Scott Whitlock's blog

ABC News has, thus far, ignored its own revelation that, contrary to insinuations made by Barack Obama, the then-private citizen and his wife "were making enough to be considered 'wealthy' by the president’s own definition in the years before his loans were paid off." ABC relegated this story to a posting on its website, not mentioning it on Wednesday's World News or Nightline.

The story was similarly skipped on Thursday's Good Morning America. World News did touch on student loans, but only to accuse Mitt Romney of flip-flipping on the issue. David Muir dug up a clip of the Republican telling a college student to shop around and not expect the government to bail him out.

MSNBC's Chris Jansing on Wednesday didn't exactly press Jimmy Carter as she interviewed the ex-President, wondering if Mitt Romney has "gone too far" with conservatism "to be trusted."

Carter appeared to disagree with his former presidential speechwriter, Chris Matthews, who smeared the former Massachusetts governor as a KKK "Grand Wizard" on Monday. Carter asserted he'd be "comfortable" with a "moderate" like Romney. Not seeming to accept this, Jansing pressed, "Do you think that he has gone too far into the conservative positions and do you think that that makes him difficult to be trusted?"

Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza definitively declared on Tuesday's Hardball that for the 2012 race, Barack Obama is "cool" and Mitt Romney is "not cool." Host Chris Matthews, trying to prove his hipness, wondered aloud, "Can you dig it?"

Fellow Post writer Nia-Malika Henderson then attempted to explain what the "kids" these days are saying. After a clip of Obama on the Jimmy Fallon show, Cillizza proclaimed, "The one thing that I would point out that I think is fascinating about this race...[Obama] is cool. Mitt Romney is not cool."

Over a combined total of nine and a half hours of programming, CBS, NBC and ABC allowed a mere 72 seconds of coverage to the news, Monday, that Social Security will go bankrupt three years earlier than previously expected. ABC's World News and NBC's Nightly News skipped the subject entirely.

The same networks that offered copious amounts of stories to a vague threat of future global warming disaster, found little interest in the coming problems of Social Security.  Scott Pelley briefly explained on Monday's Evening News: "Medicare will run out of money in 2024. Social Security retirement benefits run out in 2033. But Social Security disability benefits will be exhausted long before that, in 2016."

An unhinged Chris Matthews on Monday excoriated Republican primary voters as racist, deriding them as the "Grand Wizard crowd." Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele fought back,  slamming "this Grand Wizard nonsense." "Don't go there with me," he warned. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

After Steele informed the Hardball anchor that subjects such as climate change weren't big issues in the GOP primary, Matthews slimed, "It certainly was in the Grand Wizard crowd over there." The liberal host tried to move on, but his guest stopped the conversation dead: "Wait, I resent that! No. Come on. What is this Grand Wizard nonsense? Are you saying that we're Ku Klux Klan?" "Give me a break," the former RNC chair dismissed.

ABC reporter and global warming enthusiast Bill Blakemore on Sunday condescendingly dismissed climate change skeptics as "denialists." In a piece on ABCNews.com, he called for yet more advocacy on the part of journalists.

After noting that confidence in the science of climate change has varied from year to year, Blakemore huffed that these beliefs "don't seem to be responding all that much, [Professor Jon Krosnick] says, to whatever the global warming denialist campaigns may have been doing."

CBS's Bill Plante on Friday downplayed graphic photos of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with severed body parts of suicide bombers as a GOP "distraction," insisting that Republicans were "somehow" trying to portray this (and other issues) as a failure of leadership. None of the networks wondered if this reflected poorly on Barack Obama.

Since the Los Angeles Times first reported the 2010 pictures, ABC has only offered one report, airing on World News. CBS allowed a lone segment on the April 18 Evening News and a brief mention by Plante on Friday's This Morning. He spun, "...Republicans keep pointing out several recent distractions: this incident, the troops posing with body parts in Afghanistan, and the big party that the General Services Administration threw itself in Las Vegas." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The big three networks have, thus far, shown little interest in investigating the nearly one million dollars in commuting costs spent by Barack Obama's Defense Secretary. According to the Washington Times, Leon Panetta's weekend flights home cost $32,000 and have totaled $860,000 as of early April.

