MRC.org Reality Checks

Media Go to Bat for Abortion Giant, Ignore Catholics vs. Obama Controversy

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:35:00 GMT

When the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the U.S.'s largest breast cancer charity, announced on February 1 that it would no longer be donating to Planned Parenthood, the Big Three networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC -- rushed to the defense of the left-wing organization, which is the largest abortion conglomerate in the United States. Over the course of about 60 hours, ABC, CBS, and NBC emphasized the controversy with a whopping 13 morning and evening news stories. The soundbite count was loaded: 76 percent of the quotes came from supporters of Planned Parenthood (35 in total). Only 11 clips or statements came from Komen representatives or new allies.

By contrast to those 13 reports on the feminist "firestorm," when the Obama administration announced on January 20 that it was giving religious institutions one year to comply with a mandate for coverage of sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception in their health plans without a co-pay, these same networks all but ignored the face-off with angry Catholic bishops and their flocks. It took CBS 10 days to air one news brief about the controversy on CBS This Morning on January 30. Neither ABC nor NBC have aired anything on their morning and evening newscasts over the past two weeks, and CBS hasn't done anything since giving that one brief.

On February 3, ABC's Claire Shipman trumpeted the negative responses to the breast cancer charity's decision: "This morning, outrage and disappointment engulfing the Internet. 'All lies.' 'You have lost my support.' 'Playing politics with the lives of women.' 'I'll never by pink again.'" ABC showed the strongest tilt towards Planned Parenthood, with 10 sound bites or statements in favor of the organization, versus only two supporting Komen, a five-to-one margin.

The day before, both CBS and NBC highlighted a talking point from Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, who hyped that a "right-wing political campaign [was] bullying" the breast cancer foundation. NBC trailed not far behind ABC in terms of slant towards the abortion giant, with 15 clips in favor of the liberal darling, and four supporting Komen, a nearly four-to-one imbalance.

CBS displayed the least amount of tilt in the area of soundbites/statements, with 10 in favor of Planned Parenthood and five in favor of the pink ribbon foundation, or an overall two-to-one ratio. However, one report from correspondent Nancy Cordes on the February 2 edition of CBS Evening News had five in favor of the abortion leviathan, versus just one soundbite from Komen president Nancy Brinker.

All three networks turned to women who feared the worst would happen after Komen stopped its grants to Planned Parenthood, which amounted to $680,000 in 2011. Both ABC and CBS played testimonials from Monique Benoit on their evening news programs on February 2, who turned to the left-wing organization for a breast exam at a time when she was "laid-off and uninsured," as Cordes recounted. NBC Nightly News featured Abigail Sunaki, who "found a lump in a breast two years ago and got help through Komen's funding of Planned Parenthood. Today, she's healthy."

The Big Three's on-air journalists also gave strong hints that they supported the left-leaning giant. NBC's Brian Williams teased a segment on February 1's Nightly News on the controversy by proclaiming how "a decision...[is] making a lot of women furious at the world's largest breast cancer organization. Why did it cut off funds for critical breast cancer screenings?" Correspondent Lisa Myers spotlighted the "explosion of anger among your lifetime supporters" during an interview of Brinker the following evening.

On ABC's World News on February 2, Shipman concluded that the apparent outrage at the breast cancer charity "shows the passion in this country among women on the issue of women's health care- access to services. I think we're going to hear a lot more of that over this campaign year."

In their coverage of the Komen vs. Planned Parenthood dispute, the Big Three clearly showed that they were willing to rush to the defense of the abortion giant over a few hundred thousands dollars in grant money. But when the Obama administration handed down a policy that clearly violates the consciences and the religious beliefs of Catholic institutions across the country, the networks barely raised a peep.

— Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.

No Matter the State of the Union, Reporters Love Obama's Speeches

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:11:00 GMT

Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, and his sixth speech to a joint session of Congress since taking office in 2009. But there’s no need to spend a lot of time wondering about what the media will say after The Great One speaks, since — like a gaggle of corporate yes-men — journalists have gushed over every one of these major addresses.

“It was a big and bold speech,” ABC’s Terry Moran applauded on Nightline shortly after Obama’s budget address in February 2009, his first before Congress. “It was his debut and he wowed us,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews enthused the next day on Hardball.

“It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg gushed on Inside Washington later in the week, adding, “You know, a friend of mine said, ‘Oh my God, we have a President again!’ Now, in some ways, that’s not fair to Bush, but that’s the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”

Seven months later, in September 2009, Obama returned to the House chamber to make his pitch for government-run health care. That night on ABC, George Stephanopoulos cast him not as a central planner, but a passionate reformer: “This might have been the most emotional speech I’ve seen President Obama give....There was even a catch in his voice.... This is very close to President Obama’s heart.”

Over on MSNBC, the not-yet-fired Keith Olbermann offered a typically sycophantic take: “It was, to say the least, a broad and forward-thinking speech. On the rhetoric and the phrasing and the pacing and the design of the speech itself, there seems to have been a touch of greatness.”

For Obama’s first State of the Union address, in January 2010, then-CBS anchor Katie Couric was in full Obama-mania mode during her network’s prime time coverage. After Jeff Greenfield noted how the President went “five or ten minutes without a single applause line,” Couric chirpily cited a liberal New York Times columnist’s take: “Well, as Tom Friedman said, ‘He’s better at making us smarter than making us angry.’”

Over on MSNBC, the gang was experiencing a full Obamagasm. “If presidential leadership were only about giving speeches, the jackhammers would already be at work on Mount Rushmore,” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman exulted.

Chris Matthews oddly observed: “You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight, and it’s interesting: He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.”

In January 2011, two months after voters repudiated his liberal agenda and elected scores of new conservative House members, the media greeted Obama’s second State of the Union by claiming that the most liberal President in American history was somehow another Ronald Reagan. According to CBS’s Jeff Greenfield: “He kept talking about winning the future and that was always a big theme about Reagan....He was clearly striking rhetorical notes that reminded me of Mr. Reagan.”

Over on ABC, Christiane Amanpour delightedly called Obama’s speech both “Reaganesque” and “Kennedyesque” — “Full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque, on and on about American exceptionalism in many, many instances and full of Kennedyesque encouragement to break a new frontier. That Sputnik moment was remarkable....”

Then in September, Obama returned once more to pitch a “jobs plan” that he claimed needed to be passed immediately, and the media once again took up the cause of spinning on his behalf. “This is an extraordinarily bold plan by the President,” CBS’s Norah O’Donnell argued, reciting the White House spin that “more than half of it will be tax cuts — tax cuts for every working American, tax cuts for every small business.”

[Of course, Obama’s “tax cuts” were temporary reductions in the payroll tax, to be offset by permanent tax increases on upper income households, a net increase in the tax burden.]

O’Donnell’s CBS colleague, Bob Schieffer, was swept away: “I mean, this is not the cool, detached college professor that some people have accused Barack Obama of being....I mean, he really went at them tonight. I mean, very — a lot of Harry Truman in this speech tonight.”

In the nearly 1,100 days since Barack Obama took office, the national debt has increased by more than 40%, from $10.6 trillion to $15.2 trillion. The federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for three years in a row, and Obama’s last (FY2012) projections have it staying above $600 billion for at least the next ten years.

The unemployment rate is an historically terrible 8.5%, but as economics writer James Pethokoukis noted in December, the shrinking labor force has masked much of the pain: “If the labor force participation rate were back at its January 2009 level, the [unemployment] rate would be 11.0 percent.”

If the media were to focus on the dismal state of America under Barack Obama, their reviews might not be so adoring. But the track record shows they’ll likely focus on the President’s rhetoric, and find it absolutely thrilling.

The Real State of the Union: Big Three Networks Covering Up Obama's Failures

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:49:00 GMT

By many measures, Barack Obama has left the State of the Union in tatters, but the liberal media, led by the highly rated Big Three network (ABC, CBS, NBC) news shows, have attempted to cover up those holes in the Union by mostly ignoring the Obama administration’s greatest failings. From record numbers of people on food stamps, to the administration’s support of failed energy companies while rejecting an oil pipeline that would result in thousands of jobs, the Big Three networks haven’t told their viewers the full story of Obama’s pathetic track record.

The following are just a few of the glaring examples of Obama’s failed administration and the coverage, or lack thereof, the Big Three networks on their evening news shows (ABC’s World News, CBS’s Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News), morning shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show, recently re-titled This Morning, NBC’s Today) and Sunday political roundtable shows (ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press) have given them.

Record Number of People On Food Stamps

As of October 2011, the federal government reported that 46,224,722 persons were receiving food assistance payment (Food Stamps), down slightly from the record highs earlier in that year but still more than one out of every seven Americans (14.7% of the population). Yet network coverage of this human tragedy has been paltry -- just 15 mentions on ABC (3), CBS (2) and NBC (10) since January of 2011. For the most part, the President went blameless for this sorry state of affairs. In those 15 mentions, only twice did a network reporter link the Obama administration to the sad statistic:

On the August 14, 2011 edition of CBS’s Face the Nation, Norah O’Donnell brought up the stat in a list of problems that plagued the economy as she prodded Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “You have said repeatedly that we are in much better shape than we were when President Obama took office...13.5 million more people are on food stamps today. How are we in quote/unquote ‘much better shape,’ as you argue?” And on the December 7, 2011 Today show, co-anchor Ann Curry questioned former Obama White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “This past year more Americans are on or asking for, applying for food stamps, than ever before. Why shouldn’t Americans hold President Obama accountable?”

Underplaying Importance of Keystone Pipeline

Of course, a key way to get some of those Americans off food stamps is the creation of more jobs, something approval of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada through the United States would have accomplished. According to the American Petroleum Institute an approval from the administration could have resulted in as many as 500,000 new U.S. jobs. However, the Big Three networks gave the Keystone decision very short shrift as from November 10, 2011 (when Obama initially delayed his decision) up through January 19, 2012 (a day after Obama officially rejected the move) there were a total of just five full stories on ABC (1), CBS (3) and NBC (1) with 25 other mentions on ABC (3), CBS (9) and NBC (13).

The one full story on ABC is particularly galling since that network has a series called “Made in America” that encourages viewers to buy products made in America so as to keep and produce more jobs in the USA. As part of that series, on the January 19, 2012 Good Morning America and World News, ABC’s Jake Tapper followed the President down to the Magic Kingdom to promote Obama’s plan to boost American jobs through tourism and, as the MRC’s Scott Whitlock noticed: “managed to shill for both Obama and his parent company as that network found time to promote both the administration’s plan to create a ‘small world full of tourists who want to spend their money’ and Disney World.”

Ignoring “The New Solyndras”

A CBS News investigation, headlined “The New Solyndras,” aired on the January 13, 2012 edition of This Morning, revealed the controversial government loan to now-bankrupt Solyndra wasn’t an isolated incident. CBS This Morning reporter Sharyl Attkisson explained, “We identified 11 green energy companies beside Solyndra that, together, got billions of tax dollars then declared bankruptcy or are suffering other serious financial issues.”

Total Big Three network number of stories or mentions of these other budding Solyndra scandals, aside from the original CBS This Morning report: 0

U.S. Falling Behind the Rest of the World in Economic Freedom

On January 13 the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal released their 2012 Index of Economic Freedom that, “measures economic freedom in 10 specific categories: labor freedom, business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights and freedom from corruption.” The U.S. was ranked at (#10), behind such nations as Hong Kong(#1), Switzerland(#5), Chile(#7) and Ireland at (#9). The U.S. finished just slightly above Denmark(#11).

Number of Big Three network stories devoted to that embarrassment for the Obama administration: 0

When viewers watch the Big Three networks’ coverage of Obama’s State of the Union address, the question has to be asked: How many of these scandals and failures will they cover or cover up?

MRC's Top 10 Most Obnoxiously Liberal Today Show Quotes

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:08:00 GMT

This week the Today show is celebrating 60 years of being on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting the NBC morning show’s liberal agenda. From past anchors like Bryant Gumbel blaming “right wing” talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and Katie Couric trashing Ronald Reagan as an “airhead,” up through current anchor Matt Lauer wondering how Barack Obama would “manage the expectations” of being called “The Messiah,”
MRC analysts have been documenting the worst the show has offered.

The following are 10 of the most obnoxiously liberal examples of Today show bias from the MRC’s archive:

10. Happy Columbus Day!

“[Columbus] sailed just as Jews and Muslims were being expelled from Spain, the persecution of those peoples and the riches robbed from them paying for his small armada of ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, to set sail for new plunder. For Native Americans, the people who hardly felt discovered, Columbus’ landing commenced a Holocaust. There’s really no other word for the death delivered by settlers, as they scattered, enslaved, and obliterated Indian nations on their own sacred lands.”
— Co-host Scott Simon on NBC’s Today, October 11, 1992.

ABC's Morning Show Host Gets Chance to Jab GOPers in Primetime

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:43:00 GMT

The GOP presidential candidates, at the upcoming ABC News debate in Iowa, should brace themselves to be splattered with tough questions from the left from moderator George Stephanopoulos. The good news for them is that most should be well-prepared for the left-leaning sliders, as many have already been subjected to Stephanopoulos’s liberal questioning on Good Morning America. In 20 interview segments this year with the GOP candidates, totaling nearly two hours (110 minutes), an MRC review has documented Stephanopoulos has consistently pressed his guests from the left. Of questions with an ideological bent 75 percent (36) were from the left with just 25 percent (12) of them coming from the right.

When current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich showed up on the January 18 edition of Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos prodded the former Speaker of the House if he was prepared to put 129 million Americans at “risk” with his opposition to Obamacare.

STEPHANOPOULOS: A new study being released by the Department of Health and Human Services that says up to 129 million Americans, half the non-elderly population, could have health problems that could lead insurers to either raise prices or deny coverage. If President Obama's reform is repealed, they say that's going to put these people at risk. Are you willing to take that risk for the 129 million Americans?

On the April 20 Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos wasted little time in hitting Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann with the attack line that Republicans only care about the wealthy:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let's talk about the poll numbers, just out this morning. That seems to be very strong support for President Obama's position in this budget fight and a rebuke of the House Republican position.

BACHMANN: I think if you look at those numbers, that would be accurate. But I don't think that totally reflects where the American people are coming from. First of all, if we tax 100 percent of what everyone made who make $250,000 or more, that would that- everything they made- that would get us about six months'-

STEPHANOPOULOS: But every bit helps, doesn't it?

BACHMANN: Well, but it wouldn't be enough...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say that everyone needs to be involved. And I think that's reflected also in those numbers. A lot of Americans look at those numbers and say it's wrong for seniors who rely on Medicare to get cuts when wealthy people get tax cuts extended.

Stephanopoulos portrayed another GOP candidate, Ron Paul, as an uncompassionate villain of flood victims when he passed along an audience viewer’s question on the May 13 edition of Good Morning America.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn to some issues here at home. Celia from Springfield, Ohio wants to test how just how far your libertarian principles take you. She ask, "Do you think everyone should just be responsible for themselves and if a flood washes your house away, no FEMA? Sink or swim?”

On the November 30 Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos actually gloated that his interview with a woman who claimed to have had an affair with GOP candidate Herman Cain could “spell the end” his candidacy. Stephanopoulos’s unseemly gratification in Cain’s troubles wasn’t surprising given how he treated his guest on the October 12 Good Morning America, when he claimed that his 9-9-9 tax plan was “gonna be a huge hit to Americans who are hurting right now.”

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your 9-9-9 plan, scrap the tax code, replace it with a 9% income tax, 9% corporate tax, 9% sales tax, got hit by everybody on the stage last night. And, and one of the most striking moments, when they panned out to the crowd and asked about the 9-9-9 tax, not a single person raised their hand in support. And I wonder if that's because, you know, when people look at the nine cents sales tax, you're gonna spend another nine cents every time they spend a dollar. That's gonna be a huge hit to Americans who are hurting right now, isn't it?...A lot of independent analysts have looked at it, have looked at this plan as well, and they say that this would be a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, a real tax increase for poor and middle class Americans, and it's gonna increase the deficit.

Apart from questions tilted ideologically to the left, Stephanopoulos used his interviews to play up the Republican candidates’ weaknesses and foibles. While he actually asked Mitt Romney, on the February 1 Good Morning America, a few questions from the right he did so to underline his chief weakness among Republican voters.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even Karl Rove, President Bush’s former advisor, has said that unless you find a way- that the number one challenge to you getting the nomination in the Republican Party is your support for this individual mandate...You not going to apologize for the individual mandate?”

When Texas Governor Rick Perry showed up on the November 10 Good Morning America to talk about his brain freeze debate moment, Stephanopoulos used the occasion to pester Perry about leaving the race right then and there:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Larry Sabato, presidential scholar already calling this the worst moment in modern primary debates. You’ve got a host of Republican operatives out overnight saying this is a death blow to your campaign.

On the June 27 Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos scolded Bachmann about the accuracy of her statements: “As you make progress in this campaign, everything you say is going to get more scrutiny. And the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Politifact has said you have the worst record of making false statements of any of the leading contenders.”

Stephanopoulos then used his airtime to dispute Bachmann’s statement that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery: “Now, with respect, Congresswoman, that’s just not true. Many of them, including Jefferson and Washington, were actually slave holders. And slavery didn't end until the Civil War.”

In contrast, Barack Obama got a much different treatment when showed up on the October 4 Good Morning America. Stephanopoulos relayed to his viewers that: “The President says the best piece of advice he got from Michelle: that the mark of success comes from having happy and loving children,” and then later asked Obama: “How do you protect them, this time around, when everybody’s saying all these bad things about you?”

Stephanopoulos did manage to ask some ideological questions of the President - but they were from the left. On the April 15 edition of Good Morning America Stephanopoulos hit Obama with this question from Louise Ross of Chester, New Hampshire:
“Why not release at least some of the oil in our reserves before gas reaches $5 a gallon. If that's a rainy day fund, it's pouring out. Give us a break. That's what it's there for.”

Then, in October, he similarly passed along a viewer’s plea for the President to tamper with the free market: “More than 40,000 questions came in online for the President, most expressing anxiety and anger about the economy, including outrage at Bank of America’s $5 debit card fee. Vicki Menkel wrote, ‘Those are the types of things government should get involved in and put a stop to.’ [to Obama] Can you put a stop to that?...Can you stop this service charge?”

Viewers of a Republican debate don’t expect softball questions to be thrown at the participants but they would hope any tough questions came mostly from the right. However, as his recent interviews with GOP candidates on Good Morning America indicate, that is a task the former Democratic White House spinner to Bill Clinton seems unable or unwilling to handle.

Occupier Outrages Omitted

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:40:00 GMT

ABC, CBS and NBC have continued their overly positive coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors, devoting a massive number of stories (81 in just the month of October) to the leftist, anti-capitalist movement. This is a far cry from the coverage they initially gave the Tea Party protest, granting them a scant 13 stories all of 2009. More troubling, the radicalism and criminal acts at some of the protests have been virtually ignored by the Big Three networks.

