Since late January of 2012, the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard has once a week featured a “Mainstream Media Scream” selection in his “Washington Secrets” column. For each pick, usually posted online on Monday, I provide an explanation and recommend a “scream” rating (scale of one to five).
This post contains the “Mainstream Media Screams” for July through December 2016. For those starting in January of 2017. Earlier: “Mainstream Media Screams” for January to June 2016; for July to December 2015; for January to June 2015. (2012-2014 are featured on MRC.org: For 2014; for June 17, 2013 through the end of 2013. And for January 31, 2012 through June 11, 2013, when the Washington Examiner was both online and a printed daily newspaper distributed around the Washington, DC area.)
Check Bedard’s “Washington Secrets” blog for the latest choice and his other Washington insider posts. Each week, this page will be updated with Bedard’s latest example of the worst bias of the week.
(For more of the worst liberal media bias, browse the MRC's Notable Quotables with an every other week compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media.)
■ December 19, 2016: Mainstream Media Scream: Will & Grace star sobs over ‘greatest prez’ Obama
(Washington Examiner post)
The tears have started to flow over the exit of President Obama.
Exhibit A is Will & Grace actress Megan Mullally, our weekly Mainstream Media Scream star. Appearing on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she recalled meeting Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at a White House Christmas party last week with her hubby Nick Offerman.
She described sobbing over Obama and begged him to stay. His response was a bit surprising, telling her, "we're not going anywhere."
From her appearance:
I said, 'Listen, I really love you and we don't want you to go.'
He gave me a hug and he said 'We're not going anywhere.'
And he walked out the door and, I mean, I'm not talking about a cute, single tear, I mean, burst into wrenching sobs, doubled over. Nick had to get out his handkerchief and sort of block me from view because I was embarrassing myself. But, you know, I mean, that's the greatest president and first lady in any of our lifetimes."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "The definition of a vacuous Hollywood star, blithely unaware of how her sycophantic gushing should be embarrassing. She's 58 years old, yet sounds like a 'tween meeting the leader of a boy band."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ December 12: Mainstream Media Scream: Media try to delegitimize Trump’s victory
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features one of many media efforts to question the legitimacy of President-elect Trump's victory by highlighting concerns that the Russians influenced the election on his behalf.
On CBS Face the Nation, for example, Slate's chief political correspondent, Jamelle Bouie, raised the specter that the "election was In some sense illegitimate."
Host John Dickerson: Jamelle, as Michael [Duffy of Time magazine] points out, that the distinction here on the CIA and what they seem to have found, what's new here. We heard about Russian involvement potentially while the election was going on, but what seems to be new is that it was targeted to help Donald Trump. That seems to be the new development – that in order to just update people on where things are.
Slate's Jamelle Bouie: Right, exactly. We've sort of had to acknowledge and suspicion that the Russian government has been involved in, you know, helping leak documents like and engaging in election interference that way, but that's different. That's materially different than the suggestion that, hey, they were doing this specifically to help Donald Trump.
I'm sort of in this place right now where I'm not entirely sure, beyond investigations, beyond sort of serious scrutiny of this, what we do about this, because it really is unprecedented. And if — if it is true, if we have further verification of this, then what it suggests potentially is that the election was in some sense illegitimate. And I don't know where you go from there.
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Question is: Who did more to interfere in the integrity of the U.S. election? The American news media which forwarded its own 'fake news' to discredit Trump or, if Russia really is behind the hacking, Putin's regime which disclosed some emails that revealed truths about what Clinton's team thought of her opponents?"
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ December 5: Mainstream Media Scream: Sally Field declares Trump a fraud
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features the one-time Flying Nun, actress Sally Field, going off on President-elect Trump as a fraud.
Appearing on Netflix's "Chelsea," hosted by Chelsea Handler, Field's attack seemed ironic since on the same day of the episode release Trump was making good on his promise to save jobs by appearing at a Carrier plant in Indiana to celebrate with the employees.
Said Field:
"I want to know what other people are thinking. I want to know why they voted for this man who does not stand for anything and has no real evidence, there is no evidence, if you look at his past, if you look at his history, there is no evidence that he can do one single thing that he says he's going to do, not one single thing.
