NB's Graham on Fox Biz: Networks Show Obama's Mastered the Sequester Puppets

MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham appeared on the Fox Business network Friday morning on the show Varney & Co. Host Stuart Varney began by noting that negative columns toward Obama in the morning’s Washington Post suggest the press may be turning on the president.

Graham said in the wake of Politico praising Obama  for being a “puppet master” of the press corps, they might think “We don’t want to look like we’re easily manipulated, but if you actually watch the coverage this week of the sequester, you saw a lot of easy manipulation.” (Video and transcript below)

GRAHAM: They really did show a lot of panic this week, and they didn’t really make any space – you know, maybe 10 percent of their space [in sequester stories] – for the idea that you know, this probably isn’t that bad. This probably isn’t that big a deal.

VARNEY: I’ll make a prediction see if you agree with it. In the next week, the establishment media is going to be scouring the land to find someone who’s just lost a job or an essential service. You think?

GRAHAM: I think they’re eager to do that. Again, they are emotional manipulators. Everything Obama’s tried to do on this sequester is emotional and manipulative, and the networks love that stuff! They think it really sells the Red Lobster and the Dentu-Creme, you know, they’ve got to have it be panic, panic panic. It sells for them. Fairness and balance, just not a good formula somehow.

Graham charged that the media largely ignored the hard fact that every deficit under Obama has been over a trillion dollars. “There’s a lot of ways the news media think Obama’s historic, in a wonderful way. That’s not one of them, and yet this is not the history they’re talking about.”