Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Hannity, Gingrich spread falsehoods to bolster Gingrich's claim that Dems are moving U.S. toward "dictatorship" Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich spewed falsehoods concerning Democratic economic proposals and policies to bolster Gingrich's claim that Democrats are moving the country "towards a political dictatorship." Read More Fox & Friends hosts former mobster to compare Dems to crime family Fox & Friends hosts featured a segment in which they asked a former member of the Colombo crime family to compare Tim Geithner, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and George Soros to members of the mob. Read More Denouncing death threats to AIG execs, Fox's Kelly ignored colleagues' violent rhetoric In criticizing death threats to AIG executives, Fox News' Megyn Kelly did not address Charles Krauthammer's recent comments advocating for the "hanging" of AIG executives who received bonuses or Mort Kondracke's recommendation that they be "boil[ed] in oil." Read More CNBC allows Gregg to forward small-business tax falsehood CNBC's Joe Kernen allowed Sen. Judd Gregg to advance the false Republican talking point that President Obama's income tax proposals would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses. Read More Return to (poor) form: MSNBC again drops the ball on disclosing McCaffrey's DynCorp ties On MSNBC Live, Barry R. McCaffrey discussed "build[ing] Afghan security forces," but at no point during the discussion did either McCaffrey or anchor Andrea Mitchell disclose McCaffrey's ties to DynCorp International -- a company under contract to train part of the Afghan National Security Force. Read More After devoting extensive coverage to Geithner hearing on AIG, cable networks all but ignore live testimony on Treasury powers CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News aired virtually no live coverage of Timothy Geithner's testimony before a House Financial Services Committee hearing on regulatory reform in the financial industry. By contrast, CNN and MSNBC each aired live more than an hour, and Fox News approximately 14 minutes, of Geithner and Ben Bernanke's testimony at a committee hearing on AIG two days earlier. Read More NY Times mag profile of global warming skeptic uncritically repeats false comparison with '70s global cooling theory A New York Times Magazine profile of global warming skeptic Freeman Dyson quotes without challenge his false suggestion that there was a scientific consensus in the 1970s that the earth was cooling. Unlike the current consensus that global warming exists, there was no consensus in the 1970s that the earth was cooling. Read More Will media note House GOP has proposed a plan that its own leader called a power grab? Rep. John Boehner has called Timothy Geithner's proposal to allow the government to take over nonbank financial institutions "an unprecedented grab of power," but a budget blueprint by House Republicans proposes steps similar to Geithner's plan, raising the question of whether the media, which have reported extensively on the conservative charge of a "power grab," will note the similarities. Read More NY Times mag sends a sports and music writer to do a science writer's job The New York Times Magazine is slated to publish a story on March 29 -- promoting the controversial global warming views of physicist Freeman Dyson -- that was written, not by a scientist or science writer, but by Nicholas Dawidoff, whose previous work for the Times has focused largely on sports and music. Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.