This was bound to happen given the overwhelming disparity in the number of soundbites (19 to 1 ratio) devoted to those who were sympathetic to the OWS cause. A staggering 190 (80%) soundbites were given to those who were in favor of the Occupiers, only 10 (4%) soundbites featured those who were critical of the movement, 38 (16%) were neutral. In addition, nine guests on the morning shows appreciated the OWS crowd, to just one against (Newt Gingrich).

MRC analysts reviewed the Big Three network evening (ABC’s World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning shows (Good Morning America, The Early Show, Today) for the month of October and found accounts of anti-Semitism and sexual assault arrests have been completely omitted from the Big Three broadcasts. And when confrontations erupted between the police and the protestors, the networks were much more likely to pin the blame on police for instigating the violence.

Where the Tea Party protesters were depicted as uneducated, racist rabble rousers – CBS’s Bob Schieffer, in 2010, accused them of hurling “racial epithets” and “sexual slurs”-- network anchors, like NBC’s Matt Lauer, have looked upon the Occupy Wall Street protests, with their hurling of bottles and bricks at law enforcement officers, as a wonderful opportunity to deliver a “civics lesson...for our kids.”

Police are the Bad Guys

In fact, in the few stories of violence at the protests, like the one in Oakland, the Big Three networks took the side of the protestors against the police more often than not with 15 stories (54%) putting more blame on law enforcement officers. Only seven stories (25%) mostly faulted the protestors for acts of aggression. Six stories (6%) didn’t blame any particular side for the violence. Viewers of these stories were also far more likely to hear statements made by reporters or talking heads blaming law enforcement officials for the violence with 36 (71%) blaming officers to just 15 (29%) blaming the protestors.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos’s and Abbie Boudreau’s characterization, on the October 27 edition of World News, of the police as the bad guys was all too typical, as they presumed, despite lack of video evidence, the injury of an Iraq war veteran was the result of police brutality.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And tonight, one young man has become a symbol of their resolve. A 24-year-old Iraq war veteran, now in serious condition in a California hospital, his skull fractured after a violent run-in with police. ABC's Abbie Boudreau has more.

BOUDREAU: With tensions mounting deadly, the name Scott Olsen has become a rallying cry for Occupy Wall Street. Olsen, who had joined protestors after work, was injured Tuesday night, as police began firing tear gas during the Oakland crackdown. People who came to his aid were then scattered by a gas canister tossed by police. Last night in New York, protesters marched in solidarity with Olsen, leading to a tense confrontation with police and ten arrests.

Sexual Assault and Anti-Semitism Ignored

Despite several charges of sexual assault and rape and instances of anti-Semitism the Big Three reporters have completely ignored these incidents. Not only did NBC’s Today show omit the ugly instances, but on their October 21 show, they actually preached that parents should use the OWS protest as a teachable moment for kids.

MATT LAUER: “What’s the civics lesson in this for our kids as they’re watching this on TV?”

NATALIE MORALES: “Well, I think there — as a parent, there’s a huge civics lesson, and it teaches, you know, what is important about this. What are — I think you have to ask the questions, ‘What are they there for, what are the reasons behind this?’ And I think the idea of having that civil discourse is important to teach our kids and it’s something in history we’ve seen....”

Not a single anchor or reporter brought up the anti-Semitic rants found at some of the rallies, like this one caught by MRC-TV cameras on October 21: “The Jews commit more white collar crime than any other ethnic group on the earth, and they go unprosecuted because they can buy their way out of it.... Whenever there’s a billion dollar fraud, there’s a Jew involved.”

In fact, the only time that touchy subject was broached was when GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich brought it up on the October 26 edition of CBS’s The Early Show, when he pointed out: “If you look at some of the signs, if you listen to some of the interviews there’s a frightening level of anti-Semitism in some of these gatherings, fundamentally different from the Tea Party.” Of course CBS’s Erica Hill, who conducted the interview, felt the need to correct the former Speaker of the House, as she responded: “Some would say those are the actions of a few.”

Big Three network reporters weren’t so hesitant to slam Tea Partiers for their signs. On the September 12, 2009 CBS Evening News, Nancy Cordes touted the supposed radicalism of a Tea Party crowd: “Homemade signs accused Mr. Obama of socialism, communism and worse.” On the September 15, 2009 edition of ABC’s World News, Dan Harris ranted: “They’ve waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil, raised questions about whether he was really born in this country, falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels, decried his speech to students as indoctrination and called him everything from a ‘fascist’ to a ‘socialist’ to a ‘communist.’...And all that was before Mr. Obama’s speech was interrupted by a Representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.”

No Leftist Movement Here

Even though the Occupy Wall Street movement protestors have been open about their calls for bigger government and redistribution of wealth, for the most part, they have not been categorized by the Big Three as “communist” “socialist” or even “leftist.” The “liberal” label was applied exactly once when, on the October 11 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, co-anchor George Stephanopoulous asked Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe if he thought the OWS protestors were the “liberal version of the Tea Party?”

NBC came closest to describing the movement as “socialist” but that was only because Lester Holt, on the October 22 edition of NBC Nightly News, cited the Iranian government’s celebration of the “protest against capitalism and America.”

Throughout the weeks of Occupy protest coverage, network anchors and reporters have largely avoided the question of how this movement's violence and radicalism might affect President Obama and the Democrats at the polls. In 2009, NBC's David Gregory asked Obama about the Tea Party: “House Speaker Pelosi worried about the opposition, the tone of it, perhaps leading to violence as it did in the ’70s.” But on October 16, Gregory touted that these left-wing protests are “going to dovetail nicely into a big message that the President's selling, which is that the wealthy should pay more.” The only way the media are going to make these protesters “dovetail nicely” with Democratic aims is by whitewashing away all the violence and radicalism.

Networks Hype Vague Cain Charges, Ignored Sexual Harassment Claims Against Clinton

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:31:00 GMT

Since the Herman Cain sexual harassment story broke late Sunday night, the broadcast networks have covered it extensively: full stories on Monday's morning news shows (ABC's Good Morning America led off their broadcast); full stories on Monday's evening news shows (the CBS Evening News made it their top item) and ABC's Nightline; and the top story on all three Tuesday morning shows.

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Monday hyped the story as a "bombshell blast." On Tuesday, he derided Cain's "bizarre series of interviews" on the subject. On Tuesday's Early Show, Jan Crawford highlighted how Cain has been "trying to shoot down these allegations." NBC's Matt Lauer gloated that the Republican was "finding out the hard way about the attention that goes along with being a front-runner."

Cain's accusers are still anonymous. Three women publicly accused Bill Clinton of far more serious instances of sexual harassment in the 1990s, but the networks all but ignored them. The coverage that did exist was often skeptical, insulting and hostile, an astonishing double standard.

- Paula Jones, who accused Bill Clinton of exposing himself to her in a hotel room when she was a state employee in Arkansas, held a public press conference in February 1994, CBS and NBC ignored those charges, while ABC devoted just 16 seconds to Jones' press conference.

As a January 29, 1998 Media Reality Check pointed out, "The rest of the media waited three months, until Jones filed suit, and the networks then did just 21 stories in that month."

Appearing on the late Tim Russert's CNBC program, then-Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw dismissed, "It didn't seem to most people, entirely relevant to what was going on at the time. These are the kind of charges raised about the President before."

In the Jones case, the networks were openly disdainful of covering her accusations. "It's a little tough to figure out who's being harassed," NBC Today host Bryant Gumbel smugly asserted (May 10, 1994).

After ABC's Sam Donaldson interviewed Jones for Prime Time Live in June 1994, anchor Charles Gibson wanted to know: "Why does anyone care what this woman has to say?"

Gibson continued to pile on, adding, "Bottom line, Sam: Is she not trying to capitalize on this, in effect to profit from impugning the President?"

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, who sometimes appears on the networks to offer analysis, derided Jones as "some sleazy woman with big hair." (This was on the May 7, 1994 Inside Washington.)

- In the case of Kathleen Willey, who said Bill Clinton groped her in the Oval Office while President, the networks gave minimal coverage to that story when it was broke by Newsweek magazine in late July 1997.

On July 30, 1997, the CBS Evening News aired a story, but managed not to mention Willey by name. Reporter Bill Plante warned, "But unless and until this case is settled, this is only the beginning of attempts by attorneys on both sides to damage the reputations and credibility of everyone involved."

A March 20, 1998 Media Reality Check explained how ABC delicately approached the subject:

In an August 8, 1997 presidential press conference, ABC reporter John Donvan asked about Willey without naming her. Donvan confessed: "Even for those of us who don't have much appetite for this entire subject, this particular answer in this particular category seems needlessly evasive. My question to you is: Is it your wish that it be answered this way, and is it consistent with your intention to run an open White House?" But ABC continued to avoid the story despite the question.

CBS gave it one minute on the July 30 Evening News, with brief items on the July 31 CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. Willey eventually became a big news story when CBS's 60 Minutes interviewed her in March 1998, during the Lewinsky scandal.

"Wow! That was something," Today co-host Matt Lauer exclaimed on March 16, 1998, reacting to the 60 Minutes story. There was no introspection as to why it took Today and other outlets so long to cover the charges.

- In the case of Juanita Broaddrick, who publicly came forward to say Bill Clinton raped her while he was the Arkansas Attorney General and a candidate for Governor, the networks offered weekend coverage in March 1998, when the charge surfaced in a court filing by Paula Jones' attorneys. NBC interviewed Broaddrick for a Dateline special in January 1999, but the airing was delayed until February 24, 1999, after the end of Clinton's impeachment trial.

The March 1999 Media Watch pointed out the disparity of coverage of Broaddrick versus Anita Hill:

In the first five days of Hill’s charges (October 6-10,1991), the network evening shows (on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS’s NewsHour) aired 67 stories. (If a count began with Jones’ February press conference, the networks supplied just a single 16-second anchor brief; if the count began with her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton in May, the number was 15.)

But in the first five days after Juanita Broaddrick has charged the President with rape in The Wall Street Journal (February 19-23), the number of evening news stories was two. That’s a ratio of 67 to 2.

During the period of February 19-28, as NBC prepared to finally air its Dateline special, ABC virtually ignored the controversy. World News and Nightline skipped it. Good Morning America allowed two brief mentions. This Week briefly discussed it.

CBS allowed just one story on the February 20th Evening News.

Considering that NBC had the scoop, it's not surprising that the network offered more coverage. While Nightly News ignored it,

Today aired only a brief until the Myers interview. The morning after the interview, it carried a report by Claire Shipman and a Katie Couric interview with Clinton ally Alan Dershowitz and Dorothy Rabinowitz, who wrote the Wall Street Journal story. On the 26th, Matt Lauer asked NOW’s Patricia Ireland tough questions, including whether she’d ask Clinton to resign, since that’s what she demanded of Sen. Bob Packwood. On the 28th, most of Meet the Press focused the Broaddrick story.

When one contrasts the sexual harassment scandals of Democrat Bill Clinton, which included on the record accusers, with the hazy allegations against Republican Herman Cain, it becomes clear that the networks have enthusiasm for one and ignored the other.

CNN 'Moderator' Finds GOP Eight Times as Dishonest as Democrats?

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:15:00 GMT

Tuesday night’s Republican debate in Las Vegas will be moderated by CNN anchor Anderson
Cooper. The CNN promo urges viewers to “See if what happens in Vegas gets them closer to the White House.” But Cooper’s nightly newscast often looks like it’s trying to keep Republicans away from the White House.

CNN advertises Cooper’s regular segment, “Keeping Them Honest,” with the question: “Who's Anderson keeping honest tonight?” Apparently, CNN and Cooper find Republicans are much more dishonest. Since July, a review of “Keeping Them Honest” segments found 24 reports tagging the Republicans with dishonesty, compared with just three for Democrats – a ratio of eight to one.

In a review of programs from January 1 through October 14, Cooper’s show (with occasional guest hosts) has aired 164 of these "Keeping Them Honest" reports, and 80 have focused on political issues involving the two major parties, Republican and Democrat, or the two prevailing political movements, liberal and conservative. Of those political reports, Cooper focused exclusively on Republicans or conservatives 45 times, compared to just 13 for the Democrats or liberals, although 22 of the reports hit both sides.

The rest of the "Keeping Them Honest" reports, 84 in number, either didn't pertain to American politics or focused on a nebulous political group that was neither liberal nor conservative. Topics included affairs in the Middle East like the Arab Spring and the Libyan government, domestic stories like the Casey Anthony trial, and disasters, like the nuclear plant troubles in Japan.

Fourteen segments covered events in Syria, and 12 more centered on matters in Libya. So there was one more "Keeping Them Honest" report on deception by the Syrian dictatorship than there were reports on Democrats (13).

Turning Up the Heat on Republicans as the 2012 Campaign Marches Onward

Everyone expects the media to vet presidential candidates and provide their audience with a clear and critical look at a candidate's background, political beliefs, and past statements. But Cooper’s record suggests there’s a much more glaring need to scrutinize Republican candidates and even provide follow-up stories to their “scandals.” Meanwhile, Cooper's scrutiny has been lighter on the President that’s currently in power – with no follow-up segments included. In the last four months, Cooper's investigative stories have been decidedly critical of Republicans and conservatives.

A few targeted congressional Republicans. On September 22, Cooper laughably claimed that demanding spending-cut offsets for Hurricane Irene spending marked the “first time ever” someone had used a hurricane as a “political wedge.” (Has Cooper forgotten his own yelling at politicians over Hurricane Katrina?)

“Conservative Republicans voted against the C.R., or Continuing Resolution, because they said there weren't enough spending cuts to offset the $3.6 billion in disaster relief money,” Cooper declared. “Now you can decide for yourself if you think funds for disaster relief for agencies like FEMA should only be available if they're offset by spending cuts elsewhere. This country is in some pretty tough straits for sure, but this is the first time ever, ever, that funding for people affected by things like tornadoes, flood, hurricanes, fires, you name it, have been used as a political wedge.”

Not only has Cooper’s “dishonest” meter been pointed at Republicans by 24 to 3, but 17 of the 24 stories critical of Republicans focused exclusively on GOP presidential candidates. Since July 1, three "Keeping Them Honest" segments have targeted President Obama. In that same time frame, Cooper's offered seven critiques of Bachmann. In 2011, Bachmann was targeted 12 times -- five more than the president. By comparison, there have been four on Rick Perry and three on Mitt Romney.

In just the past two weeks, Cooper has also run two critical segments on Herman Cain, whose poll numbers have risen dramatically in the last month. Cooper even admitted that he was focusing on Cain because of his newfound popularity.

"In any case, we are taking a closer look tonight because Republican voters have made him [Cain] a leading contender for the presidential nominee – or nomination I should say," Cooper explained on his October 6 show, adding that his surge in the polls was "a sign that Herman Cain is no longer a voice on the fringe." Cooper said of Cain’s statements that “Some are contradicted by facts, some seem barely tethered to reality.”

Taking It Easy on the Democrats

Even though Cooper offered 13 “Keeping Them Honest” segments on the Democrats, four of them were devoted to Congressman Anthony Weiner's Twitter scandal over a few days, more than Obama received in over three months.

When Cooper targeted Obama, it often came from the left. On the June 21 edition of Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper scrutinized the President's position on gay marriage over the years – for it in the 1990s, against it when he hit national politics. He asked what Obama really believed and if his current opposition was just political calculation. He cited Obama spokesmen being questioned at the far-left Netroots Nation convention and in the White House briefing room by a reporter for the gay Washington Blade newspaper. Cooper asked “human rights activist” Cleve Jones “Does the Democratic Party take gay Americans for granted, feeling that, well, look, they're not going to go to the Republican Party?”

In addition, five of the times Cooper’s show offered a “Keeping Them Honest” critique hitting Democrats, they also produced a “Keeping Them Honest” segment on Republicans for the same hour. This suggests CNN couldn’t stand to leave the viewer with a distinctly anti-Democrat feeling.

For instance, on January 19 Anderson Cooper began his show with a "Keeping Them Honest" story of Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen from Tennessee comparing Republicans to Nazis. Later in that same hour, he followed-up a story from the previous night on a Florida GOP representative who wanted to make it illegal for pediatricians to ask the parents of their patients what Cooper called “one simple question. And the question is, is there a gun in your house?”

On September 14, Cooper led his show with a follow-up segment criticizing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). Only later in his show did he address the Obama administration's Solyndra scandal. That segment was also the only "Keeping Them Honest" story he did on the Solyndra scandal.

Anderson Cooper prides himself on holding powerful figures accountable for their words and actions. He brags of his fairness in trying to elicit answers to basic questions. The recent record shows he hasn't offered Republicans a fair shake.

A Tale of Two Protests: Media Cheer Wall Street Occupiers But Jeered Tea Partiers

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:37:00 GMT

The Occupy Wall Street protestors have received overwhelmingly positive coverage from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks, as they used their airtime to publicize and promote the aggressively leftist movement. In just the first eleven days of October, ABC, CBS and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts with a whopping 33 full stories or interview segments on the protesters. This was a far cry from the greeting the Tea Party received from the Big Three as that conservative protest movement was initially ignored (only 13 total stories in all of 2009) and then reviled.

Where the Tea Party was met with skeptical claims of their motivations -- with some reporters claiming they were merely corporate backed puppets and others implying they were spurred on by their racist opposition to the first black president – the Occupy Wall Street crowd was depicted as an almost genial “grassroots” movement.

While network reporters weren’t hesitant to describe the Tea Party as conservative, only once did a reporter attach even the “liberal” label to the overtly leftist Wall Street protestors.

Network anchors like Brian Williams couldn’t be bothered with ideological labeling of the occupiers as he was, on the October 5 NBC Nightly News, too busy celebrating the arrival of the “massive protest movement” that “could well turn out to be the protest of this current era.”

ABC’s Diane Sawyer was so excited she tripped herself up in hyperbole as she proclaimed, on the October 10 World News, that the movement had “spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries – every continent but Antarctica.” Sawyer would have to correct herself on a later edition of the program as she clarified it was “more than a thousand cities around the world – every continent but Antarctica.” – still a tremendous exaggeration.

Most astoundingly, the networks’ Occupy Wall Street (OWS) stories were overwhelmingly sympathetic: Protesters and supporters of the movement dominated the soundbites, with 109 (87%) to just 8 critics (6%), with another 8 soundbites from neutral sources. Five of the eight soundbites unsympathetic to the protesters were brief clips of GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain blasting the occupiers. In addition to the 109 pro-OWS soundbites, seven times guests on the Big Three network morning shows expressed sympathy for the protestors. No guests opposed the protests.

MRC analysts tracked all the stories on the Big Three broadcast networks’ evening and morning news programs (ABC’s World News and Good Morning America, CBS’s Evening News and The Early Show, NBC’s Nightly News and Today show) and found that from October 1 through October 11 network anchors, and reporters, in addition to the 33 full stories, delivered 15 brief items and 14 mentions in other stories not devoted strictly to the Wall Street protest.