"He has shown to be everything that he accuses and has accused Hillary Clinton of being. It is now evident he is all of those things, every single thing that he accused her of."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Don't take any stock picking advice from the flying nun, or anyone else in the Hollywood Left, who are so afflicted with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that they can't see beyond their own hatreds. Should be a fun next few years if Field and friends expect Trump to always fail."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ November 28: Mainstream Media Scream: Media can’t take Kellyanne Conway’s charge of bias
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features Meet the Press host Chuck Todd shutting down Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway's criticism of the media.
When Todd, on Sunday's Meet the Press, asked Conway about what President-elect Trump will do to resolve conflicts of interest with his businesses around the world, Conway came at him by questioning how Trump has been treated by the media, especially to how President Obama was greeted in 2008.
Kellyanne Conway: "I went back and looked at what all the press clips and the conversations on shows like this were eight years ago. It was basically debating just how cool Barack Obama is. So we should at least, if we're not going to do that about President-elect Trump, we should, at the very least, trust him to do the right thing and comply with the law here."
Chuck Todd: "I understand every knee-jerk pushback is going to be to blame the media. That's a crutch. I get it. And I'm used to it."
Conway: "Not by me."
Todd: "But it's not the fact."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Todd's quick rejection, of Conway's obviously accurate recollection of how the media oozed over then-President-elect Barack Obama eight years ago, showed she clearly hit a very raw nerve. He knows it's true and contrasts with the media's hostility toward President-elect Trump."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ November 21: Mainstream Media Scream: Carl Bernstein joins in Sessions slamming
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features famed former Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein expressing his sadness at Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions being named attorney general by President-elect Donald Trump.
His money line: Sessions won't even be as good as a former KKK member who made it on the court.
Bernstein appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, hosted by John Berman:
"That's the sadness here. The Department of Justice — great attorneys general like Robert Kennedy — the reason we have civil rights in this country and they have been enforced has been because of great attorneys general. Jeff Sessions is not someone who has made his mark by becoming a great advocate for civil rights in this country. That's the sadness of this.
"Look, there have been people who were in the Ku Klux Klan and senators from Alabama — namely Hugo Black — who became a great liberal Supreme Court justice and was confirmed by the Senate after he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
"I don't think we're going to see — I would love it if Jeff Sessions becomes a great advocate for civil rights for all Americans — but he's going to win in the confirmation hearing — but you can't look at this appointment separate from the other four names we've been talking about and what that signal is to all Americans of where Donald Trump is going. And they are, quite frankly, poking in the eye."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Bernstein's high dudgeon outrage is a sure sign TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) will last well past election night and into the new administration's formation. Message to Bernstein: If you find yourself regretting someone isn't as inspiring as a former member of the KKK, you've lost your way."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ November 14: Mainstream Media Scream: The bitter left media in four TV clips
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features a montage of TV clips from left media that pretty much size up their view of President-elect Trump and his supporters.
In order:
Bill Maher Friday night on his HBO show, Real Time:
"They're going to get rid of ObamaCare, probably get rid of Roe vs. Wade. Enjoy your victory, Trump voters. Because when you're dying because you don't have health insurance to treat the infection you got for a back alley abortion you had to get because of fetal lead poisoning, you can say to yourself, at least I didn't vote for someone with a private email server."
Musician John Legend, later on Maher's show:
"We hear him questioning the citizenship of the first black president, then we hear him calling Mexicans rapists and murderers that are coming into the country. Then he's saying he wants to ban Muslims from the country. We hear all that and we can't get past that. I guess half of the country could get past that and vote for him because of his 'Make America Great Again' slogan or his promise to bring jobs that he's not going to bring back. But we can't get past him saying those things and we'll never get past that and the fact that so many Americans voted for that guy who's selling them a load of bullshit and racism, we'll never get past that."
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, also on Real Time:
"This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside and we did this to ourselves."
Joy Reid, host of MSNBC's AM Joy, on Saturday morning, November 12, fretting that Germany, once the center of Nazism, is a better nation than the U.S. which is now beset by neo-Nazism:
"How awkward is it that the country that dealt with Nazism is now the country that we're all looking to with hope that has a woman president, free college, and is being looked at as the leader of the free world while we have neo-Nazism a la Breitbart.com about to get a seat in the White House. My head hurts — what about yours?"
