Media Matters Daily Summary 01-21-10

Van Susteren misuses "nuclear option," allows Gregg to call reconciliation "arcane"
Fox News' Greta Van Susteren falsely described the budget reconciliation process as the "nuclear option," and allowed Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to refer to it as "arcane." In fact, the "nuclear option" actually refers to a procedure that would be used to change Senate rules, while reconciliation requires no such rule change and was used many times by Republicans during the Bush administration, with the support of Gregg. Read More

Quick Fact: IBD falsely claimed that "the earth hasn't been warming at all, at least not in the last decade"
An Investor's Business Daily editorial falsely claimed that "the earth hasn't been warming at all, at least not in the last decade." But numerous climate scientists have reported that 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. Read More

Wash. Times columnist Birnbaum wastes no time writing about industries he represents without disclosing ties
In his first column since reportedly accepting a job heading public relations for a Washington lobbying firm, former Washington Times digital managing editor Jeffrey Birnbaum wrote favorably about industries he represents -- health insurance, health care, pharmaceutical, and oil and gas -- without disclosing his ties to the industries. Read More

One year later, right-wing media still mourn the loss of Bush
One year after the inauguration of President Obama, right-wing media -- in particular Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, Big Hollywood, and Big Journalism -- marked the anniversary with a series of articles fondly reminiscing about the Bush administration, in which they often attempted to rewrite the history of Bush's policies and also attacked Obama. Read More

Rove shelters Bush from any responsibility for 2009 increase in deficit
In his Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove ignored the Bush administration's responsibility for the 2009 budget to attack the Obama administration over deficits. Rove also ignored several economic analyses that estimated relative employment increases under the stimulus in order to claim that the stimulus failed. Read More

The incredible shallowness of the media's political analysis
For a group of people who get paid to cover politics (and who regularly forgo serious policy coverage in favor of political analysis), reporters can be remarkably shallow -- inept, even -- in their assessments. Read More

Quick Fact: Beck falsely attributes entire 2009 debt to Obama
Glenn Beck attributed the entire deficit for the fiscal year 2009 to President Obama, stating that the federal debt was "$10.6 trillion in 2008," and that since Obama "comes in," "we've gone in the one year, we've gone to... $12.3 trillion on the debt." In fact, only a small portion of the fiscal year 2009 deficit is due to Obama's policies; in January, before he took office or signed any legislation, CBO projected that, based on policies set under President Bush and economic conditions at the time, the deficit for fiscal year 2009 would reach $1.2 trillion. Read More

Right-wing media distort Blair testimony to claim treatment of Abdulmutallab made America less safe
Rightwing media outlets have distorted testimony by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to buttress their false claims that the decision to process alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab through the civilian criminal justice system prevented his interrogation and has made the United States less safe. In fact, in remarks Blair later stated were "misconstrued," he stated that an interrogation team that is not actually operational "should have" been "invoke[d]" with regard to Abdulmutallab, and in a subsequent statement, Blair said that the FBI interrogated Abdulmutallab and "received important intelligence." Read More