Tag Archives: Mainstream Media

News

Four out of five Sunday news shows fail to mention the Benghazi cover-up

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Can you guess which news channel mentioned it? Let’s see.

Excerpt:

Here is how the Sunday shows covered the issue:

NBC: Meet the Press with David Gregory

The Benghazi issue was not raised at all, save by panelist Carly Fiorina, who was interrupted by Gregory. He promised, “We’ll get to that a little bit later,” but did not return to the issue before the show’s end. (The show was interrupted in some markets, in the final minute, with breaking news about Hurricane Sandy.)

ABC: This Week with George Stephanopoulos

The Benghazi issue was raised by Newt Gingrich, in response to a question about the Romney campaign’s prospects in Ohio. Stephanopoulos failed to ask a follow-up and steered the conversation back to polls.

CNN: State of the Union with Candy Crowley

The Benghazi issue was raised twice, once by Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus in response to a question about U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s views on abortion, and once by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in response to a question about whether Romney would win the state in November. Crowley did not raise the issue independently in a show largely focused on polls and voting.

CBS: Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer

The Benghazi issue was raised in an exchange between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff. After McCain brought up the issue, Schieffer asked a follow-up question about whether the administration had engaged in a “deliberate cover-up.” McCain said it had either been a cover-up or “the worst kind of incompetence.” Schieffer responded with another question about whether drones had produced images of the attacks. Emanuel responded with the Obama campaign’s standard talking points, and Schieffer followed up with a question about what he would have done in the White House. Emanuel ducked the question, instead praising Obama’s foreign policy record in general.

FOX: Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace

The Benghazi issue was first raised by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in describing issues of concern to Wisconsin voters. Wallace replied that he had planned to address the issue later, which he did, addressing questions to Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) about recent revelations. Warner responded by expressing sympathy with the families of the dead and wounded and promised: “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. The intelligence is going to hold hearings when we return, right after the election.” He added that the situation had “been politicized,” criticizing Romney in particular. Wallace countered that the issue was a legitimate topic of political discussion. He followed up with questions about whether drones flying over Benghazi were armed, and Sen. Udall repeatedly refused to answer directly, saying that he could not comment further. Wallace also later made the issue the primary focus of the show’s subsequent panel discussion.

When conservatives say that they prefer to watch Fox News, it’s not because Fox News is conservative. It’s because Fox News is news. They actually act like journalists and report the news, and they always have multiple viewpoints – conservative and liberal. Liberals want to see a debate between Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews to see which one is more of a radical leftist. Conservatives want to see a debate between Brit Hume and Juan Williams. We want both sides, because the adversarial system is the best way of getting at the truth. People tune into to non-Fox news channels to hear what they believe echoed back to them, and to avoid hearing anything that makes them feel stupid or wrong or different. It’s like church for lazy brained leftists.

Understanding media bias

Every once in a while, I like to post the academic studies of media bias, so that everyone is clear about who is biased. It’s always important to look at the evidence when trying to decide what is the truth about something. So let’s look at the evidence of media bias.

Here’s a UCLA study on media bias.

Excerpt:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”

The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.”

Here’s a Harvard University study on media bias.

Excerpt:

The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture… of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

From the Washington Examiner, a study of the political contributions made by the mainstream media.

Excerpt:

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

[…]The data on contributions by broadcast network employees was compiled by CRP at the request of The Examiner and included all 2008 contributions by individuals who identified their employer as one of the three networks or subsidiaries. The data does not include contributions by employees of the three networks who did not identify their employer.

The CRP is the organization behind OpenSecrets.org, the web site that for more than a decade has put campaign finance data within reach of anybody with an Internet connection.

President Obama received 710 such contributions worth a total of $461,898, for an average contribution of $651 from the network employees. Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain received only 39 contributions totaling $26,926, for an average donation of $709.

And more from a study done by the radically leftist MSNBC.

Excerpt:

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

The donors include CNN’s Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O’Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV’s former presidential campaign correspondent.