Very Few Liberal Labels for Lefty Protestors

In 2009 Tea Partiers were repeatedly but accurately described as conservative. Back on the April 15, 2009 Today show, NBC’s Chuck Todd’s labeling was typical when he introduced the Tea Party movement to viewers this way: “There’s been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called Tea Parties around the country, hoping the historical reference will help galvanize Americans against the President’s economic ideas. But, I tell you, the idea hasn’t really caught on.”

However, when it came to appropriately labeling the OWS crowd as leftist or liberals, it happened exactly one time, when on the October 11 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, co-anchor George Stephanopoulous asked Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe if he thought the OWS protestors were the “liberal version of the Tea Party?” and wondered if that was a “good thing for the White House?”

The only other usage of the world “liberal” came when Columbia University's Dorian Warren, on the October 1 NBC Nightly News asserted that the protesters were “a liberal version of the Tea Party” and obligingly offered: "I think this could potentially carry over into the 2012 elections and get people to the polls.” Then, on the October 9 edition of Sunday Morning, Rebecca Jarvis pegged Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin as “a liberal observer of the politics of the protest.”

In fact, as the MRC’s Business & Media’s Julia Seymour documented, not one network report has called the protesters "radical," "extreme," "left-wing," or "socialist."

‘Grassroots’ Wall Street Protestors vs. ‘Corporate’ Tea Partiers

Digging deeper into the stories, a clear double standard emerges. Where the Tea Party’s motives were met with skepticism, with some stories questioning if they were not a grassroots movement but rather an Astro-turf movement backed by corporations, the Occupy Wall Street crowd was repeatedly classified as a “grassroots movement.”

Back on the April 15, 2009 edition of ABC’s World News, reporter Dan Harris told viewers that “critics on the Left say” the Tea Party was not “a real grassroots phenomenon at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests.”

But when labor unions started joining the OWS protests, reporters didn’t greet that information with jaundiced skepticism of a movement being taken over by well-funded, well-heeled union organizers, but treated it as recognition of the growing respect and influence they were gaining.

On the October 5 Today show, Mara Schiavocampo alerted viewers that on “Tuesday, several labor unions, including transit workers and teachers, joined activists for a march to Wall Street. Today they plan to join protesters in what could be their largest event yet, a rally and march in lower Manhattan.” In the very next sentence the NBC correspondent was careful to remind her viewers: “The grassroots movement has no official leaders.”

Racist Tea Partiers vs. Cookie Baking Grandmas

While the Tea Partiers were portrayed as racist and rude yokels, the OWS crowd has been portrayed in a decidedly more positive light with reporters highlighting cute school kids, spending their Columbus Day holiday holding up signs in opposition to corporate America and even featured a kindly grandmother baking cookies for the crowd.

On the October 10, NBC Nightly News, Mara Schiavocampo highlighted: “From school to the streets. On Day 24 of the Occupy Wall Street protest demonstrators were joined by a group of students on their day off.” Viewers were then presented clips of little children holding signs that read: “Tax the one percent, not the 99 percent!” and “Tax the greedy, feed the needy!”

Despite hundreds of arrests, the media have painted the Occupy Wall Street crowd as friendly, genial, even industrious folk who started their own newspapers, and taught Yoga classes to pass the time.

Over images of protestors stretching, on the October 10 Evening News, an impressed Jim Axelrod glowingly noticed: “The Occupy Wall Street protestors have set up a camp with a food court, newspaper, medical unit, Internet café, even yoga practice.”

On the October 3 edition of ABC’s World News, Dan Harris played tour guide to the protest scene: “This is a surprisingly functional little city. Let me give you a little tour. It starts here with the information desk for people newly arrived. Behind that this whole area back here, this is the media area. It’s filled with bloggers and other people getting the word out and powered by donated generators. And this is the food station. It’s all free and all donated including some cookies that came in today from a grandmother in Idaho.”

In subsequent days, the effusive notices came streaming in from the network anchors.
On the October 5 Nightly News, NBC’s Brian Williams trumpeted: “While it goes by the official name ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ it has spread steadily and far beyond Wall Street, and it could well turn out to be the protest of this current era.” ABC’s weekend evening news anchor David Muir, on the October 9 World News, hailed: “Look at the images coming in tonight, spelling out the anger. This sign in New York, ‘The rich get bailed out, the poor get sold out.’”

In contrast, the network anchors treated the Tea Party much more harshly, depicting its members as violent, racial slur hurling thugs. As the MRC’s Rich Noyes pointed out in the special report, TV’s Tea Party Travesty, in September of 2009, “NBC’s Brian Williams trumpeted Jimmy Carter’s charge that the Tea Party was motivated by race: ‘Signs and images at last weekend’s big Tea Party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes, and President Carter today said he is extremely worried by it.’”

In March of that year Noyes found that on “the night of the final vote on ObamaCare in March, for example, ABC’s Diane Sawyer cast Tea Partiers as out-of-control marauders, ‘roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets.’ CBS’s Bob Schieffer also cast a wide net, accusing ‘demonstrators’ of hurling ‘racial epithets’ and ‘sexual slurs,’ and even conjured images of civil-rights era brutality: ‘One lawmaker said it was like a page out of a time machine.’”

Schieffer’s colleague Jeff Greenfield, on the September 20, 2009 edition of CBS’s Sunday Morning, went as far to wonder about the Tea Party: “Does this new militancy on the Right pose an opportunity for the Republican Party or create a dilemma?” He added: “Some of it is aimed specifically and virulently at Obama....At his background, at his race, at his agenda.”
In the media’s coverage of the Wall Street occupiers and Tea Partiers, a clear tale of two different protests is seen. One that grew out of concern for out-of-control government spending was initially ignored and treated to catcalls of racism and thuggery by ABC, CBS and NBC. The other, a leftist movement screaming for an even more expansive government, that actually resulted in hundreds of arrests, was greeted by the Big Three networks with a tidal wave of coverage full of friendly talking heads.

Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.

Networks Keeping Viewers In the Dark on Solyndra Scandal

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:50:00 GMT

A study by the Media Research Center finds that the three broadcast networks are providing virtually no coverage of the Solyndra scandal, a solar energy firm that went bankrupt after getting more than $500 million in taxpayer money from the Obama administration. This is not the approach the networks took after the collapse of Enron, an energy company with Republican ties. In just the first two months of 2002, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts cranked out 198 stories on the Enron debacle, compared to just eight so far on Solyndra, a 24-to-1 disparity.

Friday night — in a classic and cynical news management strategy — the administration disgorged e-mails showing a top Obama fund-raiser and Energy Department official, Steven Spinner — who had supposedly recused himself from Solyndra’s loan application because his wife worked at a law firm representing the solar energy company — had badgered his colleagues to approve the deal.

One e-mail exchange published by The Politico demanded to know: “Any word on OMB? [the Office of Management and Budget] I have the O.V.P. [Office of the Vice President] and W.H. [White House] breathing down my neck on this....How hard is this? What is he waiting for?”

Even though these e-mails were sensational enough to make it onto the front-page of Saturday’s New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC never found a moment over the long Columbus Day weekend to mention any of this, just as they skipped news earlier in the week that Jonathan Silver, who ran the Department of Energy loan program that handed more than $500 million in taxpayer money to Solyndra, had resigned. When two Solyndra executives took the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee in late September, ABC and NBC skipped that news, too, while CBS offered a whopping 25 seconds of coverage.

A review of the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows by the Media Research Center found just fifteen stories mentioning the Solyndra scandal since its August 31 bankruptcy filing — eight on the evening newscasts (four full reports plus another four brief anchor-read items) and seven on the morning news shows (five full reports and two brief items). The network total coverage over nearly six weeks: just 25 minutes, 30 seconds, or less than 0.2% of the available network news airtime.

That’s remarkably paltry compared to what one imagines the coverage would have been if a Republican administration had funneled that much government cash to a company dominated by political allies (the company’s biggest investor, George Kaiser, bundled more than $50,000 in contributions for the President’s 2008 campaign, and visited the White House four times before the loan from the Department of Energy was finalized).

While the networks are treating Solyndra as just a minor blip on Obama’s radar screen, the scandal exposes deep flaws in the President’s economic and environmental approaches. And, the media’s lackadaisical attitude is a vivid example of their ever-more partisan approach to covering Washington politics:

■ The Failure of Obama’s “Stimulus” Spending Spree: The taxpayer money for Solyndra came from Obama’s “stimulus,” and back in 2009 the media cheered the administration’s plan to massively increase government spending in order to jump start the economy. MRC’s analysis showed nearly six out of ten network news stories (58%) tilted in favor of the big government approach as Congress debated it at the time (January 20 through February 14, 2009). In the year after it passed, the networks grew even more skewed, with more than 70% of stories applauding the stimulus as good economic medicine.

The presumption that government spending would create the jobs it promised was too good to check, and network reporters passed along the administration’s claims of success. Typical was then-CBS anchor Katie Couric, who enthusiastically chirped on the March 6, 2009 Evening News: “We’ll show you the new jobs his stimulus plan is creating.”

http://www.mrc.org/stillshots/2009/March/2009-03-06-CBS-EN-Couric.jpg

Two years later, a review by the MRC’s Business & Media Institute found virtually no network stories (just 2% out of 589) reminding viewers how the original White House pitch for new spending included the idea that it would keep unemployment from rising higher than 8%. In fact, the unemployment rate has been above 8% for the past 32 months, since February 2009.

Statistics show that stimulus money was overwhelmingly directed toward projects in Democratic congressional districts, not Republican ones. Even for those who believe that government spending can boost economic growth, that’s a red flag suggesting money was handed out to pet causes and constituencies, not to those who could necessarily use it most wisely. Yet the networks have yet to seize on Solyndra’s Democratic ties to more broadly question how Obama’s stimulus dollars were actually spent.

■ Green Jobs Are an Even Bigger Failure: As for the “green jobs” that would result from showering cash on companies like Solyndra, the Washington Post crunched the numbers in September 2011 and found failure: Instead of creating 65,000 jobs, as promised, the $38 billion loan program which included Solyndra could only claim 3,545 jobs.

Yet, as the MRC documented, the network coverage of the “green jobs” concept has been even more lopsided than coverage of the stimulus overall. Skepticism has been virtually non-existent. “We have gotten the message. Green-collar jobs are the wave of the future,” co-host Diane Sawyer cheered ABC’s Good Morning America back on April 15, 2009. Out of 52 network stories that mentioned the administration’s “green jobs” program, only four (8%) bothered to include any critics at all.

Conservatives have criticized the entire Obama concept as antithetical to a free market. “When government takes $535 million and invests in a loser, it not only wastes taxpayer money but it also denies that capital to some other project in the private economy that might have succeeded. The Solyndra e-mails show how ill-equipped government is to predict the industries of the present, much less the future,” a Wall Street Journal editorial declared on Monday.

Yet in the 15 stories since the company’s bankruptcy, not one has included the suggestion that Solyndra’s failure casts any doubt on the administration’s green jobs campaign. Instead, the networks have maintained the Obama administration’s line that the scandal is an isolated matter, an aberration that should not be seen as impugning the overall record.

■ Double-Standard Scorecard: Bush/Enron, 198; Obama/Solyndra, 8: Solyndra went bankrupt in 2011 after taking $500 million in direct government loans. In late 2001, the energy giant Enron went bankrupt, and it quickly emerged that the Bush administration had refused pleas from company executives to provide a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Yet the networks attempted to twist that story of corporate fraud into one of political malfeasance by stressing an imagined link between the Bush administration and the company’s corruption. “Enron’s connections to the Bush administration, wide and deep,” ABC anchor Peter Jennings intoned on January 10, 2002. Over on MSNBC that night, future NBC anchor Brian Williams hyped it as “the story some are already calling Bush’s Whitewater.”

In just the first two months of 2002, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts cranked out 198 stories on the Enron debacle, many about the potential entanglement of the Bush White House. Such feeding-frenzy coverage dwarfs the eight stories those broadcasts have devoted so far to Solyndra’s demise, a 24-to-1 disparity. Yet the Solyndra case involves the actual transfer of more than $500 million to a company whose largest investor, George Kaiser, was a major Obama campaign bundler (raising in between $50,000 and $100,000 for the President’s 2008 campaign).

And Obama’s Energy Department took the unusual step of restructuring the loan to Solyndra, so that private investors would be paid off before taxpayers in the event of a bankruptcy. According to e-mails released Friday, Treasury Department officials warned that such an arrangement might require a Justice Department ruling, but were ignored.

The few stories that have reached the air have been fairly tough. ABC’s Brian Ross, for example, painted the administration as deceitful in a September 14 World News report: “This year, even as Solyndra approached bankruptcy, the company and the White House kept it a secret, telling Congress and the workers everything was going great until the day it shut its doors.”

But the networks’ minimalist approach to this scandal seems designed to ensure that many Americans never even hear about Solyndra. A Pew Research Center survey in late September (after most of the stories aired) found 43% of respondents had never even heard of the scandal.

The media touted their adversarial, watchdog approach during the Bush years. If the Solyndra case is any indication, those once-aggressive reporters are now contented lapdogs snoozing at Obama’s feet.

From Democratic Promoters to Republican Destroyers

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:55:00 GMT

For most Americans, the 2012 presidential campaign will be experienced on television, and voters will evaluate the candidates based on their performances at televised debates, daily news coverage, and in long-form interviews. Even with all of the changes in the media landscape over past several years, the most-watched regular forums for candidate interviews are the broadcast network morning news programs — NBC’s Today, ABC’s Good Morning America, and CBS’s The Early Show, with a combined weekday audience of more than 13 million as of the second quarter of 2011.

But how fairly are those broadcasts treating the candidates, and how well are the network morning show hosts serving Republican primary voters who must decide which candidate will oppose President Obama next fall? To find out, the Media Research Center analyzed all 53 weekday morning show interviews with either potential or declared Republican candidates from January 1 through September 15, and compared the results with our study of the same programs’ treatment of the Democratic candidates during the same time period from four years ago.

The results show a clear double-standard:

By a 5-to-1 margin, ABC, CBS and NBC morning show hosts employed an adversarial liberal agenda when questioning this year’s Republican candidates.
Four years ago, Democratic candidates faced questions that tilted more than two-to-one to the left, a far friendlier agenda for liberal politicians.
In 2007, Democratic candidates were frequently tossed softball questions. This year’s interviews with Republicans have been much more caustic, with few chances for the candidates to project a warm and fuzzy image.
Four years ago, top Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were given massive donations of airtime by ABC in the form of “town hall” meetings on Good Morning America. None of this year’s Republican contenders have been given a similar opportunity.

Details of the MRC’s study:

Little Airtime for the GOP Frontrunners: By late summer, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney led the Republican field, but neither garnered very much face time with the networks’ morning show audiences. Romney was featured in just three interviews — one each on ABC, CBS and NBC — while Perry, a relatively late arrival to the race, appeared just twice for a total airtime of nine minutes — on NBC and CBS back on September 6 to talk mostly about the wildfires in his state.

The leader of the pack was Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, who was featured in 14 morning show interviews totaling more than 71 minutes (see chart). The runner-up was former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who — despite the visibility gained from nine interviews totaling 42 minutes — never rose beyond single digits in the national polls and dropped out after a disappointing third-place finish in the August 13 Iowa straw poll.

Getting nearly as much attention as Pawlenty was billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who flirted with a candidacy back in March and April. Trump was featured in five interviews totaling 39 minutes. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman also appeared five times for a total of nearly 26 minutes, with Romney rounding out the top five with 21 minutes.

A potpourri of other candidates were also given a chance to reach the relatively large audience watching the networks’ morning news shows: Texas Congressman Ron Paul (3 interviews, 17 minutes); former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (3 interviews, 14 minutes); former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (2 interviews, 10 minutes); and businessman Herman Cain (2 interviews, 7 minutes).

The networks also granted airtime to potential candidates former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (11 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively), while NBC twice interviewed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about his potential as a presidential candidate.

In 2007, Networks Flocked to Democratic Frontrunners: Four years ago, those same morning shows highlighted the frontrunners in the Democratic race. Hillary Clinton snagged the most airtime, with 10 appearances totaling 71 minutes (coincidentally, the same amount of time the GOP’s only female candidate, Michele Bachmann, received this year). Then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama was featured in 11 interviews (52 minutes), followed by John Edwards (5 appearances, 47 minutes); former Vice President Al Gore, touted as a possible candidate in early 2007 (8 appearances, 43 minutes) and then-Delaware Senator Joe Biden (6 appearances, 28 minutes).

Clinton and Edwards benefitted from relatively massive donations of airtime from ABC’s Good Morning America, which featured both candidates in lengthy (and friendly) “town hall” style events. None of this year’s Republican candidates has been given a similar chance for an extended interaction with voters on network television.

Four years ago, the Democrats’ spouses and top advisors were also frequent guests, giving a presidential aura to the candidates. Surrogates for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards were interviewed a total of 15 times from January 1 through September 15, giving each campaign additional opportunities to push their message.

So far this year, none of the Republican candidates’ spouses or surrogates has appeared without the candidate, although Romney’s wife, Ann, was included alongside her husband in NBC’s May 31 profile, and ABC spoke to both Ron Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, on January 5.

Another difference: While most of the Republican field’s lower-tier candidates (Huntsman, Paul, Santorum, Gingrich and Cain) have all had multiple chances to reach voters on the network morning shows, that opportunity was denied the Democratic also-rans in 2007. Of the second-tier candidates four years ago, only Joe Biden had received numerous TV appearances through mid-September 2007, while then-Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel had none by this time four years ago.

Hitting the Candidates With a Liberal Agenda: As might be expected, most of the more than 400 questions posed to the Republican candidates this year had to do with early campaign strategy and tactics and basic biographical details. But our analysts counted 98 “ideological questions” — policy-based questions that incorporated either a liberal or conservative premise.

Of those, the vast majority (81, or 83%) reflected a liberal policy agenda, vs. just 17 (17%) that highlighted the concerns of conservative voters. Thus, instead of functioning as a surrogate for the Republican rank-and-file voter who probably won’t get a chance to question a candidate, TV journalists used their time with the candidates to push a standard liberal agenda.

A central policy issue for many of these interviews was the economy and the growing national debt, and network hosts consistently pressed the candidates for their reluctance to agree on the need for a tax increase. On the April 13 Today, for example, co-host Matt Lauer hit Bachmann: “Is raising taxes on the table?” before employing liberal rhetoric: “Why shouldn’t the burden be equally shared? Why shouldn’t we put some of that burden on the wealthy and corporations?”

Over on ABC’s Good Morning America on January 11, co-host George Stephanopoulos seemed appalled by Tim Pawlenty’s call for lower taxes to spur economic growth. “Won’t tax cuts increase the deficit?” Stephanopoulos wondered. Pawlenty got hit with the same spin May 23 on CBS’s The Early Show, as co-host Erica Hill demanded: “What about raising taxes? Because, and I bring this up again, you say government money isn’t free. At some point, do you have to look at raising taxes, and do people have to pay more for what’s needed in this country?”

