Tim Graham's blog

MRC president L. Brent Bozell III had his Letter to the Editor published in Saturday's Washington Post. He objected to liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne trying to make a mountain out of the molehill of one liberal bishop granting an interview to one liberal Catholic magazine. Dionne did not note that this same bishop, so nervous about the bishops being used by political partisans "far to the right," delighted liberals by attacking the Paul Ryan budget.

Dionne wrote the conservative bishops who are "eagerly picking fights with President Obama....have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a 'Catholic spring' to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right." So now the Catholic hierarchy is like Arab dictators? Brent wrote in reply:

It’s ridiculous that Rev. Al Sharpton would title his daily radio show “Keeping It Real.” In Al Sharpton’s America, he imagines that some white conservatives are very eager for a mass murder of black people akin to the Holocaust. Does that sound “real”?

Brian Maloney blogs: “Obviously not satisfied with the level of ethnic tension in America today, Sharpton & Pals are using the airwaves to incite violence.” On Thursday’s show, Sharpton and guest Elinor Tatum think conservatives think blacks are subhuman, and therefore acceptable to wipe out: (Video and transcript below)

Patrick Gavin at Politico reported that Ashley Judd spoke out glowingly for Obama to NBC’s David Gregory on the "Press Pass" segment on Meet the Press, and that she she’s willing do whatever she can as a surrogate for the Obama-Biden ticket. She added, “As long as the Republicans keep doing really dumb things about women’s reproductive health, that should help energize girls and women in this country,” she said.

She said Obama moved her to tears: “I think that he is a powerful leader. I think he’s a brilliant man. I think that he has an incredible devotion to our constitution. And that he is now able to flower more as the president I knew he could be.”

As they did last year, researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University have issued a nationwide survey that “confirms” that Fox News Channel viewers are especially uninformed. But Paul Bond at The Hollywood Reporter found this time, an FNC spokesperson blasted the findings and turned the tables on the university, pointing out that its own students don’t exactly measure up academically. (FDU was No. 585 on a Forbes ranking of 650 U.S. colleges.)

“Considering FDU’s undergraduate school is ranked as one of the worst in the country,” said the Fox flack, “we suggest the school invest in improving its weak academic program instead of spending money on frivolous polling – their student body does not deserve to be so ill-informed.”

On Tuesday night, Bill O'Reilly interviewed former ABC News president David Westin on Fox News and pressed him about ABC having a liberal bias. He drew hilarious answers such as Westin claiming he'd " never heard people in news discussions take liberal points of view."

Westin also appeared with CNN's Piers Morgan that night. While Morgan cited the latest Pew poll numbers that 77 percent of the American people believe the media favor one side, he claimed (and allowed Westin to claim) ABC is "down the middle impartial" and it "takes the center." He didn't ask Westin about being so "impartial" in 2001 that he couldn't say the Pentagon shouldn't be bombed:

The CBS Evening News led with the Catholic Church on Wednesday night. It wasn’t about the 43 Catholic groups suing the Obama administration. It was yet another story on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy decades ago. CBS's newscast is the only one of the Big Three evening shows to notice the lawsuits -- for 19 seconds on Monday night.

Anchor Scott Pelley began at the top of the Wednesday broadcast: “Tonight, the Monsignor takes the stand. The highest ranking Catholic Church official ever charged in the child abuse scandal blames a higher power, the former cardinal of Philadelphia.” Pelley didn’t care that “monsignor” is not normally a “high-ranking” designation at all, just a special designation of honor for a priest. While CBS highlights the Catholic sex-abuse allegations in Philadelphia, it’s ignoring the Jewish sex-abuse story in its own hometown. As the New York Times reported:

On his PBS show Monday night, Tavis Smiley welcomed liberal former Sen. Bill Bradley to discuss his political agenda, which began with repealing the Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United decisions on campaign financing. But what stood out most was Smiley ripping the Tea Party as more Republican than American.

Bradley suggested “even” the Tea Party are Americans first. “I’m just not sure that I’m persuaded,” Smiley said.

When the New York Times warned it had been handed a “super PAC” memo suggesting someone, somewhere might plot to make a “hardline attack on Obama” with Wright sermon soundbites, MSNBC expressed outrage hour after hour.  But scandalized liberal journalists had no appetite for a different behind-the-scenes Reverend Wright narrative. In Ed Klein’s new book “The Amateur,” he interviewed Rev. Wright on tape for three hours. The most shocking revelation: suggestions that Friends of Barack were trying to suggest Wright take some “hush money” to shut up for the rest of the 2008 campaign. Media interest? Pretty much zero. 

Let’s imagine for two seconds what would happen if a friend of George W. Bush – even a disgruntled ex-friend of Bush – gave an interview to an author charging that Team Bush offered him money to shut up and go away during the 2000 campaign. Who would not expect that would have been screaming-siren top news? 

As much as Obama supporters like the Rev. Al Sharpton take exception to the haters who use the president's full name -- "Barack Hussein Obama," most recently disdained in the Ricketts super PAC memo revealed by the New York Times -- what about liberals who make fun of the name "Willard Mitt Romney"?

No one is fonder of that playground ridicule that Rev. Sharpton, who loves referring to Romney as "Willard" on his MSNBC talk show "Politics Nation." In fact, an MRC analysis of the last 25 Sharpton shows -- from April 16 through May 18 -- found Sharpton tossed the name "Willard" 194 times, or almost eight times a show. Friday's program contained 16 "Willards."

