The MRC@25: The Worst Media Bias of 2012

NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala tomorrow evening. (Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2011.)

Today, the worst bias of 2012 (so far): Newsweek sees Barack Obama as “grotesquely underappreciated,” afflicted by critics who are simply “dumb;” Chief Justice John Roberts becomes a media hero by voting to save ObamaCare; and an ex-CNN correspondent charges Republicans are trying to take the country back “to the good old days of Jim Crow.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Co-host Ann Curry: “The Center of [sic] Budget and Policy Priorities...says 62 percent of the savings in your budget would come from cutting programs for the poor, that between eight and ten million people would be kicked off of food stamps, that you would cut Medicare by $200 billion, Medicaid and other health programs by something like $770 billion. Where is the empathy in this budget?... Do you acknowledge that poor people will suffer under this budget-”
Representative Paul Ryan: “No. No.”
Curry: “-that you have shown a lack of empathy to poor people in this budget?”
— NBC’s Today, April 10, 2012. Ryan’s budget blueprint would actually increase Medicare spending by 70% over the next ten years and Medicaid and other health spending by 31% over the same time period.


“Given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb.... What I see in front of my nose is a President whose character, record, and promise remain as grotesquely underappreciated now as they were absurdly hyped in 2008. And I feel confident that sooner rather than later, the American people will come to see his first term from the same calm, sane perspective. And decide to finish what they started.”
— Andrew Sullivan in Newsweek’s January 23, 2012 cover story, ‘Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?’


“You don’t have to love classical music to be amazed that Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony while deaf, or be a fan of the old New York Giants to marvel at Willie Mays’ catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. For legal buffs, the virtuoso performance of Chief Justice John Roberts in deciding the biggest case of his career was just that sort of jaw dropper, no matter how they might feel about ObamaCare. Not since King Solomon offered to split the baby has a judge engineered a slicker solution to a bitterly divisive dispute.”
— Time’s David von Drehle starting off his July 16, 2012 cover story, “Roberts Rules.”


 

“These seem to be appeals to the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. That is to say that there continues to be among many conservatives a real resentment against blacks....I think this is very intentional, it is pandering, there’s sort of a wink-wink that this base should be reminded that Barack Obama, President of the United States, is one of them, an African-American. Yes, I think this is very intentional. I think it is part of a hateful campaign that is being very methodically run in the hope it’s going to appeal to voters who would love to see us return to the good old days of Jim Crow.”
— Former CNN correspondent Bob Franken talking about the GOP candidates on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, January 6, 2012.

For the full rundown of the 100 worst media quotes of the past 25 years, visit our “25th Anniversary” section.