Hill (June 3) also badgered Mitt Romney for his opposition to Obama’s huge bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009: “You also accuse the President yesterday of making the recession worse. But based on what we’ve seen in the auto industry, weren’t you wrong in this case? Wasn’t it right for both the auto industry and for the American economy to help that industry?”

Even Jon Huntsman, the most liberal of the 2012 Republicans, got hit from the left on economic issues. On June 22, NBC’s Ann Curry sounded like every other morning show host as she asked Huntsman about the deficit: “Does that revenue side include raising taxes? Is that off the table to decrease the national debt?”

Curry also suggested to Huntsman that his personal wealth would hurt his credibility on the jobs issue: “You’re the son of one of the richest men in America and you, yourself — you’re also wealthy — at a time when corporate America is making record profits and not hiring. So what do you say to, especially blue collar workers, who say what they want is a President who knows how to bring jobs back to America?”

Huntsman and Romney were also most likely to face the rare right-leaning question, together accounting for nine of the 17 conservative questions we documented. ABC’s Stephanopoulos, for example, grilled Romney about the similarities between his Massachusetts health care plan and ObamaCare back on February 1: “Why is it right for a state to impose that kind of a mandate and not the federal government?”

On May 20, Stephanopoulos also took aim at Huntsman’s decision to take Obama’s stimulus funds back in 2009. “When you were asked about it, you suggested that one of the problems with the stimulus is that it wasn’t big enough. Is that what you still believe?” Huntsman responded that his choice would have been for a package with larger tax cuts.

Four Years Ago, a Liberal Agenda for Democrats: It’s not necessarily biased for TV hosts to ask a group of mostly conservative candidates to respond to liberal policy arguments. But four years ago, the same network morning shows did not confront the Democratic field with conservative policy arguments. Looking at the same time period, MRC analysts documented 118 “ideological questions” posed to the Democratic candidates. The breakdown was decidedly to the left: 83 liberal-themed questions, vs. 35 conservative-themed questions, a more than two-to-one disparity (compared to a five-to-one liberal tilt this year).

While network hosts are taking an adversarial approach with this year’s conservatives, they were much more agreeable with the policy stances of liberal Democrats four years ago. For example, at ABC’s “town hall” meeting featuring Hillary Clinton on March 26, 2007, co-host Robin Roberts set Clinton up to tout her signature issue: “A lot of people feel like they’re rolling the dice every morning about their health care. They can’t afford it. And two-thirds — did you realize this? — two-thirds of Americans who do not have health insurance are working.”

On NBC’s Today, February 5, 2007, co-host Matt Lauer saluted John Edwards: “I’m going to — I’ll applaud your honesty. You basically have come out and said, ‘Look, I want universal health care for everyone in this country, and I’m going to raise taxes to accomplish it.’”

While the economy has been the central issue this year, the war in Iraq was the key policy debate in early 2007, and the networks frequently pushed the candidates to be even more active in opposing the Bush administration. “At what point do you say, ‘Enough’s enough, Mr. President. Now I will use the purse strings,’” Lauer beseeched Clinton on the January 17, 2007 Today.

A few days earlier (January 11), Lauer’s co-host Meredith Vieira pleaded with Barack Obama: “What can you do as a Senator? What are you willing to do to stop the troops from going there?...Would you support Senator [Ted] Kennedy’s resolution that would force the President, really, to go to Congress before authorizing any troops to be sent there?”

Not all of the liberal questions were softballs. Hillary Clinton was pressed often on her support for the Iraq war resolution in 2002. “When you say you’ve taken responsibility, Senator, once again — is that the same thing as saying, ‘I made a mistake by voting for the war’?” NBC’s Meredith Vieira asked Clinton on the January 23, 2007 Today. Over on ABC that same morning, co-host Diane Sawyer demanded to know: “Is that your biggest mistake as Senator?”

The network agenda four years ago was reasonably consistent with the agenda of liberal primary voters trying to choose their party’s nominee. This year, conservative voters would have to strain to hear their concerns reflected in these same morning show interviews.

Softballs vs. Hardballs: Another difference between the networks’ treatment of the Democrats in 2007 and this year’s crop of Republican candidates — the tone of the questioning is far more adversarial this year. The Democratic front-runners four years ago were indulged with friendly questions aimed at creating a personal bond with voters.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer greeted Hillary Clinton on January 23, 2007 with a clip of her husband during the 1992 campaign saying their slogan “might as well be, ‘Buy one, get one free.’” Sawyer enthused to Clinton: “Is that your slogan this time around, ‘Buy one, get one free ?’” In June, ABC’s Kate Snow brought together a team of Clinton campaign operatives to tout their boss. “What does she do behind closed doors that would surprise us?” Snow wondered. “Is she a practical jokester? Does she play practical jokes?”

In May 2007, NBC sent Meredith Vieira to New Hampshire to follow Barack Obama around for the day. “Do you have a weakness on the campaign trail, anything that you have to have with you at all times? Stuffed animal?” (Obama answered that he liked “a certain brand of green tea.”) Vieira kept up the softballs: “When your head hits the pillow tonight in Iowa, will you fall fast asleep, or will your mind be racing about the next day?...Do you dream of the White House?”

Embarrassing as it might be in retrospect, ABC’s Sawyer also fawned over the Edwards’ marriage in a July interview: “You have a 30th wedding anniversary coming up, the two of you....Have you gotten the present, yet?....Is it going to be Wendy’s again?” She later asked the candidate: “If you have one fellow Democratic candidate you could take with you if you were stranded on a desert island, who would it be, and why?”

This year, only NBC’s May 31 profile of Mitt Romney came anywhere close to striking such a familiar, personal tone. Correspondent Jamie Gangel asked Romney: “Do you have an iPod?...What kind of music is on your playlist?...What’s the last book you read?” Upon hearing that Romney liked the “Twilight” series, Gangel wondered: “Do you like vampires?”

Romney replied: “I don’t like vampires personally. I don’t know any.”

Apart from that interview, the questioning has been strictly business-like, and occasionally caustic. In March, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Rick Santorum if it was fair to brand him an “ultra-conservative on social issues.” During Mike Huckabee’s appearance on Good Morning America in February, George Stephanopoulos painted mainstream Republicans as a engaging in fringe behavior: “It seems like Republican leaders have the hardest time in the world saying simply and clearly ‘President Obama is a Christian and President Obama is a citizen. Get over it.’”

When she appeared on ABC in late June, Stephanopoulos characterized Michele Bachmann as a flaky liar: “The Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site, PolitiFact, has said you have the worst record of making false statements of any of the leading contenders.” And NBC’s Meredith Vieira took a frosty line with Tim Pawlenty when he appeared on Today back in February, quoting criticisms from Pawlenty’s Democratic successor: “What makes you better equipped to run the nation’s economy, if you left your own house in such disarray?”

It’s not necessarily unfair to pose such tough questions to presidential candidates — indeed, they should be able to respond to hardball questions and defend their views and their records in office. But there’s an obvious double-standard with the networks’ tone towards these Republican candidates, vs. the much friendlier approach they took with the 2007 Democratic contenders.

MRC Study: CNN's Tea Party Debate More Fair Than NBC News/Politico Hatchet Job

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:00:00 GMT

The left is already out attacking last night's CNN Tea Party debate, with the New York Times leading the way as it cried "the first event hosted jointly by a major news organization and a Tea Party group" has "left some questioning whether the network had gone too far in reaching for centrist credibility." That charge only makes sense in a liberal world view that thought Brian Williams' biased performance at last week's NBC News/Politico debate was somehow soft and uncontroversial.

In fact there were far more liberal questions (13) to the GOP candidates at this Tea Party debate than there were conservative-oriented questions at the NBC News debate last week (just one). The Tea Party gets credit for helping restore balance to the agenda, but it's not like liberal ideas were shut out.

A study of the questions asked at both debates does show Blitzer was more balanced than Williams, in part, because he was involved in a forum where Tea Partiers themselves were able to ask questions of the GOP candidates. Whereas Williams, along with the Politico's John Harris, were able to run rampant with one question after another from the left.

A review of the 54 total questions asked by Williams and Harris to the Republican candidates shows that 25 of them came from the left, with just one from the right. Twenty-eight questions were neutral. So those questions with an agenda almost all of them (96 percent) were from the left (4 percent from the right).

In contrast, a review of the 62 total questions posed to GOP candidates at the CNN debate shows only 13 of them came from the left, 21 from the right, with 28 being neutral. So of questions with an agenda 62 percent were from the right, 38 percent were from the left. However, it should be noted that since this debate was sponsored by the Tea Party seven questions from the right were asked by Tea Partiers themselves. Of the questions asked by Blitzer 14 were from the right and 13 from the left, with 28 being neutral.

While Williams and Harris lobbed one loaded lefty question after the next at GOP candidates, at their respective debate, Blitzer for the most part, asked straightforward questions or threw to Tea Partiers in the audience, and then just stood by as the candidates responded.

Blitzer's opening questioning was typical:

BLITZER: Let's start off here in Tampa. We have a Tea Party activist. Please identify yourself and ask your question.

TEA PARTIER: My question: How will you convince senior citizens that Social Security and Medicare need to be changed and get their vote?

BLITZER: Good question. Let me begin with Michele Bachmann. Congresswoman, how do you do that? How do you go ahead and change, reform Social Security, Medicare, while at the same time getting votes?

Blitzer then asked follow-ups of the candidates that spurred back and forth exchanges, that while occasionally led to Republicans fighting each other, also allowed each candidate to further explain their similarities and differences with their primary opponents.

This was a far cry from Williams, who instead set out to hammer individual Republicans with liberal agenda questions that tried to depict the GOP candidates as somehow cartoonishly out of step with mainstream values. As was the case with Williams' line of questioning of Texas Governor Rick Perry, as noticed by the MRC's Brent Baker.

"Williams hit Texas Governor Rick Perry from the left on his state's poor economic indicators ("no other state has more working at or below the minimum wage"), chastised him for cutting education funding and, citing how "your state has executed 234 death row inmates," demanded to know whether he's "struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?"

Williams was taken aback when the audience applauded Perry's death penalty record, prompting a befuddled Williams to follow up: "What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?"

Even though, unlike Williams, Blitzer was able to have actual conservative Tea Partiers ask questions directly of the candidates, Blitzer, himself, did manage to sneak in some questions from the left.

Like when he asked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann the following:

"The Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, which went across the board, were not offset with spending cuts, and as a result, potentially, a lot of economists think, the deficit went up and up and up."

Blitzer also pressed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich if he would compromise with Democrats:

"Jobs, jobs, jobs. All of us who covered you when you were Speaker — and you worked with President Clinton at the time — you compromised, he compromised, you got things done. There was a budget surplus for as far as the eye could see.

If you were president, would you work with the Democrats, assuming they were the majority in the House or the Senate? Would you compromise with them on some of these gut issues?"

A little bit later Blitzer asked Gingrich about the fairness of tax breaks for corporations:

"Speaker Gingrich, some of the biggest companies in the United States, the oil companies, they got — I guess some would call government handouts in the form of tax breaks, tax exemptions, loopholes. They’re making billions and billions of dollars. Is that fair?"

Not all of the outside questions came from Tea Partiers, as Blitzer selected the following query submitted to CNN's Web site:

"We have a question via CNNPolitics.com. 'All of you profess to be pro-business candidates for president. Can you be pro-worker at the same time?'"

Blitzer was also similar to Williams in how he treated Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Back in the NBC News debate Williams attempted to make Paul's libertarian views on domestic issues look outside of the mainstream as he asked:

"Congressman Paul, a long time ago, a fellow Texan of yours, a young student teacher in Cotulla, Texas, was horrified to see young kids coming into the classroom hungry, some of them with distended bellies because of hunger. He made a vow that if he had anything to do about it the government would provide meals, hot meals at best, in schools. The young student teacher, of course, later went on to be President Lyndon Johnson. Do you think that is any more -- providing nutrition in schools for children -- a role of the federal government?"

Blitzer took a similar tone with Paul when he asked the following question about health care:

"You're a physician, Ron Paul, so you're a doctor. You know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question.

A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I’m healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.

Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?"

In the end Blitzer turned out to be the fairer moderator, perhaps, because he was partnered with the Tea Party. However, in the NBC debate viewers saw what kind of left wing assault can occur when the questions and topics are left strictly to the likes of Brian Williams.

Ten Years After September 11, Recalling the Outrageousness of the Hollywood Left

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:14:00 GMT

Ten years after the attacks of September 11, it’s worth recalling how the immediate reaction of some on the far Left was to blame the United States foreign policy for instigating the attacks, and how various Hollywood celebrities spent the remainder of the decade trashing the War on Terror and likening the United States to some sort of Nazi regime or police state. Some even promoted wild conspiracies that the United States government had participated in the attacks themselves, or was sheltering terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

Here, culled from the MRC’s vast archives, are 25 blood-boiling quotes showcasing the Hollywood Left’s outrageous take on the War on Terror over the past ten years, with links to several videos:

“Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives.
“Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam while claiming to be ‘on duty’ in the Air National Guard. Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And now you are asking for ‘unity’ so you can start another one? Do not insult me or my country like this!
“Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly world .”
— Message posted by left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore on his Web site, September 14, 2001.

“We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, not cowardly.”
— ABC’s Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect, September 17, 2001.

“Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word ‘cowardly’ is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.”
— Novelist and playwright Susan Sontag writing for the “Talk of the Town” section of the Sept. 24, 2001 New Yorker.

“I despise him [President George W. Bush]. I despise his administration and everything they stand for....There has to be a movement now to really oppose what he is proposing because it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral and basically illegal....It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It’s humiliating.”
— Actress Jessica Lange at a September 25, 2002 press conference at an international film festival in San Sebastian, Spain where she was given a lifetime achievement award. Her remarks were shown in the U.S. on the syndicated show Inside Edition on October 4, 2002.

“This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them ‘hawks’, but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation’s grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist.”
— Former Cheers star Woody Harrelson in an op-ed headlined “I’m an American tired of American lies” published Oct. 17, 2002 in London’s The Guardian newspaper.

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: “What happened to the search for Osama bin Laden?...You don’t think they [the U.S. government] know where he is?”
Bob Costas (astonished): “You think they know where Osama bin Laden is and it’s hands off?”
Moore: “Absolutely, absolutely.”
Costas: “Why?”
Moore: “Because he’s funded by their friends in Saudi Arabia! He’s back living with his sponsors, his benefactors. Do you think that Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 from a cave in Afghanistan? I can’t get a cell signal from here to Queens! I mean, come on, let’s get real about this....I think the United States, I think our government knows where he is and I don’t think we’re going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon.”
— Exchange on HBO’s On the Record with Bob Costas, May 9, 2003.

“I wondered to myself during ‘Shock and Awe,’ I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?”
— Actress Meryl Streep at a July 8, 2004 Kerry-Edwards fundraiser held at Radio City Music Hall, as quoted by the Boston Globe the next day.

“I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don’t know anything about the Iraqis, but they’re angry and frustrated in their own lives. It’s like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we’ve got a new bunch of Hitlers.”
— Singer Linda Ronstadt, as quoted by USA Today reporter Elysa Gardner in a November 17, 2004 profile.

“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas and we are expressing our solidarity with you.”
— Singer Harry Belafonte to Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez during a televised rally on January 8, 2006 in a clip shown on FNC’s Hannity & Colmes the next day.

“Unless you are willing to accept torture as part of a normal American political lexicon, unless you are willing to accept that leaving the Geneva Convention is fine and dandy, if you accept the expression [expansion?] of wiretapping as business as usual, the only way to express this now is to embrace the difficult and perhaps embarrassing process of impeachment.”
— Actor Richard Dreyfuss in a February 16, 2006 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

“In my country, we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial...put them in jail without telling anyone...and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do....This is exactly what [George] Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes.”
— Actor/left-wing activist Tim Robbins, who was in Athens, Greece, performing in a stage version of Orwell’s 1984, as quoted in a May 2, 2006 Agence-France Press dispatch.

“As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries....Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”
— Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s The View, September 12, 2006.

“When they say the ‘terrorists want the Democrats to win,’ you say ‘are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorist’s wet dream.’ He inflames radical hatred against America and then runs on offering to protect us from it. It’s like a guy throwing shit on you and then selling you relief from the flies.”
— Bill Maher on his HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher November 3, 2006 offering his suggested “talking points” for Democratic candidates.

“You have two choices in life, Elisabeth. Faith or fear. Faith or fear, that’s your choice. You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking....Get away from the fear. Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.”
— Rosie O’Donnell to co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on ABC’s The View, November 9, 2006.

Actor Zach Braff, NBC’s Scrubs: “You know America...my middle name is Israel. We’re both named after countries.... Do you think that you have any traits in common with the country that is your namesake?”
Actress America Ferrera, ABC’s Ugly Betty: “Well, you know, I mean, I guess I’m a free-spirited person and America’s supposedly the ‘land of the free,’ right? Or at least we will be in 2008.”
— Exchange during the “Spirit Awards” shown live on the Independent Film Channel, February 24, 2007.

“It is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself — it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved...World Trade Center One and Two got hit by planes. Seven, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.”
— Rosie O’Donnell discussing 9/11 on The View, March 29, 2007. [Watch the video on MRC-TV]

“I just want to say something: 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?...If you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?”
— Co-host Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s The View, May 17, 2007.

“Over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and the people, an attack on the Constitution and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war. And this is a song about things that shouldn’t happen here, happening here. And so right now we plan to do something about it — we plan to sing about it.”
— Bruce Springsteen introducing his song “Living in the Future” before a live concert on NBC’s Today, September 28, 2007.

“Let’s face it: If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamned wars in the first place.”
— Actress Sally Field at the Emmy awards, September 16, 2007.

Author Laura Ingraham: “It’s a free country though, right?”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg: “Well, it used to be. I used believe that it was, and then a lot of-”
Ingraham: “You don’t think that it’s a free country?”
Goldberg: “Not as free as it was when I was a kid.”...
Co-host Joy Behar: “Nobody was tapping into my phone when I was watching Howdy Doody.”
— Exchange on ABC’s The View, November 12, 2007.

“We’ve been redefined for seven years now as a war-mongering, far-right, intolerant nation who’s raping our own atmosphere and demonizing the poor and letting the banks rob us blind. I think if — any incremental move away from that would be a godsend. And I think Obama will, at the very least, put the brakes on this madness and in some ways heal it....I think the rest of the world, if they see that America elects a man of color, I think they’ll breathe a big sigh of relief and not think that we’re this war-mongering, rich white guy country.”
— Actor/comedian Richard Belzer on FNC’s Geraldo At Large, March 2, 2008.

“Is Cheney a goon? I don’t mean that to be like a smart ass, but he seems like he might be a goon....My feeling about Cheney — and also Bush, but especially Cheney — is that he just couldn’t care less about Americans. And the same is true of George Bush. And all they really want to do is somehow kiss up to the oil people....Is there any humanity in either of these guys?”
— CBS Late Show host David Letterman interviewing former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 11, 2008. [Watch the video on MRC-TV]

“The word, ‘zoo,’ is sort of elephant-speak for Guantanamo. They’re really, they are suffering and being tortured.”
— Actress Lily Tomlin at an animal-rights protest in Los Angeles, clip shown on NBC’s Today, December 4, 2008.