Yet, ABC, NBC and CBS have skipped this subject, even as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was pressed on it, Wednesday. Yet, on January 29, 2012, 60 Minutes profiled Panetta about his California farm. Journalist Scott Pelley puffed, "He and his brother planted these walnut trees sixty-five years ago with their father...Did you pick the walnuts?"  

Apparently, Hardball anchor Chris Matthews doesn't watch his own network. On Wednesday, the liberal cable host piously proclaimed that liberals would never compare a conservative to a dictator such as Joseph Stalin: "...People don't do that," he sputtered. However, on February 14, 2012, MSNBC host Martin Bashir outrageously linked Rick Santorum to genocidal murderer Joseph Stalin. [See video of both clips below. MP3 audio here.]

After highlighting a critic who insisted the Republican was straight out of the 13th century, Bashir smeared, "If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like Stalin than Pope Innocent III." Yet, according to Matthews on April 18th, "But if you were to say that to a conservative...you're really on a slippery slope to extreme rightism...you're basically over there with Mussolini and Hitler- But people don't do that." Maybe just MSNBC hosts do such things?

MSNBC's Martin Bashir, who previously compared Rick Santorum to genocidal murderer Joseph Stalin, on Wednesday mocked the concept that MSNBC could be biased against Republicans. A network graphic dismissed, "Paranoia? Romney: More Media Should Be as 'Fair' as Fox News."

After playing clips of Mitt Romney decrying liberal media bias, Bashir huffed, "This is pretty rich from a man who hasn't appeared on Meet the Press, whose spokesman won't even accept an invitation to appear on this broadcast." Why would Republicans come on Bashir's show? In addition to comparing Santorum to a dictatorial mass killer, this same anchor linked Newt Gingrich's political comments to the murder of a British teen. [See MP3 audio here.]

Of the three major networks, only ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday covered the "dog wars" counterattack by Mitt Romney's operatives. Co-anchor George Stephanopoulos highlighted that the campaign is "tweeting around a picture of the President and trying to focus on a revelation he made in his memoir, that he actually tried dog when he was a young boy in Indonesia." 

CBS This Morning and NBC's Today both skipped the story. The Romney team used the dog-eating revelation from Obama's book to hit back on Democratic complaints that the Republican once put his dog on the car roof during a vacation. On January 31, 2012, Today made sure to bring up that liberal talking point.

MSNBC analyst David Goodfriend appeared on Tuesday's Dylan Ratigan Show to slime the National Rifle Association as having "blood on its hands." Goodfriend, who was only identified as a Democratic strategist in an onscreen graphic, accused the pro-Second Amendment group of killing people via legislation: "Americans are dead because of what the NRA has done."

Goodfriend's diatribe was labeled an editorial "rant" by MSNBC, but typical of the network's hateful tone. Goodfriend's proof? He cited the anti-gun, liberal Brady Center and shilled for donations: "Folks, please go to www.BradyCenter.org. You'll see a picture of George Zimmerman and a quote: 'I am the NRA.' Just above that, you'll see a donate button. Do it!" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

ABC, the same network that provided softball interviews with Barack Obama on such subjects as singing and Abraham Lincoln, featured an aggressive, hard-hitting segment with Mitt and Ann Romney, recycling the President's talking points. On Monday's World News, Diane Sawyer parroted, "President Obama threw down a kind of gauntlet to you over the weekend. And he said, release 12 years of your tax returns." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

After the Republican presidential candidate refused, Sawyer pushed, "Release 12 years. If you have nothing to hide, why not release 12 years as your father [Governor George Romney] did?" Sawyer brought up Romney's Mormon faith, prompting, "Would you sit down sometime and really talk the two of you about something that holds a lot of curiosity for people?"

MSNBC on Monday featured 9/11 truther and network analyst Toure to slam the "paternalistic" Bill Cosby for suggesting the Trayvon Martin shooting is more about guns than it is about race. Toure derided this "dangerous sentiment" as "not at all true" and implied that the popular comedian is dumb: "But in terms of nuanced political thinking, [Cosby] has not shown himself to be a big fan of that."

Toure used Cosby's recent comments as a jumping off point to scold the former sitcom star: "And he has quite often said things that put him into the category of, with friends like these, who needs enemies?" Specifically, Toure bashed Cosby for talking about "a lack of morality in the black community." News Nation host Tamron Hall was so taken aback, she sputtered, "But Bill Cosby is not anti-black. What are you saying?"  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Ten days after ABC and CBS's morning shows covered a growing scandal at Barack Obama's General Services Administration (GSA), NBC's Today show finally discovered the "lavish" example of government waste, devoting a full report to the segment on Monday's program.