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Proof positive liberals haven't learned anything from the election results. Angry, bitter and still trying to smear the motives of those who vote differently than do they while condescendingly lecturing everyone for not appreciating the great benefits of big government liberalism."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ November 7: Mainstream Media Scream: NBC praises ‘extraordinary, magical’ Hillary
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features legendary NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell praising a campaign Hillary Rodham Clinton rally as "extraordinary" and "magical."
Live on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show from a Clinton rally in Manchester N.H. Sunday night, she said:
"It's been extraordinary, I got to tell you Rachel. First of all, she did not mention the e-mail controversy, as you noted, in her earlier appearance in Cleveland with LeBron James trying to rally the black vote....James Taylor played for 45 minutes. It was extraordinary. And I thought, well that is so mellow and such a wow, how does Khizr Kahn follow that? He came and this crowd was on their feet screaming for Khizr Khan with his heartbreaking story about his son and a message against bullying. This has been a sort of magical night, staying on message and trying to recapture the momentum going into the final day."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Mitchell keeps earning her reputation as the most enthusiastic Hillary Clinton sycophant in the news media. If Clinton wins, Mitchell won't have to adjust her presentations an iota to fit right in as the White House Press Secretary."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ October 31: Mainstream Media Scream: GOP accused of ‘treason’ in fighting Hillary
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features CNN political contributor Van Jones declaring that GOP "obstruction" to a President Hillary Rodham Clinton amounts to "treason."
It came during Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. After Maher predicted Republicans will investigate Clinton immediately after she takes office, quipping they'll do it on Inauguration day, "like she'll be testifying in a ball gown," Jones responded:
"You know, listen, they have forgotten the difference between being a party of opposition and a party of obstruction. There's great honor in being a party of opposition, you know, saying, 'Listen, we think your ideas are wrong. We can make them better.' But when you just stop the entire government from functioning, there's a word for that: treason. That's the word. It's treason. You have to do your job. You have to do your job. You take an oath. Period."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "The Oxford dictionary defines treason as: 'The crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government.' Republicans who plan to oppose the agenda of a President Hillary Clinton are hardly overthrowing a government. Having such a regular face on CNN impugn them of such a capital crime helps explain why those on the right have little respect for the cable news channel."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ October 24: Mainstream Media Scream: MSNBC rips Fox, says ‘Trump like Swastika’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features a top MSNBC show discussing the possibility of a Donald Trump cable network taking over from Fox.
On Sunday's AM Joy, Joy Reid 'dissed the competition and featured a panel that slapped Fox as "too lazy to join" the KKK and called Donald Trump like a "Swastika.'"
In a discussion about potential post-election Trump TV venture, Reid said, "I actually think – and you probably know better than I do – there are people who say that Fox News doesn't hate Muslims enough, isn't angry enough about immigration, that Megyn Kelly is too tough on Trump surrogates. There is an audience that's further to the right because it's on Breitbart.com right now."
Panelist and comedian Dean Obeidallah, added, "Finally a network for people who find Fox News too intellectual, and too warm and fuzzy, and too lazy to join the Klan. So you can sit home and watch this stuff. But, you know what, and a great morning show of Mel Gibson and Paula Dean together in the morning for the base. Here's the reality. We've watched Fox, we've watched Trump TV, a preview the last about 15, 16 months. It's horrifying. It is bone-chilling.
"We've seen a spike in emboldening in hate of anti-Semitism, of white nationalists. Anti-Muslim hate crimes have spiked in the last few weeks by self-professed Trump supporters. I'm not guessing they're Trump supporters. Last weekend alone, two mosques defaced with the word 'Trump.' To his supporters, the name 'Trump' is becoming a modern day version of the Swastika. So I fear that this is an IV drip of hate."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Such condescending disdain for a significant portion of the population, trying to smear many Trump supporters as deplorable racists, may be funny to MSNBC producers, but it's likely humorous to few others. Obeidallah shouldn't try this routine beyond MSNBC."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ October 17: Mainstream Media Scream: It’s Trump’s fault press ignoring Clinton-WikiLeaks
(Washington Examiner post)
Apparently, the mainstream media can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
Exhibit one is our Mainstream Media Scream of the week. It was during Sunday's "Meet the Press" when NBC White House reporter Kristen Welker said that it's Trump's fault the media isn't focused on the thousands of embarrassing Clinton campaign emails leaked out by WikiLeaks.
