Radical Chic: NY Times Relaunches Magazine w/ Hagiography Of Terrorist Helper Lori Berenson

Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
Friday March 04, 2011 @ 09:29 AM EST

1. Radical Chic: NY Times Relaunches Magazine with Hagiography of Terrorist Helper Lori Berenson

For the third time in ten months the New York Times sympathizes for Manhattanite girl turned Peruvian terrorist helper Lori Berenson, this time with a magazine portrait by novelist Jennifer Egan: "Such an outpouring of rage at a forty-year-old woman, mother to a toddler, who was convicted in her mid-twenties of abetting a terrorist plot that never took place...." She added that "The M.R.T.A. was a much smaller insurgent group than the dominant Shining Path, and historically less violent."

2. Brokaw's Bad Memory or Historical Revisionism? Claims GOP Was Thrown Out of House After '95 Shutdown

NBC's Tom Brokaw was invited on Thursday's Today show to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from the Supreme Court ruling on the Westboro church to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling results and in discussing the poll Brokaw warned Republicans risked political peril if there was another government shutdown. The former Nightly News anchor actually claimed that after the 1995 shutdown the GOP was "turned out" of the House "not too long after that." However that historic budget fight wasn't as politically lethal as Brokaw made it out to viewers, as the Republicans maintained control of the House until 2006.

3. CBS Sees Too Much 'Personal Baggage' for Gingrich; Other GOP 2012 Candidates Unable to Match Obama Fund-Raising

Discussing the possibility of Newt Gingrich running for president in 2012, on Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Chris Wragge touted "big negatives" for the former House speaker: "...baggage that he brings with him...the government shutdowns back in the '90s, to being forced out as speaker, to the fact that he's on his third marriage, which is probably going to alienate some social conservatives." Political analyst John Dickerson agreed with Wragge's assessment: "But as you say, the personal baggage is considerable. He's not only had multiple marriages but he is an admitted adulterer."

4. CBS, NBC Newscasts Give Scant Coverage to Muslim Terror Attack at German Airport

Two US airmen were killed by a Muslim terrorist in Germany on Wednesday, but neither CBS nor NBC thought it worthy of more than thirty seconds of coverage on their evening newscasts Wednesday night. While ABC devoted a full segment of the March 2 World News to the issue, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News offered only scant news briefs and buried the story deep into their broadcasts.

5. Big Three Networks Herald New White House Women's Report

ABC and NBC touted the Obama administration's new report on women by leading their evening news shows with it on Tuesday. Diane Sawyer gushed over the "huge new report," while NBC's Savannah Guthrie trumpeted the "first comprehensive White House report on women since...Kennedy asked Eleanor Roosevelt to lead a study." CBS also highlighted the report on Evening News and on the Early Show the next day. NBC's Brian Williams, during his introduction to correspondent Savannah Guthrie's report, proclaimed how "the White House reported some new numbers today about women in this country, and while, in many ways, women continue to pass men by, an old problem is just as bad, just as serious, and it continues to hold women back economically." After noting the gains by women in terms of college attendance, Williams continued that the problem was "the pay gap in the workplace, and that hasn't changed."