Media Mash: Debt Ceiling Edition

"You know, in Journalism 101, if you're going to ask a question of someone like the president, what you do is, you take, respectfully, you take the opposition's best argument and you play devil's advocate," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the July 14 edition of "Hannity."

But instead of taking that approach -- which, Bozell noted, the famous liberal reporter Sam Donaldson took both with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- the media have been actively working with Obama to forward the Democratic narrative regarding the debt ceiling negotiations.

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Noted the Media Research Center founder:

Instead, what you've got [in press conferences] is Barack Obama choosing these people who he knows are his allies in that room to do his talking points for him. So who does he choose to ask an objective question?

The Huffington Post.

What kind of question do you think you're going to get?

So he's setting them up for softballs and they're calling it a press conference. It's making a mockery of this thing called journalism.

Later in the segment, responding to MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski saying that cutting a deal on the debt ceiling increase that included some spending cuts and tax hikes was a "no brainer," Bozell noted that similar deals to that effect haven't worked before:

If she just knew a little bit about these grand bargains, she would know that every time the Democrats make a deal with the Republicans where they'll cut spending and they'll raise taxes, they always succeed in raising taxes and raising spending.

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