To nods of agreement from the media panel, she said, "I can't tell you how many times this past week journalists have said, 'What would this news cycle look like if we hadn't had the 2005 tape of Donald Trump, if these allegations hadn't come forward from all of these women?' I mean, we would be almost solely focused on these WikiLeaks. And yet, Donald Trump continues to kind of make these unforced errors."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "The whopper of the week! If only Donald Trump would stop forcing us to cover his alleged misdeeds, we journalists would be zealously pursuing WikiLeaks revelations damaging to Hillary Clinton – as if journalists currently couldn't devote the same level of attention to both, if they really wanted to do so."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ October 10: Mainstream Media Scream: CNN compares Trump to Hitler, Stalin
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features a post-debate analysis of Donald Trump's statement that he'd put Hillary Rodham Clinton "in jail" if he was president and she was facing charges linked to her email scandal.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash were discussing this clash in the debate:
CLINTON: "It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country."
TRUMP: "Because you'd be in jail."
CNN's analysis unfolded this way:
Wolf Blitzer: "One candidate says not only is he going to put forward a special prosecutor to investigate his rival, but – and this is very significant – he's going to put her in jail if he's elected president of the United States. That's pretty extraordinary."
Dana Bash: "Okay, not to sound too corny, but what makes this country different from countries with dictators in Africa or Stalin or Hitler or any of those countries with dictators and totalitarian leaders, is that when they took over, they put their opponents in jail. To hear one presidential candidate, say – even if it was a flip comment, which it was – 'you're going to be in jail' to another presidential candidate on the debate stage in the United States of America, stunning, just stunning."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Quite a bit of baseless indignation from the CNN crew. All Trump did was quip 'you'd be in jail' if he were president – simply suggesting that she would have been held accountable by a fair and impartial Justice Department. That's a long way from Stalin and Hitler and the inability of Blitzer and Bash, who are quick to presume the worst in Trump, to understand that is what's 'stunning.'"
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ October 3: Mainstream Media Scream: Bill Maher calls Trump sons ‘axe murderers’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features maybe one of the nastiest attacks on the Trump family, this time from HBO funnyman Bill Maher calling Donald Jr. and Eric Trump axe murderers and comparing them to the lethal sons of former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein.
In his "New Rules" segment on Friday's Real Time on HBO, host-comedian Maher delivered a particularly personal and vicious assault on Donald Trump's sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, calling them "psychos," who may put "plastic over the furniture so they can axe murder prostitutes while discussing Phil Collins."
To laughter from the Los Angeles audience, Maher asserted:
"Donald Trump also once said, 'sometimes people will come into my office and they'll look great, sound great, dress beautifully. Everything is great. Then after you hire them they turn out to be morons.' Which explains his sons, Uday and Qusay. I mean, Trump senior in the White House is bad enough without these two American psychos, putting plastic over the furniture so they can axe murder prostitutes while discussing Phil Collins."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Maher may think he's being cute in disguising his left-wing hatreds within jokes, but he's not fooling anyone. You can't bemoan Donald Trump's crassness while simultaneously making crude personal insults towards Trump's family."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ September 26: Mainstream Media Scream: Stephanopoulos ‘in the tank for Hillary’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, ABC's "Chief Anchor," calling on the media to highlight the "dishonesty" of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
On his Sunday show, "This Week," he said to New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman:
"The [New York] Times got attention last week when they called out a Trump lie on the front page of Saturday's paper. You've got another article in the paper doing that this week. Whose job is it, and is the Hillary Clinton team right when they complain about this double standard, they say 'well voters think she's dishonest in part because the media hasn't done its job calling out the dishonesty of Donald Trump'?"
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Of all the concerns to have hours before the first debate, only someone in the tank for Hillary could have this one. Calling out the dishonesty of Trump is about all the media have been doing for the past few weeks. And suggesting people think she's dishonest because they don't realize how dishonest he is, is ludicrous."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ September 19: Mainstream Media Scream: NYT’s Dowd tells the truth, elites loves Hillary
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream, for the first time, is a cheer for a giant in the media world blowing the whistle on her friends who want to give Hillary Rodham Clinton a free pass.
We feature Maureen Dowd of the New York Times who told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that her friends won't even read her interviews with Republican Donald Trump, choosing to censor GOP news as well as negative stories about Clinton.