And here’s a bit from that same article about The New Yorker:

The last bulwark against bias’s slipping into The New Yorker is the copy department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush. “That’s just me as a private citizen,” she said. As for whether donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn’t considered it. “I’ve never thought of myself as working for a news organization.”

Those are the facts.

So what?

Now consider this column from Brent Bozell, which explains the difference media bias makes to political intelligence.

Excerpt:

The Republican presidential contest is picking up steam. Obama is consistently polling under 50 percent. This one’s a toss-up, and in the thick of it is the Fox News Channel. It’s not just their role in hosting and vetting the candidates. It’s their role as the chief villain in the eyes of liberal Democrats struggling to push their version of the “truth” about Obama.

Jon Stewart rhetorically asked Chris Wallace about Fox on “Fox News Sunday, because he thought he knew the answer: ”Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”

In the real world – outside Stewart’s smug bubble – this is garbage. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center asked media consumers three questions: which party was in control of Congress (Democrats), who was the secretary of state (Condi Rice) and who was the prime minister of Britain (Gordon Brown).

Let’s document how the viewers of “Hannity &Colmes” were better informed than Stewart’s “Daily Show”  gigglers on basic political facts. Hannity viewers beat Stewart’s on the Democratic majority (84 percent to 65 percent correct answers), Condi Rice (a dramatic 73 percent to 48 percent gap) and Gordon Brown (49 percent to 36). Overall, as a percentage getting all three questions right, Hannity won 42-30.

Just keep that in mind when you are watching the mainstream media news shows. A very good site to bookmark and read is Newsbusters, which documents mainstream media bias daily. I even have an RSS feed of their latest stories on the front page on this blog.

News

CNN debate: a liberal moderator and Democrat activists posing as undecided voters

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Should you watch tonight’s debate, moderated by Candy Crowley of CNN?

Second presidential candidates’ debate between Obama, Romney

  • Topic: Foreign and domestic issues
  • Date: Tuesday, Oct. 16
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
  • Moderator: Candy Crowley, chief political correspondent, CNN, and anchor, CNN’s “State of the Union”
  • Format: “The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which citizens will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues. Candidates each will have two minutes to respond, and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion. The town meeting participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.”

Here are three reasons why you should be cautious about it.

First, Candy Crowley is a leftist who has made comments critical of the Romney-Ryan ticket. Second, the format allows Candy Crowley to select all the questions for the two candidates. Third, the last time CNN did a townhall debate, they featured questions from well-known Democrat activists and lied to the audience saying that they were “undecided voters”. Let’s take a look at the evidence for each of these statements.

First, Candy Crowley. Is she a centrist?

Newsbusters explains:

As NewsBusters has been noting all Saturday morning, now that Paul Ryan has been chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate, the goal of the Obama-loving media is to rip him to shreds.

Doing her part Saturday was CNN’s Candy Crowley who claimed some Republicans (unnamed, of course) think this “looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish.”

[…]Transcript of Crowley’s remarks is below:

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN: We’ve already had this debate. All they have to do at Obama Reelect is open up the files because this debate has already happened. They just bring it back, it goes, it is, you know, what they talk about. But I think the other thing that’s worth pointing out is not every Republican has signed on to this kind of, I mean, they will publicly. But there is some trepidation…

GLORIA BORGER, CNN: They’re afraid.

CROWLEY: …that this might be, looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish. That, oh, my gosh, do we really want to talk about these thing? Is this where we want to go when the economy is so bad? We could have stayed on that.

Second, what about the format of the debate. Who is choosing the questions?

Associated Press explains:

Town halls have lost some of their spontaneity. The 80 or so undecided voters chosen for Tuesday’s event must submit their questions in advance and moderator Candy Crowley of CNN will decide which people to call on. She can pose her own follow-up questions.

Third, there is the disturbing pattern of CNN stacking the town hall audience with well-known liberal activists and passing them off as “undecided voters”. That’s what CNN did in a previous debate they moderated, as Michelle Malkin explains.

