| Media Matters Week-in-Review Special Note: If you are looking for Jamison Foser's weekly column, you can view this week's installment here or sign-up to receive them by email here. Weekly Wrap-Up Video - Weekly Wrap-Up for Friday, March 20, 2009 (Watch Video)
This Week's Top Stories AIG Bonus Controversy Dominates Media - As if news that AIG was handing out bonuses to executives despite having been bailed out by the Federal government wasn't bad enough, reports on the controversy this week only made matters worse. You'd think President Bush had no blame for the situation if you read reports in publications like Politico, USA Today or the Los Angeles Times -- all of which omitted any mention of the Bush Treasury Department's work with the Federal Reserve in carrying out last year's bailouts and bought AIG stock notwithstanding the existence of these bonus contracts. Worse yet, in reporting on emails obtained by Fox Business Network, Fox News' Jon Scott at no point noted that the emails implicate the Bush administration in approving a $40 billion bailout for AIG without requiring AIG to nullify its employee bonus contracts. Additionally, conservative leader Rush Limbaugh and a host of other right-wing media players ratcheted up the rhetoric standing up for AIG against what they described as "mob rule" while also falsely claiming that no Republican voted for the TARP bailout or the bonuses. Others in the press corps falsely asserted that President Obama's recovery bill required the bonuses "to stay in place."
Jim Cramer vs. Jon Stewart, Round 2? - Think the dust-up between Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, and CNBC's Jim Cramer ended with Cramer's appearance on Stewart's show? Guess again. After acknowledging that CNBC's reporting deserved criticism during his interview with Stewart last week, Cramer appeared on NBC's Today show this week saying of Stewart that "it was a naïve and misleading thing to attack the media" for their coverage of the economic recession. (Read More)
Death of Obama's Media "Honeymoon" Cliché Lives On - This week, a Media Matters study found that since the day after President Obama's inauguration, broadcast and cable news figures have been declaring that Obama's "honeymoon" is "over" or questioning whether it is, in fact, over, rendering the cliché all but meaningless. Of course that hasn't stopped them from repeating it time and again. (Read More)
Action of the Week This Week's Media Columns | | Eric Boehlert: Rampage Nation: The press no longer cares about epic gun violence
Last week, two breaking news events competed for attention from the national media. Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's guilty plea was pitted against a deranged 28-year-old, who armed with a pair of military-style assault weapons went on a killing spree. Which do you think garnered wall-to-wall media attention? (Read More) | | | | | | Jamison Foser: Tucker Carlson's Jerk Store
Tucker Carlson has been doing his best impersonation of Seinfeld's George Costanza ("the Jerk Store called, and they're running out of you!") for the past week, as he lashes out again and again at Jon Stewart, who humiliated Carlson on national television more than four years ago. (Read More) | | | | | | Karl Frisch: An AIG of conservative enlightenment? Hardly.
Angry at AIG for handing out executive bonuses to the very people who helped sink the company in the first place? Well, if conservative leader Rush Limbaugh is to be believed, you're now part of an angry "lynch mob" ginned up by the Obama administration. (Read More) | Radio Active: The Week in Conservative Talk Radio In Case You Missed It... - Associated Press Liberal media watchdog begins anti-CNBC drive: Spearheaded by the new Progressive Change Campaign Committee and supported by the watchdog Media Matters and others, the group is asking CNBC to hire economic voices with a track record of being right on the current economic crisis, and do more to hold business leaders accountable. "You screwed up badly," the petition, posted online Monday, reads. "Don't apologize. Fix it." (Read More)
- Media Matters president Burns on MSNBC's Countdown: On Thursday, March 19, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann hosted Media Matters president Eric Burns for a discussion on issues ranging from Bill O'Reilly's preoccupation his progressive critics to recent unfounded attacks on progressives by conservatives in the media. The appearance was part of Olbermann's "left-wing smear merchants week." (Watch Video)
- What Honeymoon? Have you noticed how the press has been trumpeting the end of President Obama's "honeymoon" nearly every day since he took office? Talk about a prolonged annulment. We're not even sure they ever made it to the alter in the first place as this great new video illustrates. If the last two months are the media's idea of a honeymoon, all we have to say is good riddance. (Watch Video)
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