Some of my favorites:
November 2009: In a segment on Sarah Palin, Dylan Ratigan uses multiple clearly-photoshopped pictures of her, including the one of her in a bikini holding a rifle, passing them off as completely real.
November 2010: Dylan Ratigan and a guest talk about the potential need for a violent revolution. While not a "lie", I suppose, it seems to be a lie whenever some other MSNBC personality gets outraged for a conservative bringing up that notion yet having no problem when it comes from one of their own.
Before reading this post, I had never heard of Dylan Ratigan. I've never watched his show in my life and, if he did these things, I don't think I'll be starting.
January 2010: Keith Olbermann lies saying O'Reilly hasn't dedicated even one segment to Haiti, when in fact he had featured multiple correspondents and relatives of people in Haiti.
He was probably referring only to the first day or two after the earthquake. He's not the only one. Here is a different source saying essentially the same thing, and Olbermann is not mentioned at all(except by some people in the comments section):
O'Reilly ignores Haiti to cover whaling, wild horses and Jon Stewart | Media Matters for America
January 2010: Olbermann lies saying that the beating of Kenneth Gladney by SEIU members is not real, despite videotape and multiple arrests proving the contrary.
Apparently there was some footage of Gladney in a wheelchair, unable to talk on one network and footage of him walking and talking the day before on another network, or something like that, and that raised some eyebrows. But, that's purely speculative and not enough to base those comments on, so, yeah, Olbermann probably shouldn't have said that.
January 2010: Olbermann calls Scott Brown an "irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees." As fun as it was to watch the veins in Keith's head, I'm pretty sure very few of those things are true.
There's definitely a good deal of exaggeration and spin there, but no outright lies. Here's a nice point-by-point analysis that appears to be fairly objective - in fact, the author set out to disprove Olbermann, but ended up not really hating on him that much and in fact admitting that a good chunk of this is true, even if Olbermann did exaggerate some things:
Keith Olbermann ‘Proves’ His Case Against Scott Brown | Mediaite
November 2010: Rachel Maddow criticizes Fox News for the fact that Sean Hannity was the keynote speaker at at least one Republican fundraiser, while not mentioning at all the fact that Ed Schultz has been the keynote speaker at multiple Democratic fundraisers. Dishonest.
I believe the hosts are contractually bound from criticizing other hosts on the same network on the air - it's why Maddow's reference to Joe Scarborough was so veiled, she wasn't allow to refer to him by name. For all we know, she might agree that Shultz shouldn't have done that, but she's not allowed to really say so on the air.
I forget exactly when this was, but how about all the completely untrue quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh when he was trying to buy an NFL team? Not a single video or transcript was provided, but MSNBC and others ran with the quotes as fact.
I don't know anything about this - what was said, and how do you know it to be untrue?
October 2010: Rachel Maddow lies saying that a Republican member of Congress got advanced notice that the Oklahoma City bombing was going to happen. When called out on it, she "apologized" in her typical sarcastic manner, seeming to mock the people who corrected her, apparently oblivious to the fact that there are some people who might get a little upset over the slight error of confusing "before the bombing" and "after the bombing."
This was unfortunate; I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she made an honest mistake[i.e. she may have meant that the congressman in question was notified of the bombing after it happened, but "in advance of" the press being all over it], because I think she is trustworthy(moreso than Olbermann, in fact). I really hope it was an honest mistake/misunderstanding.
November 2010: Olbermann lies saying that FNC's Brian Kilmeade said that "all Muslims are terrorists" when in fact he said no such thing. I'll let the videotape speak for itself.
YouTube - Watch: Keith Olbermann Smears Brian Kilmeade with a Lie!
I'd never heard about this, but somebody in the comments section of that video had this to say:
"Funny how olbywatch doesn't use the original clip of Keith Olbermann calling Brian Kilmeade an unAmerican baster, the clip that Jon Stewart used at the Rally. That's because in the original clip Olbermann did NOT showed that short Fox News TV clip of Kilmeade that olbywatch showed, he used a Fox News RADIO clip of Kilmeade. olbywatch is the one who is doing the smearing."
I know, I know, youtube comments section is hardly a reliable source of information. I don't know what's in the radio clip in question, but until I do, I'll reserve judgement.
And finally, one of my favorite displays of downright stupidity. On Hardball, Chris Matthews played a clip of Alaska's Joe Miller being interviewed via satellite by someone in New York. Any intelligent person would realize that there would be a slight delay in the communication between the two people. In the clip Matthews played, Miller was asked if he thought Sarah Palin was qualified to be President. As a result of the delay, it appeared Miller took a second or two before responding- as he did for every single question he was asked. Yet after playing the clip, Matthews said something along the lines of "What was with that awkward pause? It's like he didn't know how he should answer the question!" That's just pathetic. That's as straight-up dishonest as it gets. For someone who has been in television for years and done thousands of interviews, he knows damn well that it was a delay, yet he tried to pass it off as something that it clearly wasn't.
If Matthews really did that, then yeah, that's stupid. No argument.
I think here is the difference between MSNBC and Fox. Conservatives will defend Fox tooth and nail, they see it as their only beacon of light and it employs many of the major players that run the ultra right machine.
How many in here defend MSNBC with that much energy? How many in here worship Olbermann?
The right need their news to pander to them.
There are plenty who defend, perhaps not the whole network, but some of its hosts. Look at dailykos.com.