F. Kennedy ‘s documentary filmmaking daughter,  Rory Kennedy , along with TV veterans  Dick Robertson   and  Scott Carlin . But there’s one sticking point, says our impeccable insider. According to our source, “NBC wants an out if she implodes like she did on ‘The View.'”  If this is correct, one certainly can’t blame NBC for wanting to hedge its bet. On the other hand, if you’re concerned about the behavior of someone you’re entering into a contract with, isn’t the wisest move to NOT put yourself in a position where said individual could end up embarrassing your organization? As such, why is NBC even considering this risk given O’Donnell’s background? Maybe the folks at NBC ought to watch this before they sign:

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Rosie O’Donnell Getting New Show On NBC?

NBC’s Todd Defends Obama ‘Twitters’ Gaffe: ‘Written Incorrectly in His Prepared Remarks’

On NBC’s Today on Friday, White House correspondent Chuck Todd preemptively dismissed any criticism of President Obama referring to “Twitters” during a joint press conference with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Thursday: “It turns out he didn’t misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks.” During Todd’s report, a clip was played of Obama noting how in a visit to California’s Silicon Valley, Medvedev went to “visit the headquarter of Twitters.” Obama simply placed an ‘s’ after the wrong word. Rather than let the minor gaffe stand, at the conclusion of the report, Todd made to sure to explain the typographical error to viewers: “You did not mishear. The President did say the word ‘Twitters,’ plural.” Despite Obama’s inability to correct the remarks off the cuff, Todd solely blamed a White House staffer for the mistake: “A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one.”                              Todd quickly changed the subject to a similar gaffe made by President Bush: “…it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those ‘internets.'” The media was certainly never quick to come to Bush’s defense after a verbal misstep.   In his report, Todd observed how Obama got a “diplomatic head-start” on the upcoming G-20 economic summit in Canada by meeting with Medvedev and how “…the President treated Medvedev to cheeseburgers at one of the President’s favorite burger spots in northern Virginia.” Here is a full transcript of Todd’s June 25 report: 7:07AM MATT LAUER: President Obama will be keeping an eye on what’s happening in the Gulf today from Toronto. He’s heading there this morning to join a host of world leaders at the G-20 summit. NBC’s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd is there as well. Chuck, good morning to you. CHUCK TODD: Well, good morning, Matt. The President is scheduled to arrive here later this morning. He’s going to have a new Wall Street reform deal in his back pocket. It’s something he’s going to try to use to convince these other nations from around the world to do similar action. On Thursday he met with an important G-20 ally, the Russian president. Believe it or not, it’s the seventh time these two have met face-to-face. Security here at the G-20 meeting is tight. The Canadian government has spent more than any other host country ever to try to make sure world leaders are safe. Heading into the important economic summit, the President got a diplomatic head-start by meeting with one of America’s most touchy allies, Russia, and its president, Dimitri Medvedev. BARACK OBAMA: America’s most significant national security interests and priorities could be advanced most effectively through cooperation, not an adversarial relationship, with Russia. TODD: And yet, despite the global economic concerns and the presence of the Russian president- UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Does the change in command in Afghanistan- TODD: A reporter’s first question brought the President back to the issue that’s dogged him all week, Afghanistan. OBAMA: I am confident we’ve got a team in place that can execute it. TODD: The President promised no more personnel changes after Wednesday’s dramatic firing of General Stanley McChrystal and the President made sure to leave himself wiggle room on the question of whether the U.S. will actually go through with its plans to draw down troops in July, 2011. OBAMA: We didn’t say we’d be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us. We said as we begin a transition phase in which the Afghan government is taking on more and more responsibility. TODD: Medvedev was asked if he had any advice for the President, given Russia’s long and costly war in Afghanistan. DIMITRI MEDVEDEV: But I try not to give pieces of advice that can’t be fulfilled. TODD: But Defense Secretary Robert Gates did have words of advice. ROBERT GATES: No one, be they adversaries or friends, or especially our troops, should misinterpret these personnel changes as a slackening of this government’s commitment to the mission in Afghanistan. OBAMA: Visit the headquarter of Twitters. TODD: On a lighter note, President Obama noted President Medvedev opened a Twitter account and joked it was a 21st sentry substitute for the old Cold War hotline. OBAMA: I have one as well, so we may be able to finally throw away those red phones that have been sitting around for so long. TODD: Earlier in the day, the President treated Medvedev to cheeseburgers at one of the President’s favorite burger spots in northern Virginia. MEDVEDEV: Probably it’s not quite healthy but it’s very tasty and you can feel the spirit of America. TODD: Alright. You did not mishear. The President did say the word ‘Twitters,’ plural. It turns out he didn’t misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks. A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one. But it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those ‘internets.’ Matt. LAUER: Alright, Chuck Todd, thank you very much. He’s in Toronto this morning.

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NBC’s Todd Defends Obama ‘Twitters’ Gaffe: ‘Written Incorrectly in His Prepared Remarks’