“We’ve lived through a nightmare...in the past eight years....We’re going through something that we haven’t gone through in my life. Foreign policy, domestic policy — driven to its breaking point. Everything got broken. And the philosophy that was at the base of the last administration has ruined many, many people’s lives. The deregulation, the idea of the unfettered, free market, the blind foreign policy. This was a very radical group of people who pushed things in a very radical direction, had great success at moving things in that direction, and we are suffering the consequences.”
— Singer Bruce Springsteen in an interview with producer Mark Hagen published January 18, 2009 in Britain’s The Observer.

“9/11? Inside job, plain and simple....I am talking about a massive neo-conservative government effort. It’s been in the works for over twenty years....One problem: How you going to put it into action? I mean, the American people are never going to go for shit like that, right? You’re damn straight. No, what you need is an event, an event that gets everyone’s heads turned around the right way. What you need is a new Pearl Harbor. That’s what they said they needed. You’re looking at a guy who went to 58 funerals in 26 days, I can tell you that is sure as shit what they got.”
— New York City firefighter “Franco Rivera,” played by Daniel Sunjata, on FX’s Rescue Me, April 14, 2009. [Watch the video on MRC-TV]

Brian Williams Vs. Tea Party Conservatives

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:24:00 GMT

Tomorrow night Brian Williams will moderate, along with Politico's John F. Harris, the GOP presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If recent performances by the NBC Nightly News anchor are an indication, candidates (particularly those favored by the Tea Party) should recognize his hostility to their agenda and be prepared for a number of topics and questions from the left. Ever since its emergence, Williams has undercut the Tea Party, its champions within the GOP, and its cause of fiscal conservatism. At the same time, Williams has heralded its chief opponent Barack Obama.

Mocking the Tea Party...

In the summer of 2010 Williams began mocking the Tea Partiers as unsavvy paranoids. On the August 23 Late Show With David Letterman, Williams made fun of the signs he had seen at Tea Party rallies, as he told the late night talk show host: "It makes people feel better to say 'Take our country back.' If you ask them, they would say from, 'from the Trilateral Commission, from the big bankers, from the Council on Foreign Relations.'...You see a lot of signs, 'Federal Government Out of My Social Security,' 'Federal Government Out of My Medicare and Medicaid,' but for the federal government, of course, those programs would not exist."

Williams continued that refrain during NBC's 2010 Election Night coverage with his Nightly News anchor predecessor Tom Brokaw as he tried to toss a wet blanket on the Tea Party's historic success.

NBC's Tom Brokaw: "Matt Kibbe, who speaks for Freedom Works, the Dick Armey organization has said, 'We want this message to go across the country. The people want less from their federal government.' We've heard that before, when it bumps up against reality and you're talking about closing a base or shutting down an agricultural substation of some kind, then it gets pretty tough to do, Brian."

Williams: "Reminds me of the signs at more than one rally this past season: 'Get the government out of my Social Security. Get the government out of my Medicare.'"

...Its Champions in the GOP

Williams has also attacked those in the GOP who have championed the Tea Party cause, namely - Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Williams introduced Perry to his viewers, on the August 16 Nightly News, as a name-caller who came out "swinging and talking" and alerted his audience that the White House had already warned him "to watch what he says."

"On the broadcast tonight, fighting words. Rick Perry comes out swinging and talking, and the White House tells him to watch what he says....The rest of the country is learning what Texans already know about their Governor, what he says, what he does, how he does business....Today's debate had to do with money, name-calling, and whether or not the President of the United States loves his country."

Williams repeatedly derided Palin, for of all things, her retelling of the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere, actually devoting segments to the perceived gaffe on three straight weeknights, beginning with this report his June 3 show:

WILLIAMS: And this piece of video from a woman prominent in the news this week already has tongues wagging. It's from her tour of historic sites -- listen to the following and you shall hear, Sarah Palin's version of the midnight ride of Paul Revere:

SARAH PALIN: He who warned the British that they weren't be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.

WILLIAMS: As she said, that already has — as we said, rather — that already has people talking. Sarah Palin touring the Freedom Trail in Boston. Of course, the real life version involves lanterns.

Back in 2007, however ,Williams ignored a historical gaffe by a then-candidate Barack Obama when he claimed his parents "got together" because of "what happened in Selma" even though his mother and father had married four years prior to the famous 1965 march in Alabama.

...And Its Cause of Fiscal Conservatism

On the February 18 Nightly News Williams hyped the fight between Wisconsin state Republicans and public unions as a decisive backlash against the Tea Party. Williams summoned images of the revolution in Egypt: "On the broadcast tonight, the uprising at home...another day of fury in Wisconsin...From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens uprisings are changing the world."

By the time the Wisconsin Supreme Court handed GOP Governor Scott Walker and the Tea Party a huge victory, by allowing a collective bargaining law to be implemented, Williams had forgotten all about what he previously celebrated as a momentous struggle, by ignoring that bit of news on his June 15 broadcast. However, Williams, on that show, did report about the troubled Broadway production Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark.

Williams' news embargo of that ruling wasn't surprising as Williams has, on numerous occasions, sided against the Tea Party's cause of fiscal conservatism by advocating for increased spending on government programs and tax hikes on job producers.

On his July 31, 2010 special "Taking The Hill: Inside Congress" Williams depicted any GOP attempt to balance the budget as an attack on the poor as he asked Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: "A liberal member said to me his fear is the poor are gonna get hurt and the rich are gonna get by without harm in this. Is that your fear?" On the other hand, Williams pressed Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about raising taxes on the wealthy as he demanded: "Why shouldn't rich folks pay more?"

Prior to that special Williams led his December 6, 2010 newscast this way: "Good evening. It's a fair question to ask, and for a while now Americans have been wondering how lawmakers in Washington could possibly extend tax breaks for wealthy Americans while allowing benefits for jobless Americans to be cut off."

However that wasn't the first time Williams played the class warfare card, as on the December 1, 2010 Nightly News, he offered just one challenging question to deficit commission co-chairmen Erksine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and not surprisingly it was from the left: "It seems to me there's two arguments. There's what you’re trying to accomplish and then there's how you're trying to accomplish, and there are, as you know, critics of what you're trying to do. James K. Galbraith writes in the New York Times, 'Bowles-Simpson proposal is an assault on the middle class, the working class and the poor.'"

...But Heralding Its Opponent

In sharp contrast, Williams, on the August 8, 2011 Nightly News, looked to the President for hope as he wished Obama would take hold of a "leadership moment" and bring "sanity" back to Congress when he asked CNBC's David Faber the following question:

"I'm not a historian, but I think this is a leadership moment, potentially, for the President of the United States. He's getting pressure to force Congress into a sudden breakout of sanity. If that happens, how long until we could get our top credit rating back?"

Of course this wasn't the first time Williams carried water for Obama. After John Boehner, on the January 6, 2011 Nightly News, charged that "ObamaCare will ruin the best health care delivery system in the world, and then, thirdly, I think it will bankrupt our country," Williams returned fire for the President as he lectured the Republican Speaker of the House: "Two points: What do you say to those who would disagree that it was the best health care delivery system in the world because they, by the millions, weren't getting it? And, second, where are you getting the notion — as you said again this morning — the American people want it repealed? Our exit polling was about 48-47, very evenly split on that."

Williams ignored the results of another poll from Fox News/Opinion Dynamics, taken in mid-December of 2010 that showed a solid majority, 59%, were for repealing all or part of ObamaCare, vs. 31% who wished it left alone or expanded.

When viewers of Wednesday's night debate watch Williams hurl hardball questions from the left at GOP presidential candidates they should keep in mind this is the same man who, when given the same chance, didn't exactly treat Obama in a similar manner.

During an exclusive one-on-one interview with Obama on August 29, 2010 Williams tossed this softball at the President: "Finally, I'm hoping to find you in a reflective mood on a cloudy day. We're the first to speak to you coming off your summer vacation. How does it re-charge you? What do you think about? What do you see? What do you read about? How are you thinking about your job these days?

The Media's War Against Dick Cheney

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:59:00 GMT

Dick Cheney has begun a media tour to promote his memoir, In My Time, with excerpts of his NBC Dateline interview showing up on Wednesday’s Nightly News and Thursday’s Today. If history is a guide, Cheney will face a liberal media that has been stunningly hostile and derisive in their coverage of the former Vice President.

Prior to his selection as George W. Bush’s running mate in the summer of 2000, the liberal networks generally treated Cheney — who served as White House chief of staff, Congressman and Secretary of Defense — as a respected Republican leader. But the media turned on Cheney as soon as he joined the Republican ticket, portraying him as an extremist who was “anti-equal rights” and “against education” — even distorting his vote on a non-binding resolution as a vote “against releasing Nelson Mandela from prison,” as if the U.S. House had such power.

After September 11, 2001, the networks channeled liberal displeasure with Cheney’s strenuous anti-terror agenda, and the far Left unleashed venomous assaults on Cheney — casting the Vice President as a “terrorist,” “a goon,” and a war criminal. After a suicide bomber attacked the base in Afghanistan where Cheney was visiting — leaving the Vice President unharmed — HBO’s Bill Maher argued: “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”

MRC has compiled the most noteworthy examples of the media’s hostile antagonistic coverage below:

■ “When you talk about votes like that, that he [Dick Cheney] made while in Congress — anti-affirmative action, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-equal rights — how does George Bush portray him as a compassionate conservative?”
— Today co-host Matt Lauer to Tim Russert, July 26, 2000.

■ “I have to ask you, as an African-American, if you have any difficulty supporting a man who voted against releasing Nelson Mandela from prison....Is that kind of vote acceptable under any circumstance?”
— Co-host Jane Clayson to Republican Congressman J. C. Watts on CBS's Early Show, July 31, 2000.

■ “I’m just curious, do you have any problems with the fact that he did vote against Head Start — because you care so deeply about education — and against a resolution that would have allowed Nelson Mandela to be released from prison?”
— Katie Couric to Colin Powell, August 1, 2000 Today.

■ Katie Couric: “Dick Cheney’s past voting record, his congressional voting record, which is quite conservative, is likely to come under fire as well.”
Tim Russert: “Absolutely. His votes against Head Start, his votes against education, against Medicare, against gun control....Dick Cheney was an extremely conservative Congressman, there’s no doubt about it.”
— October 5, 2000 Today.

■ “In politics, self-made men seem to fall into two categories: sunny and dark....In the 2004 election, Dick Cheney projects the bleakness of a Wyoming winter, while John Edwards always appears to be strolling in the Carolina sunshine.”
— Story by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, Susannah Meadows and Arian Campo-Flores as part of a July 19, 2004 cover package on Kerry and Edwards, “The Sunshine Boys?”

■ “I read you once took a psychological profile test, and it said the position you’re most suited for is undertaker.”
— ABC’s Claire Shipman to Vice President Cheney in an interview shown August 31, 2004 on Good Morning America. [MP3 audio]

■ “There are those who believe that Dick Cheney has led this administration and this President down a path of recklessness, that maybe his approach, his dark approach to this constant battle against another civilization, is actually the wrong approach for ultimately keeping America safe.”
— NBC White House reporter David Gregory during live convention coverage on MSNBC about 8:30pm EDT on September 1, 2004 about two hours before Cheney spoke. [MP3 audio]

■ “The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for President, I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.”
— Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas, as quoted in the “Under the Dome” column by Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour in The Hill newspaper, July 28, 2005.

■ “I’d like to put this personally, if I can. You’re a grandfather. I’m a father. When we look at those girls and we think that the country we’re about to pass to them is a country where the Vice President can’t say whether or not we have secret prisons around the world, whether water-boarding and mock executions is consistent with our values, and a country where the government is surveilling Americans without the warrant of a court — is that the country we want to pass on to them?”
— Co-anchor Terry Moran to Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview shown on ABC’s Nightline, December 19, 2005. [MP3 audio]

■ “Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought [accidental shooting victim] Harry Whittington would be the answer to America’s prayers. Finally, someone who might get that lying, thieving Cheney into a courtroom to answer some direct questions.”
— Actor/left-wing activist Alec Baldwin in a February 17, 2006 blog entry posted at HuffingtonPost.com.

■ “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”
— Host Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, 2007, discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset a suicide bomber's attempt to kill Cheney in Afghanistan had failed. [MP3 audio]

■ MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “Russ Feingold wants to censure the President, the Vice President...”
Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: “Good idea....Personally I’d like to see a perp walk coming out of the West Wing of the White House.”
Matthews: “Do you think they’re guilty of war crimes?”
Moore: “Absolutely....I think we need a trial, in this country, where Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush would be brought up on charges for causing the deaths of so many people....”
Matthews: “It’s interesting if you go back....the Nuremberg Trials weren’t about the genocide, it was about waging an aggressive war. I love reading some of that language. It’s interesting.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, July 23, 2007. [MP3 audio]

■ “Is Cheney a goon? I don’t mean that to be like a smart ass, but he seems like he might be a goon....My feeling about Cheney — and also Bush, but especially Cheney — is that he just couldn’t care less about Americans. And the same is true of George Bush. And all they really want to do is somehow kiss up to the oil people....Is there any humanity in either of these guys?”
— CBS Late Show host David Letterman interviewing former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 11, 2008. [MP3 audio]

■ “You’ve ruled against impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney....Why do you, why do you insist on not impeaching these people so that the world and America can really see the crimes that they’ve committed?”
— Co-host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, July 28, 2008 asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi why she refuses to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

■ “I think this has been a profoundly un-American administration....[But] it’s going to be very hard to prosecute these people. The Obama folks don’t want to do it, because they want to focus on the big problems we have going forward. It might happen overseas, you know, I raised the possibility of Cheney being snatched mid-stream while, you know, fly fishing in Norway, as Augusto Pinochet, the dictator in Chile, was.”
— Time’s Joe Klein on MSNBC’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, January 8, 2009.

■ “Well, 100,000 people are dead now because he got it wrong about nuclear weapons before, back in 2001. We have to remember that Dick Cheney was wrong in a way that was lethal....He does seem like a character out of Dr. Strangelove.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, February 4, 2009.

■ “Flatly, it may be time for Mr. Cheney to leave this country. The partisanship, divisiveness, and naivete to which he ascribed every single criticism of his and President Bush’s delusional policies of the last eight years have now roared forth in a destructive and uninformed diatribe from Mr. Cheney that can only serve to undermine the nation’s new President....You, Mr. Cheney, you terrified more Americans than did any terrorist in the last seven years, and now it is time for you to desist, or to be made to desist.”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a “Special Comment” reacting to former Vice President Cheney’s warnings about future terrorism, February 5, 2009 Countdown.

■ “He is an enemy of the country, in my opinion, Dick Cheney is, he is an enemy of the country....I just think the guy’s such a freakin’ loser. You know, Lord, take him to the Promised Land, will you? See, I don’t even wish the guy goes to Hell, I just want to get him the hell out of here.”
— Ed Schultz, The Ed Schultz Show, May 11, 2009. [MP3 audio]

■ “Is Dick Cheney running for President?...In some ways, I kind of admire this, kind of, crazy jihad, this one man, kind of, hate-fest that he runs on cable shows.”
— Former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 12, 2009. [MP3 audio]

■ “This was as sleazy a presentation by a Vice President as we’ve had since Spiro Agnew. This was an absolute abomination....This guy just has to lie from beginning to end through his setup of his opposition’s position in order to advance any of his ideas at all, none of which have any proof to them at all....This is the kind of sleazy arguing that this guy does in these speeches. It is just ridiculous. It is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who’s listening to him.”
— MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell during live coverage following Cheney’s speech on terrorism, May 21, 2009.

■ “If a Democrat was doing this in a Republican administration, wouldn’t the Republicans be saying, this is traitorous?”
— CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Anderson Cooper 360, May 21, 2009, asking former Vice President Cheney’s daughter, Liz, about her father’s criticism of the Obama administration.

■ “If Ronald Reagan were President, he would try Dick Cheney for war crimes.”
— Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, February 19, 2010. [MP3 audio]

■ “You’re damn right, Dick Cheney’s heart’s a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him.”
— Ed Schultz on The Ed Schultz Show, February 24, 2010. [MP3 audio]

■ Host Joy Behar: “Was it hard to play Dick Cheney?...Because I know that you’re not a fan of Cheney....Where did you find it in yourself to go down and find that satanic spot that we all know so well?”
Actor Richard Dreyfuss: “Are you leading me somewhere? First of all, every actor likes the play bad guys.... To play Dick Cheney, all I had to do was find my Dick Cheney. And you can find all the villainy in the world in your own heart, and that’s what an actor’s job is. I always say to kids, inside you is Hitler and Jesus. And you got to find the appropriate person and bring them out.”
— Exchange on HLN’s Joy Behar Show, October 18, 2010. [MP3 audio]

By 20-to-1, Nets Apply Ideological Labels to Republicans Over Democratic Presidential Candidates

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:59:00 GMT

This year’s crop of GOP presidential candidates includes strong conservatives, just like the top Democratic candidates four years ago — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — were all staunch liberals. But a major, glaring difference between today’s campaign coverage and the early coverage of the 2007 Democratic nomination race is the impulse of journalists to repeatedly brand the 2012 GOP candidates as “conservative” despite offering extremely few “liberal” labels four years ago.

Media Research Center analysts reviewed the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs from January 1 through July 31 and found 62 “conservative” labels for Republican candidates or those talked about as potential candidates. A check of the same broadcasts for the same time period in 2007 found a paltry three “liberal” labels for the Democrats running that year, a greater than 20-to-1 disparity.

In fact, reporters four years ago used the “liberal” label more freely with Republican candidates than Democrats. ABC’s Jake Tapper (World News, March 5, 2007) called Rudy Giuliani a “former big city mayor with liberal views on abortion, gay rights, and gun control.” But Democratic candidates such as Edwards and Clinton, whose views were to the left of Giuliani, were not once called “liberal” on any of the networks during the period we examined, while CBS and NBC never tagged Barack Obama as liberal.

With this year’s crop of Republicans, however, the networks aren’t being nearly as stingy with the ideological labels. On the March 22 edition of NBC’s Today, for example, Natalie Morales told viewers about former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy: “The 50-year-old conservative announced on Facebook Monday that he was forming an exploratory committee....”

On the June 13 Early Show, correspondent Jan Crawford called former Senator Rick Santorum the “strongest social conservative in the bunch.”

ABC’s John Hendren, on the May 14 Good Morning America, described former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as “a conservative’s conservative who last held office when Seinfeld was a hit TV show and Michael Jackson was still on tour.” That night, Hendren revised his script for ABC’s World News to describe Gingrich as “a family values conservative who’s had three wives since he last held office....”

