Brent Baker's blog

In pointing out how Barack Obama only won in 2008 by a slim margin, so this year’s Republican nominee doesn’t have to win over all that many Americans, ABC’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning listed the media amongst the factors “going” for Obama four years ago: “You had the media, perhaps, tilting on the scales a little bit.”

That’s an understatement, but a noteworthy realization when it comes from the chief White House correspondent for a major network.

An hour before CNN screamed “Breaking News” Thursday night over the Boston Globe’s endorsement of Jon Huntsman (basically for not being “pushed” to the right like Mitt Romney), the CBS Evening News trumpeted the presidential bid by Huntsman who “has flown under the radar, despite his impressive resume. He's the chopper-riding popular two-term Governor of Utah with a picture-perfect family...”

Reporter Bill Whitaker’s glowing story hailed Huntsman’s economic plan as “deemed best of the campaign by the Wall Street Journal,” before approvingly touting: “Unlike most of the Republican field, he believes humans contribute to climate change.” Whitaker soon cued up Huntsman to confirm: “You’ve also called yourself ‘the sane Republican.’”

Showing how no left-wing effort to raise taxes is too silly or embarrassing for ABC News to embrace, World News on Wednesday night jumped to promote a Web video, created by a group founded by a former Howard Dean operative and “featured contributor” to the Huffington Post (Rick Jacobs), to impose a higher state income tax rate on Californians earning over $1 million.
 
“First it was Warren Buffett,” anchor Diane Sawyer glowed in citing her hero, “and now it is reality TV star Kim Kardashian. What could they have in common? Both center stage on the question of fairness in the way the country taxes the rich versus the middle class. Some big unions in California have created an ad saying people like Kim Kardashian are the reason the tax code has to change.”

In a series of CBS Evening News reports Monday night on how the top Republican presidential contenders plan to reduce the deficit, reporter Dean Reynolds pleaded to Newt Gingrich: “Absolutely no tax increases?”

Reynolds proceeded to note “critics are doubtful” about the impact of Gingrich’s plans to reduce regulations and cut federal spending: “They say that fewer regulations could spur some productivity, but they also say that to really reduce the deficit you would have to include some combination of spending cuts and tax increases.”

Three weeks after CBS’s 60 Minutes delivered a friendly sit-down with President Barack Obama in which Steve Kroft gently chided him for being too willing to compromise with Republicans, the show didn’t even attempt a matching approach to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Instead, Lesley Stahl relayed a portrait painted by liberals (“He’s working on humanizing his image, and presenting himself as more reasonable”) as she blamed him for “gridlock” and offered a caricature of Cantor as an “inflexible” ideologue putting Tea Party politics ahead of passing Obama’s beneficial policies. 

Stahl abandoned any pretense of journalistic objectivity, repeatedly pressing Cantor to “compromise” – to agree with Obama on the rationality of raising taxes more, touting how even Ronald Reagan had recognized the need to hike taxes.

In her next to last week hosting This Week, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour moderated a show-long debate, touted as “The Great American Debates,” devoted to the proposition: “There’s Too Much Government.” George Will and Congressman Paul Ryan took up the affirmative case, squaring off against Robert Reich and Congressman Barney Frank. But Amanpour was hardly neutral.

She began by framing the debate around the “conundrum” that “people who oppose big government still want to collect their entitlements” and, without any matching ideological policy arguments presented to Reich and Frank, pressed Ryan and Will with liberal contentions, such as how “during the Great Depression the government did create big programs to get people back to work. Why shouldn’t they do that right now, why shouldn’t there be that kind of action?”

“After 13 years with ABC News, correspondent Jim Sciutto is leaving the network and TV news. He’s moving to China where he’ll be Chief of Staff to U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke,” TVNewser’s Chris Ariens reported Thursday in noting the latest journalist to join the Obama administration, this time working for Locke, the former Democratic Governor of Washington.

Sciutto should certainly feel comfortable promoting Obama’s interests and how he is a blessing to the world since that’s what he used his ABC News position to do. The night after Obama’s inauguration, for instance, Sciutto delivered a piece for World News with soundbites from naive kids around the world sputtering beauty pageant-like simplicities about how President Barack Obama will bring “world peace” and inspires them to say “yes, we can!”