Reporter Lisa Myers described the investigation into the waste of close to a million dollars at a GSA conference in Las Vegas. After completely ignoring the story for a week and a half, the Today correspondent conceded, "A government official taking the Fifth is not the kind of imagery any White House would hope for." She added that "top TSA officials appointed by President Obama" will have to explain why the administrator behind the swanky conference still received a $9,000 bonus.

NBC and CBS's evening and morning shows on Thursday and Friday finally discovered the ugly comments made by a Democratic operative against Ann Romney. After skipping the story Thursday morning, CBS Evening News reporters did their best to minimize it. Correspondent Nancy Cordes insisted that Hillary Rosen, who knocked Mrs. Romney for "never working," made sure to stress that the woman "is not connected to the Obama campaign, but Republicans called out the campaign anyway."

Anchor Scott Pelley offered a similarly dismissive attitude: "Democrats and Republicans tripped over one another to see who could denounce with the most force what most everyone agrees was a dumb comment from a single pundit." Cordes pointed out an 18 point lead  Barack Obama enjoys among women over Romney in one poll. On Friday's Good Morning America, reporter John Berman stressed this theme: "...Mitt Romney trails the President by 19 points among women. 19 points."

Journalist John Stossel left the liberal confines of ABC News "because it sucked there."  The libertarian reporter talked to the Heritage Foundation's Rob Bluey in an interview posted Thursday and exposed the liberal culture at his former network: "They were hostile to these ideas that have made us prosperous and I consider so important."

He added that ABC "tolerated" him and his good ratings, "But by the end, they were sort of saying, 'Oh, you're predictable, Stossel. All you want to do is libertarian economics all the time. I don't want to watch that.'" He joked that ABC preferred to do stories on how "[Michael Jackson's] still dead."

The NBC and CBS morning shows on Thursday completely skipped any mention of a nasty attack on Ann Romney by Democratic National Committee adviser (and frequent White House visitor) Hilary Rosen. Today and CBS This Morning both ignored Rosen's insult that Mrs. Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life."

Rosen's remarks were made on Wednesday's Anderson Cooper. Today did highlight news coming out of that CNN show, but it wasn't the Rosen story. It was Cooper's riveting "attack of the giggles" that Natalie Morales marveled over: "The CNN host just couldn't keep it together" and suffered a case of the "sillies." This, apparently, was the more important news emanating from Anderson Cooper 360. [See video of the actual Rosen comment below.]

The President on Tuesday made a major campaign offensive against his likely Republican opponent, but four out of the six network evening news and morning shows ignored it. Barack Obama's call to raise taxes only appeared on Tuesday's CBS Evening News and a brief sentence on Wednesday's Today.

CBS reporter Norah O'Donnell parroted, "Mr. Obama says making wealthier Americans pay more in taxes is an issue of fundamental fairness." At no point in the Evening News segment did O'Donnell feature any clips of someone opposing the so-called Buffett rule. She didn't even try to summerize opposition to the bill.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday mocked the liberal, pro-abortion bias of MSNBC, educating anchor Thomas Roberts about the so-called "war on women." After Priebus denied such an attack on females existed, Roberts dismissed, "But Chairman, how can you say that it's a fiction if you stand on the record on what the Republican Party has said and done? "

Priebus highlighted the pro-Obama spin of MSNBC, taking it right to the network: "If you believe that all women are pro-abortion, maybe in your own world, maybe there's a war on women." An indignant Roberts huffed, "I think he term is pro-choice." Continuing to call out MSNBC, Priebus attacked, "...You and I are never going to be on same page because I happen to believe that life begins at conception and you don't." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Although many members of the media downplayed the controversial aspects of Barack Obama's connection to the radical Jeremiah Wright, MSNBC on Tuesday began to investigate the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney and "its particular attitudes towards race."

Host Andrea Mitchell highlighted McKay Coppins of the liberal Buzz Feed. She quizzed her guest: "What challenges do you see for Mitt Romney as more and more questions will be asked along the way about his faith and its particular attitudes towards race?"