Asked by Todd to describe the "East Coast freak out" among "the elites" over Clinton falling in the polls, Dowd replied:
"Well my friends, one of my friends, Leon Wieseltier, calls it a national emergency. And my friends won't even read any, if I do interviews with Donald Trump, they won't read them. And basically they would like to censor any stories about Trump and also censor any negative stories about Hillary. They think she should have a total free pass. Because as she said at that fundraiser recently, 'I'm the only thing standing between you and the abyss.'"
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "I thought the media already were giving Hillary a free pass? All kidding aside, sort of, this scream goes not to a journalist, but to those who prefer to get their news from the New York Times. Dowd did a good service in revealing the intolerant attitudes of liberals and it might help explain how the Times slants its coverage to satisfy its readers."
Rating: Five happy faces.
■ September 12: Mainstream Media Scream: Clinton ‘correct, accurate’ on Trump ‘deplorables’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features Jamelle Bouie of Slate on CBS's Face the Nation saying that Hillary Rodham Clinton was "correct and accurate" to call Donald Trump's supporters "deplorables."
Bouie on Face the Nation:
"I'm inclined to see it as strategy and not so much as a gaffe because when I heard the remark, well, my first question was: Is this true? Right? Regardless of how it sounds, what it looks like, is it — what is the case about Donald Trump supporters? And if you break down the numbers and you look at the RealClearPolitics average, and it gives Trump up about 43 percent of registered voters. So it's about 30, 31 million people.
"Compare that to polls that show 65 to 70 percent of all Republicans who say Barack Obama either wasn't born in the United States or is a Muslim. You look at pilot data from the American National Election Study, and it shows upwards of 40 percent of Republicans saying things like, 'Blacks are more violent, blacks are lazier, Muslims are more violent, Muslims are lazier.' Among Trump supporters in particular, 60, 50, 70 percent of them agree with statements that political scientists categorize as being explicitly racist.
"So I'm looking at Clinton's statement, and half — which is about 31 million people again — doesn't really seem that out of bounds; 40 to 50 percent of Republicans, I would say, looking at the full spectrum of data, agree with beliefs that we would categorize as explicitly prejudiced. So regardless of whether or not Clinton needs to walk it back or not, I think she's being correct and accurate."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Bouie demonstrated the synergy between Hillary Clinton and the media elite, both with disdain for the masses, assuming the worst motives behind those tired of liberal Washington policies. Of course, journalists like Bouie didn't jump in 2012 to defend the accuracy of Mitt Romney's characterization of 47 percent as those 'who are dependent upon government' and pay no income tax, gleefully treating that accurate assertion as a damaging gaffe."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ September 6: MainstreamScream: Slate editor calls Trump ‘some rancid meat’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features the editor of Slate suggesting that Republican Donald Trump is "rancid meat" to Hillary Rodham Clinton's healthy apple.
Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of Slate, described Trump as "rancid meat," as in not an orange in an apples and oranges analogy. On Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN, in a segment about how Trump is being "graded on a curve" by a too soft media, he told host Brian Stelter:
"The structure of covering politics is you compare an apple and an orange, they have different attributes, but they're both fruits and you can take your pick. In this case we have something more like an apple and some rancid meat."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Taking up Weisberg's reasoning, assessing journalists you have apples and oranges – some are hard news reporters and others are opinionated columnists or bloggers – but all are fruits. Then there's Weisberg's souring of the whole profession by making clear he doesn't even believe in the pretense of equal treatment of the candidates picked by millions who voted in the primaries of our two major political parties."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ August 29: Mainstream Scream: MSNBC’s Mika wants Trump mentally evaluated
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream finds a leading liberal TV pundit taking a page out of a Clinton-Obama advisor's anti-Donald Trump playbook. We feature MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski calling for a mental evaluation of the GOP presidential nominee.
It came Monday as the show reacted to Trump's tweet about the killing of the cousin of NBA star Dwayne Wade. In it, Trump said, "Dwayne Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!"
Brzezinski said, "I actually think it's time to hear from somebody in the mental health community. To look at this person, who has been on television for months, and to give us a sense of what we have going on here. And, I'm sorry, let's stop pretending we're dealing with someone who we can completely understand. And when you see someone who you think has problems, you know it. And there's not anybody at this table who doesn't think he has some sort of problem. Let's ask the questions. Let's do this at this point. Let's set up someone and ask the questions."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Brzezinski long ago proved she's no independent journalist, but her hostility to Trump – talk about mental issues — has verged on the obsessive."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ August 15: Mainstream Scream: Meryl Streep says ‘very recent’ women ‘admitted to U.S. with our rights’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features one of the more interesting Hollywood head scratchers to the Big Media, this time actress Meryl Streep to CBS This Morning.