The passing Thursday of Christopher Hitchens, at age 62 from cancer, reminded me of one of his finest moments, which occurred on a Friday night five-and-a-half years ago when he gave the finger to the pretentious, left-wing Los Angeles studio audience of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

As he laid out the case for how it’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who wants World War Three, not George W. Bush, Hitchens cited how Ahmadinejad “says the Messiah is about to come back.” Maher quipped: “So does George Bush, by the way.” That caused a loud eruption of audience applause and cheering, which led Maher to clarify: “That's not facetious.”

CBS’s Steve Kroft challenged President Barack Obama a few times during the two-part 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday night, but managed to ignore the scandals (Solyndra, Fast & Furious and collapse of MF Global run by ally Jon Corzine) while mostly cuing up Obama to knock down criticism of him or pressing him with complaints from the left that he hasn’t done or gone far enough: “They thought that you were gonna be bolder.”

“Since the midterm elections, you made an effort at bipartisanship. It hasn’t worked out that way,” Kroft fretted in crediting Obama with the noble effort before seemingly conveying the liberal complaint the stimulus didn’t spend enough: “There’s a general perception that the stimulus was not enough. That it really didn’t work.”

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour just can’t comprehend why Jon Huntsman, with his “eminently sensible” anti-conservative positions, could be losing to Newt Gingrich who is full of “bombast” and “does say some pretty alarming things, some might say outrageous things.” More upsetting, Hunstman is supposedly “reversing” himself on those “eminently sensible positions.” 

Interviewing Huntsman, who appeared from the Granite State, Amanpour noted on Sunday’s This Week that “you are at the bottom of the pack despite the fact that some independents, for instance, in New Hampshire call you the sanest one running,” yet “ what you’re offering does not seem to be resonating. It appears that the Newt Gingrich, sort of bombast and brash in your face against Obama, is what’s resonating.”

“In the presidential campaign,” CBS anchor Scott Pelley announced Thursday night, “President Obama fired back today at Republican opponents who criticized his foreign policy using words like ‘timid,’ ‘weak’ and ‘appeasement.’”

Over on ABC, fill-in anchor David Muir trumpeted “a very pointed response from President Obama” to the charge he’s had a weak foreign policy as an admiring Muir maintained “you can almost see him choosing his words as the question is asked.” Both then played Obama’s response from a late morning news conference:

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday evening promised a look “back at some of the hits, runs and errors” of Newt Gingrich’s years as Speaker of the House, but other than a sentence from Lisa Myers about how “working with President Clinton, Gingrich piled up real achievements: a balanced budget, an historic welfare reform,” she focused her entire piece on how “his speakership also was marked by chaos, polarization, and incendiary remarks.”

Her first witness: NBC’s own Joe Scarborough, who feigned concern that Gingrich “hurt the Republican Party and more importantly, to a lot of us, the conservative movement moving forward.”

“The first line in Barney Frank’s political epitaph,” The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes predicted on Monday’s FNC Special Report upon news the longtime liberal Democratic Congressman won’t seek re-election, will “be the housing crisis.” But that isn’t what those who decide the first draft of history considered relevant.

ABC, CBS and NBC didn’t mention Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac as they instead touted him as “one of the most familiar, powerful and colorful characters on Capitol Hill” (ABC), as “the Congressman who co-authored the overhaul of financial regulations after the crash” (CBS) and all noted his sexual orientation. NBC’s Brian Williams: “Among his legacies – besides his legendary sharp tongue – he was the first Member of Congress to publically acknowledge he was gay back in 1987.”

“Bring the Family: Looking for Adventure with the Kids” reads the tag line over a weekly series of tips to Boston Globe readers suggesting what to do with them on weekends. In Saturday’s “g” section, the headline announced the “what,” a bizarre recommendation to expose them to a volatile, unsanitary and politically heated situation: “Occupying Boston with the kids.” The who: “Globe reporter Mark Shanahan and his daughter, Julia.”

Shanahan, who “covers the comings and goings of Boston’s celebrity class in the newspaper’s daily ‘Names’ column,” decided “it was time to visit Dewey Square so my 11-year-old daughter could see for herself what Occupy Boston is all about, to hear what the protesters are saying about ‘corporate greed’ and ‘income disparity,’ and maybe to get a few ideas for our next camping trip to Baxter State Park.”

Picking up on a blog post by a far-left group devoted to silencing Rush Limbaugh, ABC’s World News on Monday night dedicated an entire story to one word used by the conservative radio host, a comment the other networks failed to find newsworthy. “Loaded words,” fill-in anchor Georgre Stephanopoulos ominously teased, “the First Lady booed at a NASCAR event. Now Rush Limbaugh weighs in, hurling a racially-charged word at Michelle Obama.”