Rush Limbaugh is probably not shaking in his boots about the latest National Organization for Women “Enough Rush” campaign. MRC-TV correspondent Dan Joseph found seven women outside WMAL radio begging “Get him off the air!”

Joseph made trouble with the tiny group by asking if they’re protesting Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a “slut,” will they also be calling for an end to the Ed Schultz show after he called Laura Ingraham a “slut.” They refused to compare the two:

Somehow, The Washington Post always picks Sundays for articles on how God makes mistakes. Screaming at the top of Sunday’s paper was a picture of a little girl getting her head buzzed with the headline “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE,” and “She first declared she was a boy when she was 2 years old. Her parents brushed it off by slowly concluded this wasn’t just a phase." This wasn't news. It was propaganda, and if you don't like it, they dare you to cancel your subscription.

The article, by liberal Post columnist (and former reporter) Petula Dvorak, naturally referred to how everyone has grown to know “transgenders” from Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the Stars.” It also repeatedly rejected scientific fact in referring to this troubled girl in male terms like “he” and “his” – including the “instructional” video the Post put online.

Politico media reporter Dylan Byers is impatient with the media: “When will we talk about Mormonism?”

He means the negative stuff: “I’m talking about a national conversation about the Mormon faith, including its past practice of polygamy (which was renounced by the church in the 19th century) and its exclusion of African Americans from the priesthood (until 1978). That sort of thing.” Does he watch anything?

ABC News is hawking this stupid headline on their Facebook page Sunday: "Obama, America's first Amish president?"

Olivier Knox breezily reported his findings from the sappy spectacle of The View appearance: "Obama said this week that his daughters can use their cell phones only on weekends, are banned from Facebook, can't watch TV and are only allowed on the computer during the week when they have to do their homework." And that is Amish....how?

The "mainstream media" claim that they finely sift information to offer their customers only the most trustworthy information. That obviously does not apply to Politico or their reporter Ken Vogel. On Saturday, they stooped to an article headlined "Marco Rubio as vice president: the Bilderberg conspiracy?"

Vogel even included this line: "Paranoid? Perhaps. But like any good conspiracy theory, there’s just enough there to stoke questions." Then there was plenty of publicity for the "Bilderberg obsessives" and radio host Alex Jones:

A small group of conservative protesters greeted HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – a woman whose own bishop excommunicated her – to speak at the Catholic Georgetown University. The group made the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post – and the caption highlighted “A small group of abortion foes, nearly all of them men” protested.

This is not the way the Post covered Occupy DC: “A group of free enterprise foes, nearly all of them white...” Post reporter Jenna Johnson set the scene as Sebelius was heckled:

In an appearance on NPR's Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday, longtime Newsweek correspondent Eleanor Clift offered one surprising bit of understatement: "Obama and his people ran a brilliant campaign and yet it's hard to look at the last three years, four years in the White House, and think that they governed with equal brilliance."

Other than that, it was a constant drumbeat of predicting Mitt Romney is going to be sunk for going too far to the right:

Matthew Balan noted earlier today that CBS This Morning loved Jay Leno’s joke that Chris Matthews offered so many wrong answers on “Jeopardy!” he was offered a job at Fox News.” We're not so sure Charlie Rose should be laughing it up at Fox when not only is CBS's perpetually low-rated morning show getting thumped by ABC and NBC, but is even getting spanked by a cable morning show -- on Fox.

TV By The Numbers reports reported that Nielsen’s latest numbers that came out just yesterday noted that for 18 weeks straight, “Fox & Friends” has been beating CBS This Morning in total viewers in five of the Top 20 markets around the country. Not only have these same market leads sustained for all 18 weeks, since CBS re-launched this new program,  but FOX & Friends is now also beating what CBS in the key advertising demo (25-54) in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Detroit. But CBS is still boasting to advertisers.

Since The New York Times decided to put Reverend Jeremiah Wright back on the nation's agenda, it's important to note that some voters (especially the youngest new voters) may not understand what happened in the last cycle. The most important part for them is this: Barack Obama said in a widely hailed speech on March 18, 2008 that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He then disowned him on April 29, and finally cut ties to the church entirely on May 31. None of his craven (if very delayed) moves were forced by the networks, which covered them like a sad family decision.

A 2008 Media Research Center Special Report studying ABC, CBS, and NBC news broadcasts  revealed that a viewer watching only broadcast TV news would have received a very limited (and even censored) version of Wright’s most outrageous sermons. Key findings:

On Thursday night’s “Politics Nation,” Rev. Al Sharpton began by accusing someone else of having a “long history of fear and smear.” Put "Sharpton and Tawana Brawley" in Nexis. Sharpton never brings up her (and his) phony story.

Like the other hosts on MSNBC yesterday, Sharpton was pounding away at the New York Times story on the Ricketts Memo and Jeremiah Wright: “Tonight's lead, fear and loathing from the campaign trail. For decades, the Republican party has thrived on tearing down Democrats in presidential elections. Today, the GOP may be writing an ugly new chapter in their long history of fear and smear.” It’s as if MSNBC is offended anyone is actually running with the intention of defeating Obama:

Since the 9-11 truther MSNBC contributor who calls himself Toure is in the spotlight, I’d just like to add his appearance on Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation on Tuesday night. He came to proclaim that Obama’s performance on “The View” was masterful: “He was just calm and cool with it. I mean, like I thought there was a really nice way of presenting himself.”
 
In fact, he predicted “If Mitt Romney cannot lay out a plan, a credible plan for America and convince that he can make that happen, then you know, the [Obama] likability is going to crush him.”