Rick Perry, according to Ron Claiborne on the May 28 Good Morning America, “has strong conservative credentials.” On the June 27 Good Morning America, reporter Jonathan Karl described Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as a “take-no-prisoners conservative.” Earlier, on the May 27 World News, he compared Bachmann with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: “Politically, they appear to be soul mates — unbending conservatives who fire up Tea Partiers like no other Republicans.”

Indeed, the most-labeled candidate this cycle is Michele Bachmann, who accounted for more than a third (23) of the ideological descriptions we tallied. On ABC’s World News on June 14, correspondent John Berman called Bachmann “one of Congress’s most conservative members.” Later that month, ABC’s Jon Karl described Bachmann as having “unyieldingly conservative views (June 26) and as an “uncompromising conservative” (June 27). Over on the CBS Evening News, Jan Crawford tagged Bachmann as “unapologetically conservative” (June 26).

On the June 27 NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell said Bachmann was “known for her firebrand conservative style.” The next morning on Today, co-host Matt Lauer asked Bachmann: “Are you at all concerned that your socially conservative views, that make you very popular in Iowa, might not play as well down the road?”

Four years ago, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards espoused the most stridently liberal positions of the major Democratic candidates, but drew no liberal labels from January 1 through July 31, 2007. (Then-NBC reporter Chip Reid, however, did supply a single liberal label on the December 28, 2006 edition of Today, as Edwards prepared to announce his candidacy: “Critics say Edwards is too liberal and, with just one term in the Senate, too inexperienced.”)

Viewers only heard two liberal labels for then-Senator Barack Obama, who, like Edwards, espoused strongly liberal positions as a candidate. The labels came in a single flattering story by ABC’s Jake Tapper that was aired both on the January 16, 2007 World News and the next morning’s Good Morning America: “Obama has drawn raves for presenting fairly traditional liberal views as fresh and inspiring....”

As for then-New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who led the Democratic field throughout 2007, she was also never termed a liberal. In fact, network analysts busied themselves refuting the notion. “People think she’s a liberal, even though she’s hawkish,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asserted on NBC’s Today on January 15, 2007.

The only other “liberal” label in 2007 was assigned to then-Democratic candidate Chris Dodd, referred to by NBC Nightly News correspondent John Yang on February 4, 2007 as part of “a small group of liberal Democrats” who wanted to cut off Iraq war funding to block President Bush’s proposed troop surge. For its part, CBS failed to attach a single liberal label to the Democratic candidates during the first seven months of 2007.

It’s neither inaccurate nor impolite to describe this year’s GOP candidates as “conservative” — most of them wear the label proudly. But if the networks are going to treat both sides fairly, they should have been just as ardent in pointing out the liberalism of the Democratic field that produced the most liberal President in American history.

The Liberal Media Empire Strikes Back

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:24:00 GMT

For the past month, as the debt talks slogged on in Washington, the so-called mainstream media unleashed increasingly hysterical attacks on the Tea Party and anti-tax hike conservatives — epitomizing the liberal elite’s supreme annoyance at the push to curb federal spending and contain the size of government.

The media’s disdainful language has ranged from the merely condescending (wondering whether the Tea Partiers in Congress actually knew how things worked, or referring to them as children), to outright hostile (likening the Tea Party to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups). Here are some of the choicer examples MRC has collected over the past 30 days:

Just a Bunch of Ignorant Boob

“Do you think that Republicans – particularly those in the freshman class over in the House – understand just how serious this debt limit crisis is?...Do you think they understand what might happen if you can’t raise this debt limit here?”
— Bob Schieffer to Senator Jon Kyl on Face the Nation, July 24.

“The question, I think, some people might be asking is, do you think that members of the Tea Party caucus know how to govern, or are they — do they understand that standing up for a cause is not the same as governing?”
— Co-host Ann Curry to Tom Brokaw on NBC’s Today, August 1.

Tea Party = Irresponsible Children

“On one side are those kids in the back seat, Tea Party members of Congress and their stay-at-home blogging cheerleaders who either don’t understand or don’t care about the consequences of default — of the U.S. not meeting its obligations, of us looking like a joke. They’re willing to risk calamity, even embrace it, just to show how dedicated they are to not raising the debt ceiling. On the other side are Democrats and some Republicans who understand this is not a game.”
— Chris Matthews on Hardball, July 14.

“Some people say that the Republican Party has been held hostage by the Tea Party. One of our Facebook followers sent in an interesting analogy and said, ‘Why are Republicans allowing freshman congressmen to control this debate?’ and this person said, ‘It’s like letting the teenager in the family run the family budget.’ I mean, there’s some truth in that.”
— Moderator Bob Schieffer to GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation, July 31.

Conservatives Are Unhinged Lunatics

“The Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative. The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms....The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency....The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.”
— New York Times columnist David Brooks, July 5.

“You can hear the alarm going off, in this case the debt ceiling, which rational people agree needs to be raised, and yet every day there’s no deal.”
— Brian Williams on the July 26 NBC Nightly News.

Tea Party = Extremists

“Watching the extraordinary polarization in Washington today, many people have pointed the finger at the Tea Party. It’s ideologically extreme, refuses to compromise, and cares more about purity than problem solving. I happen to agree with much of that critique, but it doesn’t really answer the question, why has the Tea Party become so prominent? Why is it able to dominate Washington?”
— CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on his Fareed Zakaria GPS, July 24.

Howard Fineman: “What’s going on here, as I see it, is a kind of slow motion secession. This is an ending of the social compact. This is two, three generations worth of agreement about Social Security, about Medicare, about the role of the federal government. The Tea Party people are saying, we want to secede from that society....”
Chris Matthews: “You know what this sounds like? You know what this sounds like? When I spent two years in Southern Africa. It sounds like what the whites talked about doing. Eventually going into some sort of little circle, like Custer’s last stand against the United States.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, July 25.

Stubborn and Difficult

“I think the frustration the President has, is ‘Look, I’ve come three-quarters the way to your position, and you’re not willing to give me that last 25 percent that I can use to say to Democrats there is something in this for you.’ So I think the intransigence of the Republicans is really beginning to wear on him and just strikes him as more and more unreasonable.”
— New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler in a podcast for the paper’s “The Caucus” political blog posted July 15.

“A lot of folks are saying the current, you know, ‘My way or the highway, gotta have it all’ climate in Washington is really unworthy of the USA and makes us look like a banana republic.”
— CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin, July 19.

“The Tea Party freshmen, upon whom all of this is being laid, really, who say compromise is a dirty word — are they complicating the picture?”
— Christiane Amanpour on ABC’s This Week, July 24.

Hostage-Takers and Terrorists

“The GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology....These people are willing to go right into Armageddon, not face the warning signs. Go right off the cliff...”
— Chris Matthews on Hardball, July 5.

Salon’s Joan Walsh: “These people, the Tea Partiers and their friends and their enablers and their corporate friends like Dick Armey, they have created this shrieking on the right....This game of chicken, in particular, is deadly and it’s wrong and it’s hostage-taking. And you shouldn’t negotiate with hostage-takers.”
Host Chris Matthews: “I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree. It’s terrorism.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, July 5.

Pat Buchanan: “They [conservatives] say, ‘This is the wrong way to go. We don’t believe in it. We’ve committed against it. We can’t do it, Mr. President, you’re asking us to break our word and do something we think is not going to work, and we’re not going to do it, sir.’”...
Co-host Mika Brzezinski: “So, I think the, what was the answer to my question that who the hostage taker is, Willie?”
MSNBC’s Willie Geist: “Sounds like Pat’s boys. Pat’s boys are holding the hostage.”
Newsweek editor-in-chief Tina Brown: “I think they’re the suicide bombers in all of this.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 6.

“Wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists....The blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home....So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.”
— New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, July 24.

“If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, July 27.

MRC Study: ABC, CBS and NBC Cast GOP as Debt Ceiling Villains

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:25:00 GMT

On Election Day 2010, then-CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith posed a hypothetical question about newly-elected Republicans to Ann Coulter: “There’ll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the Tea Party guys are going to say, ‘Over my dead body,’ and the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?” The conservative author confidently predicted: “Well, the media will blame the Republicans.”

And that’s precisely what has occurred. A Media Research Center study of the Big Three network evening and morning programs finds that, when it came to assigning blame for lack of a debt ceiling resolution, ABC, CBS and NBC’s coverage has placed the overwhelming majority of the blame on Republicans’ doorstep.

MRC analysts watched all 202 stories on the debt ceiling from July 1 through July 22, looking for statements which assigned blame or responsibility for the failure to reach a settlement. Of the 85 stories that included such statements, the skew was lopsidedly anti-Republican, with 56 stories (66%) mainly assigning them the blame for the impasse. Even though Democrats control both the Senate and the White House, only 17 network stories (20%) suggested they bore more responsibility, a greater than three-to-one disparity (see chart). Twelve stories offered a balanced discussion of which party ought to be blamed.

[METHOD: Analysts reviewed each story, then tallied all reporter statements and soundbites which clearly assigned responsibility to Republicans or Democrats. If the majority of statements within that story assigned blame to one party or the other, it was scored as “blaming Republicans” or “blaming Democrats.” If the story contained a balanced number of statements, it was recorded as “balanced.”]

Of the Big Three networks, NBC was the most likely to pin the blame on the GOP, by a 27 to 6 margin (with four stories assigning equal blame). On CBS, 19 stories blamed Republicans vs. nine which tilted in favor of blaming Democrats (and five balanced), while on ABC, ten stories singled out Republicans for blame, vs. only two that painted Democrats as responsible and three suggesting equal responsibility.

On the July 12 Today show, NBC’s Matt Lauer exemplified his network’s tendency to blame Republicans when he asked conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham the following: “When it comes to taxes, this issue of revenues, is there any way this deal gets done without the Republicans compromising somewhat on taxes?...President Obama talks about shared sacrifice. Where is the shared sacrifice going to come from on the Republican side?”

Following his lead, Lauer’s colleagues Ann Curry and Amy Robach were far more skeptical of Republican motives in the debt talks, going as far to insist their proposals were just for “show.” Robach, on the July 16 Today show, pondered: “No one believes that this has any chance of passing; therefore, this looks very political. Is that risky for the Republicans, in terms of it looking like they’re just wasting time?”

Then on the July 19 Today show, co-anchor Curry also suggested to congressional reporter Kelly O’Donnell that the GOP’s “cut, cap and balance” plan was a diversion: “Tea Party conservatives love this plan. The President has already said that he’s going to veto it. Do we really have time for a plan that is really just show, Kelly?”

Not to be left, out Meet the Press host David Gregory got in a shot against the GOP when he filled in as host on the July 7 Today, pressing Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: “If Democrats are willing to cut trillions of dollars, which is certainly what you wanted in spending cuts, what is the Republican Party prepared to do in this negotiation that is hard?

Over on ABC, Jake Tapper used the words of former Republican Senator Alan Simpson to shame the GOP, as seen in this excerpt from a July 12 story aired on ABC’s World News:

JAKE TAPPER: “Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who co-chaired the deficit commission, said the American people are rightly disgusted, and he’s personally bothered by Republicans undermining any chance of Speaker Boehner compromising.”

ALAN SIMPSON: “If that — the stuff that’s going on in my party, where the pettiness overcomes the patriotism, it’s disgusting to me.”

On CBS, Scott Pelley set-up the President to tee off on Republicans, when he interviewed Barack Obama on the July 12 edition of the CBS Evening News. Pelley reminded viewers that “Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they respected each other, they liked each other and they got things done.” This led to Obama to chide: “If Ronald Reagan could compromise, why wouldn’t folks who idolize Ronald Reagan engage in those same kinds of compromises?”

CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes’ opening to her July 14 Evening News story was typical of that network’s tilt, as she transmitted a litany of Democratic complaints against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: “In Washington, where the blame game is a blood sport, Democrats have found their fall guy....Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Cantor childish.”

Assigning herself the role of judge, Cordes validated the Democratic blame-setting: “The ambitious six-term Congressman has given his opponents plenty of ammunition....He blew up the original debt negotiations, led by Vice President Biden, when talk turned to tax increases, then pulled Speaker Boehner back from a grand bargain with the President because taxes were part of the deal.”

Democrats believe that they gained political advantage during the government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996, when the national media also disproportionately battered the Republican side of the stand-off. Once again, the broadcast networks seem eager to hand another liberal President an election-year narrative: that conservatives are an intransigent obstacle, while liberals offer a “balanced” and reasonable alternative.

Weinergate: The Story the Networks Never Liked

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:26:00 GMT

As much as liberals might complain the Anthony Weiner scandal was some sort of feeding frenzy, the networks did not attack it, especially the evening news. They seemed to agree with just-departed CBS anchor Katie Couric, who asked on Twitter: “I’m curious if anybody thinks this Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal is a legit news story or just fodder for late-night comedians.”

That’s not the way the networks acted in the fall of 2006, when the MRC demonstrated a real feeding frenzy in the case of Republican Rep. Mark Foley, who quickly resigned after ABC’s Brian Ross reported he’d sent lewd AOL instant messages to former congressional pages. In the first 12 days of that story, the networks “flooded the zone” with 152 stories (55 evening stories and 97 morning stories or segments).

By contrast, Democrat Weiner’s weeks of trying to avoid resignation didn’t draw a similar flood. In the first 12 days of the Weiner scandal (from May 30 through June 9), the networks filed only 56 stories (just 11 in the evening, 45 in the morning).

This includes partial stories, like Brian Williams introducing the scandal in a disdainful 20-second brief near the end of the June 3 newscast, in the midst of a news potpourri from politics to actresses who’d died. Williams lamented it was “the kind of thing that used to be people’s own business.” Williams did find what he thought was a real scandal on June 2: Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey taking a helicopter flight to his son’s soccer game.

Before Weiner declared on the afternoon of June 6 that he’d lied in denying the story that he sent lewd Twitter messages to young women, the networks had aired an even smaller sample: one evening news story each (counting NBC’s Williams brief) and 13 morning stories. By the time Weiner resigned on the afternoon of June 16 (after 19 days), the overall number still didn’t quite match our Foley number: 113 (21 evening stories and 92 in the morning.)

In fact, MRC analysts found the networks were twice as intense on the Foley story, long after he resigned (152 stories in 12 days is more than 12.6 stories per day) than on the entire Weiner scandal up to the resignation speech (113 stories in 19 days is less than six stories per day).

The evening-news producers were noticeably allergic. Four of NBC’s eight updates were the Williams 20-second brief, two occasions on which Lester Holt asked one Weiner question to David Gregory, and a 66-second update from Kelly O’Donnell. CBS only aired five evening stories, and in Scott Pelley’s debut on June 6, he delayed Weiner’s admission of guilt until minute 12.

NBC’s Today led the morning shows with 41 segments. CBS aired 29, and ABC lagged in third with 22.

The tone of stories in both scandals matched a supportive tone for liberal Democrats. In the Foley case, it was doom from day one. Early on, CBS analyst Gloria Borger told Couric: “One senior House Republican tells CBS News that this scandal could be the congressional equivalent of [Hurricane] Katrina.”

But with Weiner, the networks avoided spreading the story to other Democrats, and talked damage control for Weiner. On NBC’s Today June 2, Meredith Vieira insisted Weiner “is a rising star in this state” and wondered “how does he get ahead of this story again or get it behind him?"

When Weiner admitted on June 6 that he’d sent the lewd photos on the Internet, CBS reporter Nancy Cordes worried out loud that Weiner was a vital voice tugging at Obama from the left, and “it’s unclear how well he’s really going to be able to perform that role now, a role that even the President has said is very important.”

But when the story deepened, with Weiner swapping online messages with a 17-year-old girl and sending semi-nude pictures from the House gym, the Democrats turned. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Weiner had to go. In sync, the network tone changed. ABC Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts began on June 13: “New pictures emerge of Anthony Weiner, this time snapped in the congressional locker room. As he begins treatment at a secret location this morning, will he now accept that his career is finished?”

That same morning on NBC, Today co-host Matt Lauer began: “Drip, drip, drip. New photos emerge of a shirtless Congressman Anthony Weiner taken in the House gym, as calls for him to resign grow louder. Will these latest pictures be the final straw?”

These two congressional non-sex scandals underline how politicians know the media is liberal. Mark Foley resigned immediately, no doubt in part because he knew the national media exposed him and would eventually drive him out. Anthony Weiner tried to negotiate around the media, since the New Media exposed him and he suspected that if Democrats would let him stay, so would reporters.

-- Tim Graham is the MRC's Director of Media Analysis. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Media Protecting 'Food Stamp President' Obama By Ignoring Growing Food Stamp Crisis

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:21:00 GMT

In the '80s the liberal media filled the airwaves with tales of woe from the homeless as a way to distract viewers from the runaway success of Reaganomics. In the 2000s, the same media chatted with one frustrated gas station customer after another to slam then-President George W. Bush.

However in 2011, with over 44 million Americans on food stamps, a new high according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (See Table 2), the Big Three broadcast network news programs have been virtually devoid of anecdotal sob stories of moms and dads struggling to pay for their kids' box of Frosted Flakes, as a way to hammer Barack Obama's failed economic policies.

A new chart released by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on May 31, according to a story by the Examiner.com's Kenneth Schortgen, showed that "just under 14.5% of the American public received food stamp benefits." This startling statistic has so far failed to provoke a rash of food stamp horror stories that badger the Obama administration for its failed economic policies.

MRC analysts reviewed the evening and morning news shows for NBC, ABC and CBS from January 1 through June 3 and found only two examples (both on CBS) of someone having to pay a portion or all of their grocery bill with food stamps. In not one story were Obama administration policies blamed for an economy where so many have ended up on food stamps. Altogether there was a total of just six stories that even mentioned food stamps as an issue.

On NBC there was just one anchor brief, by Ann Curry on the February 3 Today show, that relayed a Department of Agriculture statistic that "Some 43.6 million Americans are currently relying on food stamps for groceries...and that's nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population." There was no mention of this bit of bad economic information on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

That Curry story was a lot more than what ABC had to offer, which has yet to mention the troubling statistic on either ABC World News with Diane Sawyer or Good Morning America.

As noted earlier, CBS News did manage to talk to two different people relying on the food stamp program. During a Wyatt Andrews "American Spirit" story about a single mom who took in eight children after her sister drowned, aired on the March 9 Evening News with Katie Couric, Andrews noted that the law firm clerk was aided by "food stamps and church donations" for "help with the impossible grocery bills."

On CBS's May 30 edition of The Early Show – as part of their Memorial Day coverage of unemployed veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – did air a sound bite from Shannon Dodson, who admitted that it was "hard for me to now be on food stamps" after having served her country. Yet nowhere in the piece by Jeff Glor did Obama administration policies come under fire for the bad economy that possibly led to this Air Force vet's predicament.

There were only three other mentions of the food stamp program on either the CBS Evening News or The Early Show. On February 11, Bill Plante on CBS's morning show relayed that Obama had called for "$2.2 billion to be restored to the food stamp program" as part of his budget proposal, then later on the April 13 edition of the Early Show Plante relayed that part of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan's plan included "putting caps on Medicaid, food stamp assistance and housing assistance programs while reducing taxes for the very wealthy and for corporations."