Soon, a “word” became “words” when Stephanopoulos later plugged the upcoming hit: “Still ahead on World News, Michelle Obama booed at a NASCAR event and now Rush Limbaugh hurls racially-charged words at the First Lady.” (updated with video below)

Highlighting Grover Norquist’s upcoming appearance on 60 Minutes, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation, pointed to the anti-tax hike pledge Norquist asks politicians to sign as “one of the problems” undermining the failed “super-committee.”

After ruing the pledge with Republican Senator Pat Toomey, a super-committee member, Schieffer later also hit a Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, from the left on taxes: “Would you be willing to raise taxes if that’s what it takes to get our financial footing?” Manchin: “You don't need to raise taxes.”) 

Substitute ABC anchor David Muir opened Thursday’s World News by hyping “masses of people taking to the streets here in New York City,” before reporter Dan Harris referenced “this massive protest march tonight” and “this big protest.”

Yet over on the CBS Evening News, Jim Axelrod noted how though “organizers promised tens of thousands demonstrators disrupting business as usual here in New York,” they didn’t show up: “Frankly, we’ve seen a fraction of that number -- closer to a thousand.”

Conservatives had some significant victories in Tuesday’s scattered elections across the country, but the broadcast network evening newscasts on Wednesday night – with the exception of one topic on NBC – decided to only highlight, as did the morning shows earlier in the day, setbacks for conservatives.

“Ohio voters rejected a Republican-backed measure that limited the collective bargaining rights of public workers,” CBS anchor Scott Pelley noted of the measure which won by 61 to 39 percent, but neither he nor ABC’s Diane Sawyer informed viewers a ballot measure which will bar ObamaCare’s mandate won by an even more overwhelming 66 to 34 percent.

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, on Sunday’s This Week, hit House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly from the left to raise taxes, a hostile, political agenda-driven approach she failed to apply a month earlier to the House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi.

Amanpour demanded of Boehner: “Do you not feel that by opposing” a tax hike on millionaires to pay for Obama’s jobs bill “you’re basically out of step with the American people on this issue?” She followed by yearning: “Do you agree at all that there should be any kind of tax increases?” (video compilation below)

Saturday, November 5: News this morning that Rooney passed away last night. Below is post put up just before his final 60 Minutes appearance on October 2:

Andy Rooney delivered his final commentary Sunday night at the end of 60 Minutes and while the now 92-year old curmudgeon’s pieces usually dealt with non-serious topics, he should be credited for being able to recognize, unlike many of his prominent peers, that the media are liberal – even conceding his own “liberal bias.” He declared Dan Rather “transparently liberal” and quipped people in the news business “were almost evenly divided” in 2004 – “half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.”

Shortly after 9/11 in 2001, he embarrassed himself when he mocked President Bush over a common metaphor. “This is an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe, but they won’t be safe forever,” Bush asserted in a clip Rooney played and then ridiculed: “Well, not too smart either. Afghanistan is landlocked. It doesn’t have a harbor.” (video below)

CBS’s Bob Schieffer unintentionally played the foil to Herman Cain on Sunday’s Face the Nation as Schieffer expressed his politically-correct displeasure with Cain’s “downright bizarre” Web video which briefly shows Cain’s chief of staff smoking, was flummoxed by Cain’s sense of humor (“You also said at one point that you might want to back that fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke too?”) and was baffled by Cain’s accurate claim Planned Parenthood was spurred by the eugenics movement’s desire to reduce the black population.
 
On the ad, Schieffer decried how “it sends a signal that it’s cool to smoke” before he scolded Cain: “Well, let me just tell you, it’s not funny to me....I don't think it serves the country well, and this is an editorial opinion here, to be showing someone smoking a cigarette.” (video below)

President Barack Obama’s new infrastructure spending plan “makes all of the sense in the world” and is an “eminently sensible idea,” ABC’s Christiane Amanpour enthused Sunday morning on This Week as if there is no rational reason to oppose the additional federal money and without a look at the impact of the already-spent stimulus spending.
 
Following up on President Obama’s boast that “when you got the AFL and the Chamber of Commerce agreeing on anything, that’s a sign that it’s a good idea,” Amanpour brought aboard the chiefs of those two organizations to tout the self-interested spending and fret over Republican opposition.