NBC and CBS completely skipped a new report indicating that President Obama's health care law will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt. ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday allowed a mere 17 seconds to the revelation that the law could balloon the deficit by $340 billion.

News reader Josh Elliott swiftly explained, "And President Obama's health care law could up costing a lot more than previously expected, at least according to one new study. It found that the law could add some $340 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade." However, he also parroted talking points that, according to the White House, the study was simply "new math." This was the only mention on GMA. NBC's Today and CBS This Morning ignored the story.

What world does she live in? According to veteran journalist Barbara Walters on Monday, the American public doesn't know whether "most" reporters are "Republicans or Democrats." The unbelievable claim came during a View segment on the passing of 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace.

Walters, who once recoiled at the prospect of the "scary" Sarah Palin becoming President, insisted, "But, most of us...you don't know whether we're Republicans or Democrats or exhibitionists." (Exhibitionists?) The comment came after comedienne Whoopi Goldberg insisted, "And also, the journalists today don't do what journalists did, which was keep their opinions to ourselves." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

A nasty Joy Behar on Wednesday appeared on MSNBC's Last Word to attack conservative women such as Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley. Talking to the ultra-liberal Lawrence O'Donnell, Behar mocked, "Shouldn't [Palin] be turning letters somewhere on some game show at this point? Why is she still involved in the conversation politically?"

Palin's sin, according to Behar? Daring to opine on who Mitt Romney should pick as his vice presidential choice. Behar had more insults for the governor of South Carolina, who recently appeared on her ABC show, The View. Regarding Haley's comment that women don't really care about the contraception issue, Behar dismissed, "...I mean, that just shows you she's not thinking. I don't know where her head is at." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The Today show on Friday continued to ignore an embarrassing example of government waste during Barack Obama's tenure. ABC, CBS and NBC's Nightly News, however, have all highlighted the extravagant $823,000 spent for a General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas in 2010.

On Friday's Good Morning America, Jake Tapper pointed out that "one year after President Obama" admonished bailed out bankers to not "take a trip to Las Vegas," employees "at the GSA were doing just that." In contrast, when the Nightly News reported on the story on Monday, reporter Lisa Myers only mentioned that the "White House is angry" at the  revelations.

It only took 35 hours for MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin to bravely announce, "I don't agree with Joe" Scarborough. A day after appearing on his show, the Game Change co-author more firmly refuted Scarborough's pessimistic assessment that the entire GOP establishment thinks Mitt Romney will lose the general election.

After Hardball guest host Michael Smerconish played a clip of the negative Scarborough comment, Halperin mocked, "Michael, I've worked in TV for 25 years. When the host of the show says something, you have two choices. You can say, 'That's exactly right, Joe!'"  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

ABC and NBC could barely contain their contempt while covering the controversy over the all-male Augusta golf club. Katie Couric, guest anchoring Good Morning America on Thursday, lectured the organization hosting the Masters tournament to allow a woman in: "I mean, really. Get with the program. Seriously?"

Reporter Josh Elliott lamented that Augusta has remained "cloistered," "a secretive sanctuary for golfers and one that has never admitted a woman. On Wednesday's Nightly News, correspondent Lisa Myers wondered what Augusta Chairman Billy Payne would "tell his granddaughters about why women are excluded."

A day after Barack Obama was praised by the Chairman of the Associated Press's board, Mitt Romney spoke at the same conference and was actually lauded for his "record of accomplishment" in the field of health care and education.

Speaking at American Society of News Editors (ASNE) luncheon, Mike Reed, the Chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, touted Romney for a record "built soundly on a career of accomplishment." He hyped, "As governor of Massachusetts, he led an administration that erased a $1.5 billion budget deficit. He enacted education reform and implemented the first health care reform at the state level."

Good Morning America analyst Matt Dowd on Wednesday lectured Rick Santorum to "get out" and stop wasting "any little bit of political capital he has left." Depending on which count one looks at, Mitt Romney is currently 489 delegates short of the nomination.

That fact didn't stop Dowd from making his point clear. Over four sentences, he used the phrase "get out" four times, pronouncing, "I think he has to get out because he wants to preserve any little bit of political capital he has left and a voice in the Republican Party." The same man who, on March 26 slammed conservative states as hypocrites, instructed Santorum, "I think it would be good to get out right now before he loses Pennsylvania. But he has got to try to keep a voice in the party by getting out."