On the April 5 CBS Evening News, Nancy Cordes also reported that "Republicans want to put a cap on Medicaid, food stamp assistance, and housing assistance programs, giving states a fixed amount of money each year to insure the poor instead of making payments that fluctuate based on need."

A Nexis search over the same period did reveal that the food stamp issue was brought up on programs other than the morning and evening news programs, but not in a way to blame Obama for any sort of economic mess but rather to use a blunt instrument to bash any Republican who dared bring up the issue as a racist. Which is precisely what happened with former GOP House speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich when he raised the topic.

On the May 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, that show's host, David Gregory, throttled Gingrich for daring to bring up the food stamp issue, going as far to accuse him of using "racially-tinged language," as seen in the following excerpt:

CLIP OF NEWT GINGRICH AT SPEECH: You want to be a country that creates food stamps, in which case frankly Obama's is an enormous success. The most successful food stamp president in American history. Or do you want to be a country that creates paychecks?

DAVID GREGORY TO GINGRICH: First of all, you gave a speech in Georgia with language a lot of people think could be coded racially-tinged language, calling the president, the first black president, a food stamp president.

NEWT GINGRICH: Oh, come on, David.

GREGORY: What did you mean? What was the point?

GINGRICH: That's, that's bizarre. That--this kind of automatic reference to racism, this is the president of the United States. The president of the United States has to be held accountable. Now, the idea that--and what I said is factually true. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is on food stamps. And to hide behind the charge of racism? I have--I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist.

GREGORY: Well, what did you mean?

REP. GINGRICH: Well, it's very simple. He has policies--and I used a very direct analogy. He follows the same destructive political model that destroyed the city of Detroit.

On that same program, in the roundtable discussion, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne picked up on Gregory's "racially-tinged" line and ran with it: "But, you know, Newt has always wanted to run for president, so I'm actually glad he's doing it. And he seems to be trying to cast himself as a good-natured flamethrower, and he was very good at kind of fending off those questions. But he can never resist going a few steps over the top. Right during your interview, you asked him if this comment on food stamps is racially tinged. And he doubles down and says, 'Well, do we want the U.S. to become like Detroit,' aka Motown, you know?"

Also on that same day, over on ABC's Sunday roundtable show, This Week, Christiane Amanpour aired Gingrich's "food stamp president" quote before her interview with South Carolina's Republican Governor Nikki Haley in which she was asked about the former House Speaker's presidential chances.

ABC had one other mention of the food stamp issue, when John Quinones on the January 21 edition of Prime Time Live noted that "food stamp usage was up 20 percent from last year with a striking one in eight Americans needing assistance." Quinones uttered that statistic right before going into an ABC News hidden camera investigation where they hired an actress to pretend she was on assistance to see how fellow grocery store customers in line behind her would react to her inability to pay her bill.

A nation of 44 million Americans on food stamps and ABC couldn't find one actual person with a sad story to interview, so instead they hired a pretend victim of the Obama economy. Although, just like the other networks, Quinones didn't bother to tie even the fake victim story to Obama's polices as his name was never mentioned in the story.

If the number of Americans on food stamps had reached a record level under a Republican president it's likely that viewers of the Big Three network news programs would have been inundated with images of hungry Americans lining up to pay their grocery bill with food stamps, but with a Democrat in office the current crisis has gone virtually uncovered.

-- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.

Katie Couric's Five Years at CBS Marked by Liberal Agenda and Low Ratings

Wed, 18 May 2011 13:23:00 GMT

Thursday, May 19, marks Katie Couric’s last night at the anchor desk of the CBS Evening News. Five years ago, CBS executives were so excited about the Today show star taking over, her September 5, 2006 debut was preceded by a massive publicity campaign. Outgoing interim anchor Bob Schieffer vouched for his replacement: “She’s tough, she’s fair, she’s a straight shooter....Just watch.” Long-retired anchorman Walter Cronkite even lent his voice to a new opening segment, announcing: “This is the CBS Evening News, with Katie Couric.”

Intrigued by the publicity, more than 13 million Americans tuned into that first night, according to Nielsen research, but Couric’s honeymoon was brief. CBS had been in third place for years under Dan Rather and Schieffer, but the slide worsened after Couric took over. By August 2010, the CBS Evening News was recording its lowest ratings ever — fewer than 5 million viewers.

Under Dan Rather, the CBS Evening News was the poster-child of liberal media bias, with the broadcast’s reputation suffering its worst hit after Rather’s almost-comical attempt to sabotage President Bush’s 2004 re-election. Couric’s years at NBC’s Today, however, were marked by a similar liberal tilt that made her a questionable choice to rebuild the damaged network. In the end, the reputed $15 million per year that CBS spent on its new star was just money down the drain.

For a flavor of the liberal agenda that marked Couric’s tenure at CBS News, the Media Research Center has assembled, in no particular order, ten of her most biased moments, showcasing her infatuation with liberal politicians and her chirpy promotion of left-wing policies:

Katie Shakes Her Pom-Poms for Obama’s “Dream Team”

“You’re so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I’m not going to get the things done I want to get done, and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?”
— Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on CBS’s The Early Show, July 22, 2009. [Video/audio (0:22): WMV | MP3]

“The ‘Dream Team’ pushing Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic summer games is nearly complete. First Lady Michelle Obama landed today in Denmark where Olympic officials are meeting....The team captain, meanwhile, President Obama, arrives Friday ahead of the final vote.”
— Couric on the September 30, 2009 CBS Evening News. [Video/audio (0:22): WMV | MP3]

Giggling with Nancy Pelosi, Scolding John Boehner

Couric: “One of the key players in getting this deal approved is the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. I talked to her this afternoon as Senate negotiators were announcing the agreement and we spoke right after she had been on the phone with the President. [to Pelosi] Are you surprised how intimately involved he is in the whole process?”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Quite frankly, yes. I said, ‘Mr. President, neither of us has time for this conversation, especially you,’ because we really, we understand each other. We know where we need to go.”
Couric, smiling: “Can you tell us anything he said to you, like, ‘Get cracking’?”
Pelosi, laughing: “No, never that. We’re always cracking.”
— Evening News, February 11, 2009. [Video/audio (0:31): WMV | MP3]

vs.

“A recent CBS News poll shows that 53 percent of the American people fully backs the stimulus package, 63 percent of people we polled thought the Republican opposition to the stimulus package was for political reasons. So, are you out of touch with the American people?...Do you think the Republicans are digging themselves in a hole by not being more supportive of the President’s proposals?”
— Couric interviewing Republican House Leader John Boehner on the February 24, 2009 Evening News. [Video/audio (0:24): WMV | MP3]

ObamaCare Can’t Come Soon Enough

“More than 46 million Americans have no health insurance. So when it comes to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and good health, all men are not created equal.”
— Couric on the March 12, 2007 Evening News. [Video/audio (0:09): WMV | MP3]

“I think providing health care for people who can’t afford it is something that most people do agree with — that there has to be some kind of alternative other than our national, our nation's emergency rooms for people who need health care. And I read somewhere — I think it was in The New Yorker — that 45,000 people died needlessly because they simply don’t have access to health care, and that just seems so unfair and so undemocratic.”
— Couric in a December 22, 2009 Facebook video chat. The statistic Couric cited, which she also touted on the September 17, 2009 Evening News, was generated by the left-wing Physicians for a National Health Program. [Video/audio (0:51): WMV | MP3]

Praising the Great ‘Goreacle’

“Also in Washington today, a lot of excitement on Capitol Hill. A movie star showed up to testify before Congress – a movie star named Al Gore.”
— Evening News, March, 21, 2007. [Video/audio (0:13): WMV | MP3]

“He was once called ‘Mr. Stiff.’ Now he’s known as ‘The Goreacle,’ the new Al Gore....Sharyn Alfonsi reports on Gore 2.0.”
— Evening News, May 25, 2007. [Video/audio (0:13): WMV | MP3]

“I’m honored to be joined today by the Godfather of Green, the King of Conservation, former Vice President Al Gore.”
— Couric opening her November 2, 2009 “@KatieCouric” CBSNews.com webcast. [Video/audio (0:24): WMV | MP3]

Maybe We Need a Muslim Cosby Show

“The bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface this year.... Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show. I know that sounds crazy, I know that sounds crazy, but The Cosby Show did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”
— Couric talking to comedian Mo Rocca on her @KatieCouric Web show, December 22, 2010. [Video/audio (1:02): WMV | MP3]

“Who Made Us the Boss of Them?”

Couric: “[Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] rejects the notion that the U.S. is a bully, imposing its values on the world.”
Condoleezza Rice: “What’s wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?”
Couric to Rice: “To quote my daughter, ‘Who made us the boss of them?’”
— Evening News, September 24, 2006. [Video/audio (0:27): WMV | MP3]

For many more examples of Couric’s bias at CBS, please visit MRC’s freshly-updated “Profile in Bias” page: “Perking Up for Liberal Spin.”

Fourth Time's the Charm? Networks Take Yet Another Crack at Portraying Obama as Deficit Hawk

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:15:00 GMT

Reporters eagerly anticipated President Obama’s budget speech Wednesday afternoon, with NBC’s Chuck Todd assuring Today show viewers that now, finally, “the President’s going to add his voice to this, debate, essentially, over what to do about the ever-growing deficit and debt.”

But over and over again over the past two years, the media have painted Obama as a leader committed to “slashing” the deficit, only to have the absurdity of such spin later revealed by the administration’s actual policies.

Let’s start the trip down memory lane with coverage of President Obama’s first budget speech in February 2009, which reporters claimed would include steps to aggressively reduce the deficit. ABC’s David Muir began the February 21, 2009 World News by pitching how the President was “slashing the deficit by at least 50 percent by raising taxes on the wealthy, people making $250,000 and above, and cutting war spending by bringing troops home from Iraq.”

The next night, ABC’s Yunji de Nies kept up the salesmanship: “President Obama hopes to get control by slashing the federal deficit in half over the next four years. He’ll do it by cutting spending in at least two keys areas: winding down the war in Iraq, which now costs the taxpayers an estimated $400 million a day, and federal health care spending by overhauling Medicare and Medicaid.”

The next evening, February 23 — in spite of the massive stimulus plan just signed and ambitious campaign promises yet to fulfill — all three network newscasts touted how the President pledged at his “fiscal responsibility” summit to cut government spending and reduce the deficit by more than half:

NBC’s Brian Williams heralded “the President’s plan to bring down the federal deficit during a time of record government spending.” CBS’s Chip Reid explained that “most of the savings would come from winding down the war in Iraq; ending the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year; and cutting spending.” According to ABC’s Jake Tapper, “deficit hawks applauded the President’s focus today, saying ignoring the problem could cause an even more severe crisis....The President said to the group he has no interest in making government bigger for the sake of making it bigger.”

A year and more than a trillion dollars in new debt later, the media once again cast Obama as a deficit fighter. At the top of the January 26, 2010 CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez highlighted: “President Obama calls for a big spending freeze and focuses on plans to help the struggling middle class, but does he have the political support he needs?”

Moments later, co-host Harry Smith similarly insisted that the President would “announce plans to cut the growing federal deficit and help the struggling middle class.”

Over on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos suggested to Republican Senator John McCain that Obama was doing everything Republicans would want on the deficit, and that any criticism was politically motivated: “Let's turn to the domestic issues. White House announced this morning a spending freeze. Three-year freeze on all non-defense discretionary spending. It's already drawing some criticism from your party. The House Majority Leader’s- House Minority Leader John Boehner saying, "Given Washington's unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest." But, isn't this exactly what Republicans have been calling for? You called for this in the campaign.”

A week later, on the February 1 NBC Nightly News, Chuck Todd cast the President’s health care scheme as one that would fight the deficit — and that failing to pass ObamaCare would just mean more debt: “If health care doesn't pass, because this budget assumes health care will pass, that's yet another $150 billion that would be tacked on to the deficit.”

And, earlier this year, ABC’s Jake Tapper on the February 14 World News touted Obama’s initial budget, with comparatively tiny cuts in spending, as deeply painful: “In his $3.7 trillion budget proposal, the President promises pain....President Obama proposes eliminating Pell Grants for summer classes, as well as charging more for graduate student loans....Another painful cut, $2.5 billion from a program providing home heating assistance for the poor.”

Newspaper headlines the following morning offered similar spin about “deep cuts,” including the Washington Post: “Obama budget makes deep cuts, cautious trades,” and the Boston Globe: “Deep cuts, chance of gains for state in Obama budget.”

Expect new headlines Wednesday night and Thursday about the President’s latest attempt to cast himself as a deficit hawk. It will soon be obvious if, this time, the reality matches the rhetoric.

— Rich Noyes is Research Director at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:41:00 GMT

Loud protests by Wisconsin public employee unions against a budget reform proposal from new Governor Scott Walker have drawn considerable national network news attention since Thursday, the day Democratic state senators fled the state in a last-ditch gambit to prevent the bill from becoming law. A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media’s longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protests.

Last March, as thousands protested on Capitol Hill in the days before the passage of ObamaCare, CBS’s Nancy Cordes slammed it as “a weekend filled with incivility,” while World News anchor Diane Sawyer painted the Tea Party as a violent gang, with “protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets.” In August 2009, ABC anchor Charles Gibson complained how “protesters brought pictures of President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache to a town hall meeting,” failing to mention that the signs were produced by Lyndon LaRouche’s wacky fringe movement, not the Tea Party or conservatives.

Over the past several days, the liberal demonstrations in Wisconsin (bolstered by the national Democratic Party and President Obama’s Organizing for America group) have included signs just as inflammatory as the ones that bothered the networks during the health care debate, including several showing Governor Scott Walker as Adolph Hitler. Others have likened Walker to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (“Scott Stalin”) and recently deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak (“Walker = Mubarak”).

Another protest sign drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker’s head, with the caption “Don’t Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker” — an obvious parallel to a Facebook map posted by Sarah Palin last year, although that much-criticized graphic placed the target sights on maps of congressional districts, not any politician’s face.

Yet none of these signs in the hands of liberal protesters have drawn the slightest complaint from network journalists. MRC analysts examined all 53 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories, segments and anchor briefs on the Wisconsin protests from Thursday, February 17 (when they first drew major national coverage) through Monday, February 21. While eight of the 53 stories (15%) visually displayed one or more of the signs described above, none elicited a single remark from the network correspondents.

Instead, network journalists actually suggested the “Walker = Mubarak” theme of some of the more inflammatory signs. On Sunday’s This Week, for example, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour linked Wisconsin to the uprisings against oppressive dictatorships: “Populist frustration is boiling over this week, as we’ve said, not just in the Middle East, but in the middle of this country as well.” So did NBC’s Brian Williams on Friday’s Nightly News: “From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens’ uprisings are changing the world.” NBC’s on-screen caption: “The Uprising at Home.”

ABC’s Diane Sawyer opened Thursday’s World News by empathizing with the protesters:

Today, we saw America's money trouble meet a reality, a human reality, as teachers, nurses, tens of thousands of state workers took to the streets in this country, protesting cuts by the governors, saying to these governors, a promise is a promise. One lawmaker looked out at the crowds gathered in the Wisconsin capital today said it’s like Cairo moved to Madison.

The only time network journalists fretted about the Wisconsin protests getting out of hand was when their favorite bogeyman, the Tea Party, became involved — as ABC’s Barbara Pinto did on Saturday’s Good Morning America: “Today, those demonstrations are expected to get more intense and more polarizing — we’re watching police officers arrive here this morning. And that is because the Tea Party is staging a counter-demonstration of its own today.”

As of Monday night, none of the networks had shown the sign placing Walker’s face in the crosshairs. But last March, when the graphic first appeared on Palin’s Facebook page, those same networks howled almost instantly. CBS’s Nancy Cordes, on the March 24, 2010 Evening News, was typical: “Democrats complain Sarah Palin is also using violent words and imagery. On Twitter, she urges conservatives: ‘Don’t retreat. Instead, reload.’ And the Web site of her political action committee posts bull’s-eyes on districts of vulnerable Democrats.”

After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and severely wounded in January by a psychotic man unconnected to the Tea Party or any other political cause, the networks highlighted Palin’s map in 24 stories in just the first six days. “That map Sarah Palin put up on Facebook last year, targeting Congresswoman Gifford’s seat, made Gifford nervous, even then,” NBC’s Lee Cowan scolded on Today back on January 10.

Even the most timeworn chants seemed to outrage journalists when it came to the Tea Party. Back in March, CBS’s Bob Schieffer was appalled by, among other things, anti-ObamaCare protesters chanting “kill the bill.” He lectured on the March 21, 2010 Face the Nation: “A year-long debate that’s been rancorous and mean from the start turned even nastier yesterday. Demonstrators protesting the bill poured into the halls of Congress shouting ‘kill the bill’ and ‘made in the USSR.’”

This weekend in Wisconsin, protesters also chanted “kill the bill” (CBS’s The Early Show ran a clip on Friday) but on this Sunday’s Face the Nation, Schieffer had no negative words for these protesters as he set up a discussion of the issue: “Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets again in Madison, Wisconsin as they marched to protest major cuts in state spending. The question is, will the protests spread to other states where similar proposals to cut spending are also being contemplated?”

When it comes to the Tea Party, network correspondents seem to enjoy playing “civility cop,” emphasizing a few radical and inflammatory signs in ways that imply that the entire cause is extreme. Radical and inflammatory signs were easily found at the Wisconsin protests, but the networks uttered not one peep of disapproval — overwhelming evidence of a double standard that should embarrass any network journalist who still purports to be fair and balanced.

MRC Study: By 8-to-1 Margin, Media Target Conservative Speech after Tucson Shooting

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:36:00 GMT

Almost immediately after the shooting in Tucson that killed six people and left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded, the media establishment linked the attack with a debate about “civility,” suggesting an association between Jared Loughner’s rampage and the words and phrases used in national political debates.

Many of these network news stories offered ambiguous references to, as CBS’s Bob Schieffer put it on the January 9 edition of Sunday Morning, “the mean and hateful tone that now marks our modern politics.” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, in a soundbite on NBC’s Today the next morning, pointed his finger at “the left and the right” as contributing to what he termed “the climate of violence.”

There’s certainly no shortage of instances of the Left deploying violent rhetoric, but how evenly did the media divide the blame during the first few days of this national debate about civility? MRC analysts reviewed all 55 broadcast network stories or segments discussing the discourse from just after the shooting (January 8) through the evening of the national memorial service on January 12, reviewing the ABC, CBS and NBC morning, evening and Sunday talk shows.

While many of those stories offered general comments about “harsh rhetoric,” about three-fifths (31) contained specific references to instances of supposedly intemperate speech. Of those specific examples elevated by the media, more than eight out of ten (82%) were about the conduct of conservatives or Republicans, compared with just 11% which talked about liberals or Democrats.

