Can’t top today’s synopsis from the great Media Research Center of the typical mainstream American liberal media coverage of the latest political news.
Many Americans and almost every Canadian (because until recently Fox News Channel was banned in Canada and even now most still don’t even subscribe to it to see what fair and balanced coverage actually is), are completely unaware of the fact that they are being led down the left-wing garden path by a bunch of overtly biased left-wing journalist hacks who call themselves “objective” and “fair” and “balanced”.
Here in Canada that fact is further exasperated by the fact that one of the media outlets, the far-left’s own CBC (state-owned and state-run, paid for by me and you and all of us, which the CBC and its politically unsophisticated Canadian fans therefore hold up as a news media with an air of authority and legitimacy), is among the most left-wing outlets—if not the most—in all of North America. So they won’t “get” any of the following…
1. Bennett Rebukes CNN for Using Palin’s Daughter to Score Points
Late Monday afternoon live on CNN, Bill Bennett rebuked—as an “outrageous” piece of “advocacy” and “attack journalism” that “has no place on CNN”—a story the channel had just run which used the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter to score political points by relaying as fact the talking points on sex education from a left-wing group. A defensive Wolf Blitzer kept saying “hold on” as he tried to justify raising the supposed hypocrisy. Live from Anchorage at 5:33 PM EDT/4:33 PM CDT/1:33 PM ADT, Kyra Phillips revealed “there were a number of things that we were sent here to investigate,” including “trooper-gate,” but before that, she stressed “here’s what’s interesting,” that Palin “has gone on the record and said that she is in full support of abstinence, and that she doesn’t believe in contraception on school grounds and sex education.” Phillips then highlighted: “The Alliance for Reproductive Justice…says abstinence doesn’t work, we’ve got to have better sex education in schools and this is just one example, this just underscores—the pregnancy of the Governor’s daughter—to why we need sex education in schools.”
2. CBS: Right Might Have Been Hypocrites on Pregnant Chelsea Clinton
Instead of just flat-out making a hypocrisy accusation against “the social conservatives” who “are rallying behind” Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin following news her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, CBS’s Jeff Greenfield suggested “very conservative Republicans” may be hypocrites based on how they might have reacted eleven years ago. On Monday’s CBS Evening News, Greenfield, at the site of the delayed Republican convention, felt compelled to share: “The one question that occurs to me is if 17-year-old Chelsea Clinton had become pregnant while living in the White House, would the reaction on the part of the Family Research Council and other very conservative Republicans been the same? Maybe it would have been, but it’s a question worth asking.”
3. Kroft Cues Up Obama to Agree Palin ‘Has Less Experience than You’
CBS’s 60 Minutes led Sunday night with a taped interview with the Democratic ticket and in the piece Steve Kroft, who couldn’t resist labeling Sarah Palin as a “conservative” while never tagging Joe Biden, presumed as fact that Palin “has less experience” than Obama and cued up Obama to agree with his own campaign’s rhetoric about how Palin undermines McCain’s experience argument: “Does the fact that he chose as his Vice President someone who has less experience than you take that weapon out of his arsenal?” On Sunday’s NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams pursued the same media narrative as he pressed McCain about how as “a 72-year-old cancer survivor” he chose “a not yet one full term Governor of Alaska. Is she the best person to be literally a heartbeat away from the presidency, Senator?” McCain rejected the premise and, without even knowing it, countered Kroft: “She’s been in elected office longer than Senator Obama…”
4. MSNBC: ‘Fire-Breather’ Palin ‘Makes Obama Look Like John Adams’
On Friday’s Countdown show, while appearing as a guest, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, also an MSNBC political analyst, contended that, regarding her level of experience, Sarah Palin “makes Barack Obama look like John Adams.” Host Keith Olbermann called her “the least experienced vice presidential candidate probably in American history,” and repeatedly applied labels to her suggesting extremism, calling her “fanatically anti-abortion,” “hard right,” “global warming denying,” a “rabid conservative,” a “red meat conservative,” and a “fire-breather.”
5. Clift Reveals: In ‘Many Newsrooms’ Palin Greeted by ‘Laughter’
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift disclosed on the McLaughlin Group—seemingly without any compunction for how she was outing her fellow journalists as behaving the same way as Barack Obama’s campaign staff, but I suppose we already knew that intuitively—that John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for VP was greeted by “literally laughter” in “very many newsrooms.” From the show taped on Friday at Washington, DC’s CBS affiliate and which aired at various times over the weekend around the nation, mostly PBS stations: “This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across, in very, very many newsrooms.”
6. CNN’s John Roberts: Palin Might Neglect Her Disabled Infant?
CNN’s John Roberts, after briefly alluding to the issue of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s experience he called into question earlier on Friday’s Newsroom program, asked correspondent Dana Bash about how the Alaska governor’s newborn son with Down’s syndrome might be affected if she were elected: “There’s also this issue that on April 18th, she gave birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome….Children with Down’s syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?” Bash deftly answered this question, which has the implication that Palin could neglect her infant son, and made a possible counter-argument that the McCain camp might use, that a question like Roberts’ would be sexist: “That’s a very good question, and I guess—my guess is that, perhaps, the line inside the McCain campaign would be, if it were a man being picked who also had a baby, but—you know, four months ago with Down’s Syndrome, would you ask the same question?”