Asked by host Charlie Rose to recall her experience addressing to the Democratic National Convention, where she introduced Hillary Clinton, actress Meryl Streep said on Wednesday's CBS This Morning:
"It was personal. It was sort of, it meant an enormous amount to me because I just felt the press of history behind me. I felt my grandmother and my mother, imagining what they would feel. My mother was born before women could vote. It's very recent that we've been admitted to the United States with our rights, and so I felt it was a moment in history and I felt like I was surfing this huge wave of wonderfulness."
She was on the CBS morning show to promote, with Hugh Grant, her new movie, Florence Foster Jenkins.
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "By Streep's standard that 1920 is 'very recent,' the Calvin Coolidge presidency was 'very recent.' Her formulation about getting 'admitted to the United States with our rights' displays a remarkable degree of bitterness for a wealthy woman who has always had the right to vote, but I guess that reflects how liberals are always quick to see the worst in America."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ August 8: Mainstream Scream: ‘AM Joy’ says Clinton email scandal too hard to understand
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features a new line of spin from MSNBC weekend host Joy Reid about why Hillary Rodham Clinton's email scandal isn't damaging to the Democratic presidential candidate.
The host of AM Joy appeared on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday where she described Hillary's email scandal as too complicated for the public to understand:
"I think the blessing and the curse for Hillary Clinton is that the e-mail story is complicated. So, the curse for her is that trying to explain it, her answers are so detailed and complicated, that when you're explaining you're losing...
"But, it's also so complicated that when you talk to voters they don't really get it. What they do understand is that they have gmail, so it doesn't sound like something criminal. So that when Donald Trump goes over the top and tries to say that it's something criminal, he kind of loses the audience too. It's a blessing and a curse."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "Maybe people would better understand Hillary's misdeeds if liberal political operatives turned TV hosts, such as Reid, put as much effort into explaining to their viewers the importance of what Hillary did to avoid accountability, as they do to explaining away its relevance."
Rating: Three out of five screams.
■ August 1: Mainstream Scream: Media says GOP convention, by 12-1 margin, more negative
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream looks at the bottom line in the coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions, and finds that the GOP confab was declared negative and nasty by a 12 to 1 margin.
Mainstream media pulled no punches in slamming the Republicans. Some that featured Democrats on air slamming Republican speeches during the GOP convention refused to put on Republicans to critique the Democratic speakers.
"Every four years, the party conventions give the establishment news media a chance to provide even-handed coverage of the two parties. Once again, unfortunately, the networks have shown their obvious bias in favor of the liberals that rule the Democratic Party," said Rich Noyes, research director at the Media Research Center which helps Secrets ferret out the worst cases of liberal media bias.
Typically we feature one single pick for your weekly Mainstream Media Scream feature, but Noyes produced a very notable and comprehensive wrap-up of the two weeks of political conventions that displays in black and white the disparity in coverage.
For example, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC slammed the GOP convention as more negative than the Democratic gathering 63-5.
Also, Republican critics of Democratic speeches were missing in action. MSNBC, for example, featured five Democrats commenting on Republicans during primetime but barred Republicans from primetime during the Democratic convention.
■ July 25: Mainstream Scream: ABC host lets Democrat label George Wallace a Republican
(Washington Examiner post)
ABC's George Stephanopoulos is our featured Mainstream Media screamer for helping keep alive the false belief that one-time presidential candidate and race-baiter Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was a Republican, not a proud Democrat.
Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat, was on ABC's This Week Sunday when he identified the long-time segregationist Wallace, twice a Democratic candidate for president, as a Republican: "We do have the worst Republican nominee since George Wallace."
Wallace was never a Republican and never won the nomination of either major party, though he was the candidate in 1968 of the American Independent Party. He ran in the Democratic presidential primaries in both 1972 and 1976.
Without offering a correction, host Stephanopoulos moved on to a question to another guest, Republican Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma who did inform the audience that Wallace was a Democrat.