Excerpt:

Flashback: CNN/YouTube/plant debacle.

Refresher:

  • Concerned Young Undecided Person “Journey” = John Edwards supporter “Journey”
  • Concerned Undecided Log Cabin Republican supporter David Cercone = Obama supporter David Cercone
  • Concerned Undecided Mom LeeAnn Anderson = Activist for the John Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers union LeeAnn Anderson
  • Concerned Undecided Gay Military Retiree Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr = Hillary/Kerry supporter and anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” activist Keith H. Kerr

[…]If any more political plants turn up at CNN’s presidential debates, the cable-news network will have to merge with the Home and Garden channel.

At CNN’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas two weeks back, moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as “ordinary people, undecided voters.” But they later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada and a far left anti-war activist who’d been quoted in newspapers lambasting Harry Reid for his failure to pull out of Iraq.

Yet CNN failed to disclose those affiliations and activism during the broadcast.

Behold – the phony political foliage bloomed again at Wednesday night’s much hyped CNN/YouTube GOP debate.

Oh, CNN did make careful note that Grover Norquist (who asked about his anti-tax pledge) is a Republican activist with Americans for Tax Reform. But somehow the network’s layers and layers of fact-checkers missed several easily identified Democratic activists posing as ordinary, undecided citizens.

The tallest plant was a retired gay vet, one “Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr,” who questioned – or rather, lectured – the candidates on video and in person about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bans open gays from the military.

Funny. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was exactly the policy CNN adopted in not telling viewers that Kerr is a member of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual- Transgender Americans for Hillary.

Sen. Clinton’s campaign Web site features a press release announcing Kerr and other members of the committee in June. And a basic Web search turns up Kerr’s past support as a member of a veterans’ steering committee for the John Kerry for President campaign – and his prior appearance on CNN in December ’03.

CNN’s moderator, Anderson Cooper, singled out Kerr (who’d been flown in for the event) in the vast audience, giving him a chance for his own filibustering moment. Marvel at it: Not one CNN journalist uncovered the connection or thought it pertinent to disclose that Kerr’s heart belonged to Hillary.

When righty commentator Bill Bennett pointed out the facts to Cooper after the debate, a red-faced Cooper feebly blubbered: “That was something certainly unknown to us, and had we known that, would have been disclosed by us. It turns out we have just looked at it.”

Cluelessness doesn’t absolve CNN of journalistic malpractice. Neither does editing out Kerr’s question (as the network did on rebroadcast, to camouflage the potted plant).

The article is quite old, and it predates the revelation that Anderson Cooper is gay. Might that explain why so many gay activists were selected to ask questions at a townhall debate?

So should you watch the debate? I think not. But if you do, be aware that CNN is a leftist organization and they are not likely to do a good job of being impartial. They want Obama to win. The best debate so far was the first debate moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS.

By the way, in a recent Gallup/USA Today poll in swing (toss-up) states, Romney now leads Obama 51-46 among all voters, and is tied 48-48 among women voters. That’s what the madness of Joe Biden in his debate got Obama. Women hate a violent, disrespectful madman.

I’ll probably watch the debate, but I’ll watch it on Fox News Live, not CNN.

News

Biased debate moderator joins unhinged VP Joe Biden in interrupting and bullying Paul Ryan

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The full video is above, and the full transcript is here.

Results:

One undecided woman on CNN called Biden a “buffoon“, but why? Let’s see:

Here’s a debate re-cap from The Blaze.

Excerpt:

Ryan argued the current administration had provided insufficient security to Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed, along with three other Americans, in a terrorist attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11

However, Biden sought to blame Republicans, saying the budget that Ryan authored as chairman of the House Budget Committee cut the Obama administration’s funding request for diplomatic security by $300 million.

Despite multiple reports that indicate there were requests for additional security at the U.S. Consulate in Libya, Biden claimed the Obama administration wasn’t “told they wanted more security.” The statement appears to be at odds with the official record.

