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On July 26, the News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations were announced, and PBS topped the list with 45 nominations. CBS led the broadcast networks with 31 nods, followed by CNN and HBO with 22 each, and ABC with 20.
MSNBC got 5. Vice News got nine. Al-Jazeera International USA got five. And The New York Times got seven — for videos! Even the liberal website Vox got three.
The Fox News channel, which leads in cable-news viewership year after year after year, got none.
Raise your hand if you're surprised.
Given the liberal tilt of the news industry, did Fox News even submit its work to be nominated by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences? Fox didn't return a comment when we asked. But there are plenty of reasons to be disgusted by what's being nominated for excellence in 2017. It has nothing to do with talent. It's about the best promotion of the leftist agenda. Here's a brief list:
1. Radical leftist Jon Alpert drew an Outstanding Historical Documentary nod for "Cuba and the Cameraman" on Netflix. In a review of the documentary, The New York Times reported, "Mr. Alpert's friendliness toward Castro and many of his policies will no doubt infuriate some viewers (the authoritarian regime's human rights abuses are not addressed)." So how is it historical?
2. The picks for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary include the HBO film "Abortion: Stories Women Tell" in which leftists argue against a 72-hour waiting period for aborting unborn babies in Missouri. In the usual irony, it's up against another HBO film titled "Unlocking the Cage" in which leftists argue in favor of awarding human rights to chimpanzees.
3. Nominations for Outstanding Investigative Documentary include the PBS "Frontline" documentary harshly titled "War on the EPA" in which President Donald Trump and his band of "climate deniers" are condemned for "undoing one of President Obama's signature achievements in the fight against climate change: the Clean Power Plan." PBS couldn't find time in an hour-long broadcast to air a scrap of footage of Obama and Hillary Clinton promising to make coal prices skyrocket and put coal miners out of work.
4. Speaking of Obama, NBC was nominated in the Outstanding Edited Interview category for its sugary special "Barack Obama: The Reality of Hope." The editing did seem impressive: NBC anchorman Lester Holt edited out any mention of Obama scandals in the hour-long interview.
5. CNN's lame apple-and-banana "Facts First" ads are nominated for Outstanding Promotional Announcement.
6. Nominees for Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary include "Bannon's War" on PBS' "Frontline," which drew a rave review from the leftist website Salon that said, "Nothing in this 'Frontline' version of Bannon's biography affords a glimpse of humanity or warmth in the man, and perhaps that is for the best."
It's up against a documentary by the pay-cable movie channel Starz titled "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone." Stone, an icon in radical journalism circles, was exposed a few years ago as having been an agent for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Variety offered this summary of the film, which includes Oliver Stone among the executive producers (Again: Are you surprised?): "the anti-mainstream-media arguments are repeated so often, and so broadly, that they become a kind of catechism: All media is controlled by advertisers. Reporters aren't allowed to question The System. Greed, corruption, and government-sanctioned criminality are shrouded in narcotizing fake news."
Wait, it's OK to denounce the mainstream media as "fake news" if you're a radical lefty? Yes. You can even get nominated for an Emmy.