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "How embarrassing. Apparently so deluded by the media regularly characterizing Republicans as racists, Ellison just presumed a notorious segregationist must be Republican. And Stephanopoulos didn't even recognize such a false presumption that glosses over more than a century of the Democratic Party's history. Groupthink in action."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ July 18: Mainstream Scream: Matthews blames Trump for violence, ‘causes trouble’
(Washington Examiner post)
CLEVELAND — MSNBC's Hardball host Chris Matthews is our featured Mainstream Media screamer this week for his rant against Republican Donald Trump on the cable network just as the Republican presidential candidate was to publicly unveil Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate on Saturday.
Matthews said:
"There'll be trouble and we all know that and we're all taking precautions for that. We expect to be a lot of protests. Hopefully it'll limited to peaceful protests, but there will be a lot of action outside the convention hall which will grab the attention of the cameras. It will be a raucous event next week. We know that because Trump is a magnet. He's a lightning rod, whatever the metaphor is, he causes trouble with other people who see him as the enemy. African-Americans, we saw that at that downtown Chicago rally that he held. We saw it in San Diego with the Hispanic, the Latino population there showing up. Sometimes it seems like he's out there trying to roil it up to create trouble, but it comes, and all those groups, organized or not, are going to see Cleveland as a chance to express themselves.
"They don't like being called rapists. If you're a Latino, you don't want to be called a rapist. If you're an African-American, you see this guy as a man who called the President of the United States basically an illegal immigrant, somebody born in Africa who somehow pulled the wool over our eyes and made himself eligible for the presidency. That will not to be forgotten, and so there's a lot of enemies out there of Donald Trump who will show up in Cleveland. Let's hope they express themselves with the right way, with the way with words and loud noise and, perhaps, some excitement, but not in a violent way, but we know that that's going to be a big part of the story here. This convention could be like '68, the Democratic convention in Chicago."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: "Matthews is as messed up as usual in his reasoning, justifying violence as a rational response to views with which people disagree. If people turned violent against Matthews every time he said something offensive, he'd have a lot of bruises."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
■ July 11, 2016: Media Scream: CNN talker says last time America was great was 2008
(Washington Examiner post)
The national discussion on race relations is front and center in this week's Mainstream Media Scream with a CNN commentator's suggestion that race relations have been paying a price for the election of Barack Obama.
CNN political commentator Angela Rye, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, appeared on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS:
"The fact that his [Donald Trump] campaign slogan could be 'Make America Great Again,' and that pains me and people who look like me to no end. The fact that he could reference something like Operation Wetback, in a debate, where hundreds of our Mexican brothers and sisters were killed, slaughtered, and taken out of this country because someone didn't allow them to be here anymore is exactly the problem. The last time America was great to me, Fareed, was in 2008 when [Obama] was elected president, and ever since then, we've been paying the price for that."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "CNN isn't doing much to improve race relations when they showcase a commentator who views the country through a racial prism in which the U.S. was only great during the fleeting moment of electing a black president."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
■ July 5, 2016: Mainstream Scream: Whoopi slaps media for kicking Hillary’s ‘a— for 30 years’
(Washington Examiner post)
This week's Mainstream Media Scream features the View's Whoopi Goldberg blasting the media for being unfair for Hillary Clinton, and kicking "her a— for 30 years."
"As you know, the media cannot not take credit for having pushed some of these things about Hillary. I understand why she doesn't want — why her people don't want her talking to folks. Because, whenever you get a Hillary Clinton story, there's always some twist with it," she said on the Wednesday show.
She added, "There's always some — something with it. And I think they just felt like, listen, you've kicked her ass for, you know, 30 years. And so, we don't — we're not going to just give you — I'm just telling you how I'm looking at it. As a person from the outside. I'm not a journalist. Never wanted to be. Don't care about it, okay. But, I do understand, keeping people away from journalists because now, because facts don't matter, people are going to write what they want."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick of the week: "'Not a journalist,' indeed, but she acts just like one on TV – living in a bubble where the media have been tough on Hillary Clinton and rationalizing the presumptive Democratic nominee's refusal to take questions from anyone but friendly reporters. The last time someone at ABC News interviewed Clinton, the night she declared victory after the California primary, World News Tonight anchor David Muir buttered her up: 'You told me in September that you still hear your mother's voice....What would she say to you as you walk on the stage tonight?'"
Rating: Four out of five screams.
> Mainstream Media Screams for January through June 2016.
> For July to December 2015.
> Newer, starting in January of 2017 and going forward.