(Please note: a story could have contained more than one specific example of provocative speech. The remaining 7% of specific instances were drawn from the political fringe, not associated with either mainstream conservatives or liberals, including multiple citations on NBC of the “birther” who yelled from the congressional gallery during the reading of the U.S. Constitution, and one reference on ABC to the movie “Zeitgeist,” which supposedly influenced Loughner’s attitudes.)

Of those the media associated with the shooting, former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was most frequently impugned — mentioned in 24 stories, or more than three-fourths of those containing references to specific actors. Reporters quickly — within hours of the news breaking, when few facts were reliably known — chose to highlight a map of targeted congressional districts Palin’s Web site had drawn up for the 2010 campaign, creating the sinister implication that it was somehow related to the events in Tucson.

“Giffords was one of 20 Democrats whose districts were lit up in cross hairs on a Sarah Palin campaign Web site last spring,” CBS’s Nancy Cordes noted on the January 8 Evening News. “Giffords and many others complained that someone unstable might act on that imagery.”

On ABC’s World News that same night, correspondent Jon Karl made the same connection: “Giffords had just won re-election in a hard-fought campaign, winning despite being one of the top Republican targets for defeat. She was even on Sarah Palin’s target list.”

“Not since Timothy McVeigh attacked the federal building in Oklahoma City has a crime sparked so much attention on anti-government rhetoric,” NBC’s Lee Cowan noted on Today January 10. “That map Sarah Palin put up on Facebook last year, targeting Congresswoman Gifford’s seat, made Gifford nervous, even then.”

The following morning on the same program, correspondent Andrea Mitchell suggested Palin was off the hook — at least, for now: “Was her gun image inflammatory? There is no direct link to this suspect, as far as investigators know.”

Another nine stories linked the Tea Party to the tragedy. “Giffords, a conservative Democrat, was concerned about heated rhetoric from the Tea Party,” NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell noted on the January 9 Today, the morning after the shooting. Anchoring ABC’s World News on January 8, David Muir passed along how Giffords father was asked “Did your daughter have any enemies? And his response was, ‘Yes, the whole Tea Party.’”

The networks’ other examples of the right’s supposed vitriol: Florida talk show host and Tea Party activist Joyce Kaufman, former Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, national radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, radio host and Fox News personality Glenn Beck, and Dick Morris, branded by CBS as a “conservative pollster.”

As for pointing fingers at liberals or Democrats, both CBS and NBC once highlighted how then-Democratic senate candidate Joe Manchin shot a copy of the cap and trade bill in a TV ad last year (a position that actually puts Manchin to the right of most in his party). NBC’s Andrea Mitchell twice acknowledged (once on Today, once on the Nightly News) how, just days before the shooting, a blogger at the left-wing Daily Kos web site had written a hostile item about Giffords voting against Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker: “He had written that she was, quote, ‘dead to him’” — an anecdote that went unreported on ABC and CBS.

On the January 9 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory cited how then-Representative Alan Grayson “compared Republicans to the Taliban” in his campaign last year. Only ABC’s George Stephanopoulos mentioned (mildly) the existence of harsh left-wing speech on NBC’s cable network, MSNBC, relaying on the January 9 This Week how “on the left, Keith Olbermann last night on MSNBC, apologizing for any statements he might have made in the past that incited violence in any way.” For its part, none of NBC’s “civility” coverage ever talked about the inflammatory rhetoric of their MSNBC colleagues.

If the media want to have an honest debate about civility, then journalists need to confront the real and harsh examples of liberals engaging in the sort of rhetoric they ostensibly deplore. And the first topic for that debate needs to be the highly un-civil way the Left and many in the media suggested mainstream conservatives and the Tea Party were somehow culpable for the horrible acts of January 8.

And if they choose to continue furthering the Left’s baseless allegations designed to smear conservatives, the media’s self-appointed civility cops are themselves contributing to the coarsening of American politics — the very thing they purport to decry.

— MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons provided valuable research assistance for this report.

While Media Indict Conservative Speech, Left's Lunacy Is Ignored

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:56:00 GMT

Three days after a mentally-deranged man — whose backyard in Arizona featured a bizarre shrine decorated with a human skull and rotted oranges — killed six people and severely wounded Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the liberal media continue to cynically link Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and mainstream conservatives with the crime.

There is, of course, absolutely no evidence that “heated rhetoric” in any way motivated Jarred Loughner’s shooting spree, but the media’s repeated association of political speech with the attack suggests an attempt to exploit the tragedy to discredit mainstream conservatives by smearing them as somehow culpable.

“Giffords was one of 20 Democrats whose districts were lit up in cross-hairs on a Sarah Palin campaign Web site last spring,” CBS’s Nancy Cordes declared Saturday night in referring to a political map, adding that “Giffords and many others complained that someone unstable might act on that imagery.” Hours later on CNN, Jessica Yellin admitted “we don’t know the motive” before proceeding to raise how “on Twitter and Facebook, there is a lot of talk, in particular, about Sarah Palin.” On Sunday’s Today, leading into a clip about Palin, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell asserted: “Giffords, a conservative Democrat, was concerned about heated campaign rhetoric from the Tea Party.”

An editorial in Monday’s New York Times justified the focus on conservatives: “It is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.” But while the liberal media indict Palin and other conservatives, there’s a long list of vicious rhetoric coming from media liberals.

MSNBC has been the most venomous, a fact NBC has glossed over in its coverage castigating conservatives. The network’s 8pm ET host Keith Olbermann in 2009 referred to columnist Michelle Malkin as “a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” Hardball’s Chris Matthews fantasized about the death of Rush Limbaugh: “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.”

The outrage evidenced this week was not to be found when a film festival showed “Death of a President,” a movie depicting the imagined assassination of President Bush. “Poor taste or, as some say, thought-provoking?” MSNBC daytime anchor Amy Robach mildly wondered on September 1, 2006.

On Monday’s The Ed Show, MSNBC’s 6pm ET host Ed Schultz pointed his finger at Fox News for supposedly inciting its audience to “think that doing something radical is the right thing to do,” but sidestepped his own history of shocking comments. “I get passionate, but not in a violent way,” Schultz insisted.

On his national radio show in 2009, however, Schultz wished for Dick Cheney’s death: “He is an enemy of the country, in my opinion, Dick Cheney is, he is an enemy of the country....Lord, take him to the Promised Land, will you?” (MP3 audio) In 2010, Schultz screamed that “Dick Cheney’s heart’s a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him!” (MP3 audio)

Other left-wing radio hosts have openly desired the death of leading conservatives without a peep from the liberal media elites. Radio host Mike Malloy (a onetime news writer for CNN) wished for Rush Limbaugh’s demise on January 4, 2010, a few days after the conservative host was hospitalized for chest pains: “I’m waiting for the day when I pick it up, pick up a newspaper or click on the Internet and find out he’s choked to death on his own throat fat or a great big wad of saliva or something, you know, whatever. Go away, Rush, you make me sick!” (MP3 audio)

In 2009, then-Air America radio host Montel Williams urged Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to kill herself: “Slit your wrist! Go ahead! I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to — or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.” (MP3 audio)

If Bachmann had been the Congresswoman attacked this weekend instead of Giffords, would the media be as strong in their attacks of the overheated rhetoric lobbed against her over the past several years?

HBO’s Bill Maher, a favorite guest on CNN and other supposedly respectable news networks, wished for the deaths of both Limbaugh and Cheney. Talking about the then-Vice President in 2007, after al Qaeda exploded a truck bomb at a base in Afghanistan near where Cheney was visiting, Maher argued: “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”

In 2008, Maher morbidly suggested Limbaugh would have been a better candidate to have died from a drug overdose: “Why couldn’t he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?”

Among the claims this week is that anti-government rhetoric is putting public servants in peril. If such a dubious claim is true, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was jeopardizing lives when he teed off against the government’s anti-terrorism policies in 2006: “We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.”

Media gadfly Arianna Huffington made her own plea for civility, telling the Washington Post via e-mail this weekend that “there are lots of ways to be lively and put forth a strong opinion without demonizing one’s opponent....It’s the demonization that is the problem.”

But her Huffington Post blog site has demonized conservatives for years, including an item posted in early 2007 mocking the cancer that would eventually take the life of White House press secretary Tony Snow. Sneered San Francisco radio host Charles Karel Bouley: “I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer NOT grow in you. Work for Fox News, spinning the truth in to a billion knots and how can your gut not rot?”

The Left has been trying for years to shut down conservative radio and otherwise criminalize conservative speech. Using this tragedy to further that agenda is beyond cynical, and probably counterproductive: a new CBS News poll finds that even after a weekend of anti-conservative propaganda, 57% don’t think “harsh political rhetoric” had anything to do with the shootings.

But if the media insist on having a debate about political speech, they need to focus on the Left’s vileness as well. Otherwise, they’re just partisan hypocrites joining in the exploitation of tragedy for political gain.

Worst of the Week: MRC Study: "News" Media Aid Democrats' Tea Party Trashing

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:46:00 -0400

The broadcast TV networks have systematically skewed their coverage against Republicans and the Tea Party, a new study by the Media Research Center finds. MRC analysts reviewed the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from September 1 through October 25. Key findings:

■ Only conservative/Tea Party candidates cast as “extreme.” Congressional Democrats and President Obama are facing voters’ wrath because of their extreme agenda over the past two years: government-run health care; massive unsupportable spending; a proposed “cap-and-trade” tax on energy, higher income taxes, etc. But MRC analysts found 35 evening news stories which conveyed the Democratic spin point that conservative and Tea Party candidates are “extreme,” “fringe,” or “out of the mainstream,” vs. ZERO stories conveying the charge that left-wing Democrats are “out of the mainstream.”

■ Three times more “conservative” labels than “liberal” tags. Out of 62 ideological labels assigned by reporters, three-fourths (48, or 77%) were aimed at conservatives, vs. just 14 (23%) for liberals. Only Republicans faced extreme labels — both Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell were tagged as “ultra-conservatives” — with no Democrat ever branded an “ultra-liberal.”
CBS called Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey “conservative,” but Democrat Joe Sestak was not labeled as “liberal.” All of the networks called Christine O’Donnell a “conservative,” but none said her opponent, Chris Coons, was “liberal.” Most comically, CBS would not call loud-mouthed Florida Rep. Alan Grayson a “liberal,” but tagged his opponent Daniel Webster as “conservative.”

■ Adopting Democrats’ campaign agenda. The networks elevated contests meant to show Republicans in a poor light. While it’s not on anyone’s list of closest races, the networks devoted the most coverage to Delaware’s Senate race (15 evening news stories), emphasizing O’Donnell’s perceived gaffes. Next: the California Governor’s race (11 stories), emphasizing allegations against GOP nominee Meg Whitman. Rounding out the networks’ Top 5 were Senate races in Alaska, Nevada, and West Virginia, each the focus of four stories.

The Democrats’ strategy to salvage the 2010 campaign was to distract voters from their record over the past two years and paint their opponents as wacky extremists. Win or lose, the Democrats got a lot of help from their friends in the supposedly objective “news” media.

-- MRC analysts Scott Whitlock and Kyle Drennen and MRC intern Matt Hadro provided valuable research assistance for this report.

Worst of the Week: "Strange" "Extremists" vs. Our "Effective" "Hero" Pelosi

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:26:00 -0400

With less than two weeks before Election Day, the media elite continue to disparage the GOP’s Tea Party candidates while saluting the greatness of the über-unpopular Democratic Congress and its leader, Nancy Pelosi.

On This Week, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour — apparently oblivious to the decades of liberal mockery hurled at Ronald Reagan and William Buckley — cited those leaders as exemplifying “a long and venerable tradition” of “intellectual conservatism.” Her goal was to insult today’s conservatives: “People are looking at the Tea Party and saying this is not conservatism as we knew it, but it’s extreme.” Conservative George F. Will educated Amanpour: “Which is exactly what they said about Bill Buckley...”

Reporters continue to use any perceived gaffe to smear the entire movement. “We’ve been seeing a spate of strange claims from Tea Party candidates,” CBS’s Nancy Cordes insisted on Wednesday’s Early Show. Cordes claimed Delaware candidate Christine O’Donnell “appeared unaware of one of the Constitution’s most basic tenets,” but her evidence was a clip of O’Donnell stating — correctly — that the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution.

Despite the hilariously low job approval ratings for Congress — 18%, according to CBS; 23% according to the Associated Press — journalists from those news organizations each churned out a fawning review. “The session of Congress now drawing to a close was the most productive in nearly half a century,” the AP’s Jim Abrams touted Monday.

On CBS’s Sunday Morning, correspondent Rita Braver applauded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “one of the most effective speakers in congressional history,” “a hero in some quarters,” and “the irresistible force who marshaled House Democrats to pass controversial administration policies — including the stimulus package, Wall Street reform, and health care.”

CBS’s Lesley Stahl popped up on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday to fret how the dreadful economy is hurting Obama’s image, as if his administration’s policies are thoroughly unrelated: ”He’s fighting an economy that just won’t give him anything....No credit. No credit at all for what he’s accomplished.”

Two years ago, the media were undeniably tilted in Obama’s favor. Now, they’re just as skewed against a public that’s rejecting his liberal experiments.

Worst of the Week: Team Obama's Media Helpers Hide Bad News for Democrats

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:21:00 -0400

Worst of the Week: Media Fulfilling Their Role in Democrats' 2010 Playbook

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:00:00 -0400

Worst of the Week: Media Offer Aid to Democrats, Slam "Bizarre" GOP "Fringe"

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:00:00 -0400

Worst of the Week: Media Ramp Up Anti-Tea Party Venom

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 08:59:00 -0400

Smearing America as "Islamophobic"

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:40:00 -0400

MRC Study: ABC, CBS and NBC Tilt Debate Over Ground Zero Mosque by Hyping Accusations of Public's Supposed Intolerance

Networks Protest Arizona's Immigration Law With Cameras and Microphones

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0400

Study: By Almost 10 to 1, ABC, CBS, and NBC Stories Support Amnesty for Illegal Aliens in Arizona

Media Blackout of Supreme Court "Battle"

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:46:00 -0400

MRC Analysis: ABC, CBS and NBC Virtually Ignore Kagan Controversies; No Soundbites from Conservative Groups

Team Obama's Grubby Federal Job-Dangling Is Not News

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:01:00 -0400

MRC Study: Networks Contain Sestak Scandal to Nine Stories or Mentions on Memorial Day Weekend

Media Double Standard on Gulf Coast Disasters

Wed, 26 May 2010 15:08:00 -0400

MRC Study: Networks Pounced on Bush Right After Katrina, but Obama Granted Four Weeks of Breathing Space

Pretending Elena Kagan's Mind Is a Mystery

Tue, 11 May 2010 15:59:00 -0400

ABC, CBS, and NBC Only Manage One Label in 14 Supreme Court Stories

Elitist Networks Pile On Against Arizona Immigration Law

Thu, 06 May 2010 16:54:00 -0400

Study: By 12 to 1, ABC, CBS, and NBC Stories Ripped State's Move to Restrain Illegal Aliens

Twenty Years of Advocacy, Not Journalism, on Global Warming

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:52:00 -0400

Even After ClimateGate Scandal, Reporters Have Pushed a One-Sided "Sky Is Falling" Mantra on Climate Change

ObamaCare Aided by Big Doses of Media Spin

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:47:00 -0400

MRC Details 12 Months of Friendly Coverage for Liberals, Hostility for Government Health Care Foes

Documenting the Media's Lopsided Liberal Slant

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:54:00 -0400

MRC Details 40+ Surveys About Journalists' Liberal Opinions and Public's Growing Awareness of Bias

TV's Tilted Take on Harry Reid's "Negro" Remark

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:38:00 -0400

MRC Study: Race Controversy Buried After Four Days; Networks Gave Most Airtime to Reid Backers

The Left's Climategate: A Scandal for Journalism, Too

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:30:00 -0400

For Decades, the Media Chose to Champion, Not Scrutinize, Claims of Global Warming Alarmists

Media Coverage of the 9/12 Protests: A Report Card

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:59:00 -0400

Liberal Nets Acknowledge News Value of Anti-Obama Rally, but Much of the Coverage Is Antagonistic

Kennedy: A Case Study in Liberal Myth-Making

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:21:00 -0400

Covering Senator's Death, Reporters Chose to Celebrate Big Government Activism Rather than Debate It

Will Nets Note Sheehan's Anti-Obama Protest?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:19:00 -0400

Media Embraced Cindy Sheehan's Anti-Bush Push in 2005; ABC Anchor Now Says: "Enough Already"

Double-Standard on Anti-ObamaCare "Mobs"

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:24:00 -0400

When Target Was GOP's Bush, Media Censored Radicals and Touted Protesters from "All Walks of Life"

For Top TV News Docs, the Diagnosis Is Bias

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:55:00 -0400

ABC, CBS and NBC Health Care Reporters: Democratic Donors and Proponents of Government Health Care

Can't Blame Liberal Media for Health Bill Stall

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:48:00 -0400

BMI Study: 70 Percent of ABC, CBS and NBC Coverage Promoted Obama's Huge Health Care Takeover

Networks Mostly Mute on Democratic Scandals

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:36:00 -0400

ABC, CBS and NBC Air 49 Stories on GOP Governor's Sex Life, But Ignore Democratic Corruption

Stressing Sotomayor's Life, Not Her Liberalism

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:07:00 -0400

ABC, CBS and NBC Toast 'Amazing' and 'Incredible' Court Nominee, Leave Labeling to 'Conservatives'

Ignoring Democratic Hypocrisy, Zinging GOP

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:09:00 -0400

While Democrats Run the Entire Government, Nakedly Partisan MSNBC Goes After GOP 'Hypocrites'

Can MSNBC Get More Liberal? Yes, They Can!

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:57:00 -0400

Reports: MSNBC Poised to Add Mean-Spirited Radio Lib, Further Embarrassing Parent Network NBC.

Media Mudballs Unlikely for Obama Inaugural

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:51:00 -0400

History of Double Standards: Clinton Touted as Sturdy-Jawed Icon; Bush's Speech Paired with Funeral.

David Gregory, 'Custodian' of NBC's Biases

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:46:00 -0400

NBC Replaces Brokaw on Meet the Press With Reporter Known for Bashing Bush, Defending Clintons.

Blackout of Left's "Fairness" Doctrine Push

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:43:00 -0400

ABC, CBS and NBC Provide Zero Coverage of Effort to Control Media Content and Extinguish Talk Radio.

As Campaign Cops, Media Tilt Against GOP

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:39:00 -0400

MRC Study: ABC, CBS and NBC Spend Most Time Condemning McCain's Ads, Little Scrutiny of Obama.

Bob Schieffer Tilted Left Against Bush in 2004

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:34:00 -0400

CBS Host Trashes Palin As a "Down and Dirty...Attack Dog," Then Expects to Be Seen as Fair Moderator .

Media Silence on Abortion Aids Radical Obama

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:28:00 -0400

Not News? In Illinois, Obama Voted Against Protecting Born Babies; Later Smeared Pro-Lifers as "Liars."