Many times throughout the debate, Biden could be seen smiling sarcastically and shaking his head as Ryan spoke. Both men also interrupted each other a number of times, though Biden was a more frequent offender.

“I know you’re under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground, but I think people would be better served if we don’t interrupt each other,” Ryan said. But he didn’t exactly stick to his word.

Actually, Ryan didn’t initiate any interruptions of Biden the entire night. It was Biden who kept breaking into Ryan’s speeches, with the full support of the moderator, and Ryan had to interrupt Biden then to get back the use of the time which he had been allocated to respond. Joe Biden could not control himself. He looked like some sort of Gollum flipping back and forth between laughing psychopath and somber sycophant. And always the leftist ABC News moderator was there to give him extra rebuttals, while denying Ryan any similar rebuttals. And if things started to go Ryan’s way, she immediately shut him up and moved on to another question.

Here’s a review with some specifics:

  • The first question that I heard was the moderator passing judgement on Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney as to their timing of their response to the murder of our Ambassador. Then she allowed Uncle Joe to cut off Representative Ryan, and asked him to elaborate further and in detail about all the reasons why Paul Ryan was a liar. Why do Republicans put up with this sort of third-world dictatorship facade of a debate? She asks Paul Ryan why he was wrong and then asks Biden to tell her why his policies were so good- and this passes as unbiased and fair?
  • Next question- “Romney has book on No Apologies- tell me why this book is wrong and sucks and you are wrong for being part of this book”, then she interrupts Ryan to be critical of his answer. Look, I know that Obama appointed her baby’s daddy to a major office and Obama was at her wedding, but I can’t believe that she just interrupted Ryan about 30 seconds into his answer, especially after she let Uncle Joe ramble on and on for a full answer. He should have just stood up and walked out on her- I’ve been watching it for 7 minutes now and it’s clearly a joke of a ‘debate’.
  • This set-up- sit down in silence and no responding to each other and a moderator who wants to prove that she is something important- is boring.
  • So Biden’s strategy must be to question and ridicule everything that Romney and Ryan say- “this is incredible,” “that was malarkey,” “facts matter,”, etc.
  • Biden- “Iran has no weapon to put an atomic bomb in”- but yet Iran has Shahab missiles and Sajjil missiles- the Sajjil-2 is a medium-range missile of about 2,200 km or 1,375 miles when carrying a 750-kg warhead, capable of hitting our assets in the Middle East or any of our allies in the regime (although admittedly it’s rather inaccurate). So he’s wrong, flat wrong, and totally wrong.
  • This moderator continues to judge Ryan, have a conversation with Biden, throw tough questions at Ryan, softball questions to Biden, cut off Ryan, and let Joe ramble. This debate is a joke- the format, moderator, and set-up are all BAD. Ask a question and get the heck out of the way.
  • At 9:52, Paul Ryan is asked a question, and is interrupted and attacked by both the moderator and Joe Biden, he turns right, he turns left, he is being interrupted, and he keeps trying to push through, even over the moderator, who at 9:55 began to summarize Ryan’s plans in a typical-liberal manner, and now that she is done hearing his views and hearing him defend himself, she says “I want to move on now and ask another biased and slanted question of you.” Get out of the debate, moderator, and let Biden and Ryan talk.

Read the whole thing.

Here’s the moderate Chris Wallace of Fox News to make it clear:

I don’t think that the debate is worth watching. The moderator ruined the debate because she has connections to Barack Obama, as I pointed out before, and it showed. I didn’t expect her to basically be a mouthpiece for the Obama campaign, but that’s what she did. This was a 2 on 1 debate from the first instant. It’s not worth watching. I don’t think that independents were impressed with 90 minutes of arrogant bullying by Biden and Raddatz.

You can read some tweets here which agree with this analysis. But it’s not just ordinary people who thought that Biden lost. Left-wing media people like Piers Morgan and Kirsten Powers tweeted their disapproval, too.