7. GMA Saturday’s Weir Impugns Sarah Palin as a Neglectful Mother
On ABC’s Good Morning America on Saturday, co-anchor Bill Weir bristled with hostility during an interview with a McCain campaign spokesman about the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, suggesting she was unqualified and too conservative. At one point, Weir even suggested that by running for Vice President, the Governor would be jeopardizing her four-month old daughter, who has Down’s Syndrome. Weir confronted McCain political director Mike DuHaime: “Adding to the brutality of a national campaign, the Palin family also has an infant with special needs. What leads you, the Senator, and the Governor to believe that one won’t affect the other in the next couple of months?” When DuHaime offered a general answer about Palin’s “incredible life story,” an obviously irritated Weir jumped in, exclaiming: “She has an infant—she has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?” David Wright, Weir and co-host Kate Snow all found ways to tag Palin as conservative, with Snow calling her “quite conservative,” but a week earlier, nobody on the same program thought it worth mentioning that Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden was liberal.
8. No Morning Labels for Liberal Joe Biden, But for Sarah Palin…
Just as on Friday night (see #9 below), the big broadcast networks on Saturday morning showed no shyness about labeling Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a “conservative,” with NBC Today co-host Amy Robach calling her “a staunch conservative,” CBS’s Chip Reid tagging her “reliably conservative,” and ABC’s Kate Snow finding Palin to be “quite conservative.” But seven days earlier, as those same programs reacted to the Obama campaign’s text message heralding Joe Biden as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, none of those broadcast found a moment to call him “liberal,” in spite of Biden’s lengthy record of liberal votes.
9. Evening Shows Call Palin ‘Conservative,’ Didn’t Tag Biden Liberal
On Saturday night, August 23, in multiple stories on all three broadcast network evening shows about Barack Obama’s VP pick, Senator Joe Biden was never described as a liberal. Friday night, August 29, however, CBS and NBC accurately tagged John McCain’s selection, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as “reliably conservative” or a “solid conservative”—and that’s not counting references to how she will shore up support for McCain amongst conservatives.
10. Matt Lauer Questions Experience of ‘Staunch Conservative’ Palin
Just minutes after the news arrived that John McCain had selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate on Friday, Today host Matt Lauer broke into regular coverage and began labeling her as a “staunch conservative” and a “stalwart conservative.” The Today show avoided using ideological labels for Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, during the Democratic convention.
11. Morning Shows on Friday All Hailed Obama’s Convention Speech
After each of the first three nights of the Democratic convention, network news reporters have offered enthusiastically positive reviews, and Friday morning’s coverage of Barack Obama’s acceptance address made it a clean sweep. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith, the only morning show host still in Denver, said he felt the earth moving. “This place rumbled….The stadium was just so alive, and the ground was almost quaking,” he told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez who voiced pity for John McCain: “Harry, I found myself at one point last night thinking how difficult it must be for John McCain to watch such a huge celebration in honor of his opponent, especially on the eve of his 72nd birthday.” Over on ABC, George Stephanopoulos asserted that the mere act of speaking in a tough tone of voice “answered questions about whether he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief.” His enthusiastic review of the week: “I don’t think this convention could have gone any better for the Democrats.”
12. Maher: Matthews and Olbermann ‘Were Ready to Have Sex with’ Obama
The media in general, and MSNBC in particular, are so far into the tank for Barack Obama that even the far-left Bill Maher, on his HBO show Friday night, recognized “there is a problem…with the media gushing over him too much.” Specifically, though he didn’t name co-anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, Maher pointed to MSNBC’s coverage following Obama’s acceptance speech: “The coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him.”
13. FNC’s Hemmer Stunned by Maher’s ‘Ready to Have Sex’ MSNBC Rebuke
Stunning Fox News Watch host Bill Hemmer, panelist Jim Pinkerton, picking up on a NewsBusters (the MRC’s blog) post with video (“Maher: Matthews and Olbermann ‘Were Ready to Have Sex with’ Obama”) [see #12 above], from just hours before the FNC show aired live at 6:30 PM EDT Saturday from St. Paul, pointed out that MSNBC’s Democratic convention coverage was so adulatory that it led to: “Bill Maher, who’s no conservative, who hates Bush, to joke that he thinks that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews want to have sex with Obama. That’s no slap at Obama, of course. He’s innocent.” As the other panelists laughed, Hemmer was incredulous, interjecting “whoa, whoa” before pressing for corroboration: “Bill Maher said that?!” Pinkerton, Cal Thomas and Juan Williams all chimed in with confirmation and then Hemmer, putting his finger to his earpiece, informed viewers: “I’m hearing that we have a sound clip of that. Do we? Alright, roll it. Here’s Bill Maher.” Viewers were treated to the video of Maher from his Friday night HBO show: “I think there is a problem, though, with the media gushing over him too much. I don’t think he thinks that he’s all that, but the media does. I mean, the coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him.”
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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