Barack Obama

NewsBusters continues to showcase 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 one week from tonight.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2005. Today, the worst bias of 2006: ABC’s Terry Moran gets a thrill for Barack Obama (“Is he the one?”); AP touts the “comforts” of Castro’s communist dictatorship; and daytime talk show host Rosie O’Donnell declares: “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

As of midnight, Real Clear Politics showed Barack Obama with a 2.9-point lead over Mitt Romney in the average of the most recent six presidential election polls. One of those polls is a P-U production of Pew Research Center which shows Obama up by 8 points among 2,343 registered voters. The preposterous weighting of the sample is 37.1% Democrats, 30.6% Republicans, and 32.3% independents.

Any time a poll reveals the Romney v. Obama breakout in each of those three categories, I can run the results through what I'll tentatively christen the NewsBusters/BizzyBlog Poll Decoder, showing what the result would be using party affiliation results found by Rasmussen as of early September and Gallup as of before the Democratic National Convention. Here's what happens when one removes the stench from Pew's poll:

"The problem we have in this country is the [pro-Obama] advertising is what goes on in between the commercials" of the liberal media programs that have interviewed the president thus far this year, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham complained on the September 19 Your World with Neil Cavuto. The liberal media are in advertising mode for the president's reelection, Graham argued, judging by the way the media fail to hold the president to account for his handling of the "serious global problems that we have" while gushing over how cool his chummy chat with comedian David Letterman was last night.

"We do expect presidential candidates to do some of these lighter shows," Graham conceded, "But what's amazing about is they're not expecting Obama to do a tough show" or a "press conference" even though "our Afghanistan mission is falling apart." [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

President Obama had time to enjoy late night laughs with David Letterman while refusing to meet with America's Middle East ally, and yet CNN's Wolf Blitzer was just fine with that. It pays for a President to have friends in the media.

"In the scheme of things, who is going to get you more votes?" was Blitzer's excuse. "A meeting that could be tense with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or go on Letterman and come across as well as he did last night?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Coal miners in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Virginia are losing their jobs in part because of onerous federal regulations. But news of fresh layoffs by Alpha Natural Resources was shuttled to page A16 by Washington Post editors.

According to Post staffer Steve Mufson, Alpha Natural Resources  will lay off 160 mineworkers and abandon eight mines in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia this week.  Alpha is “the largest coal producer by revenue and third-largest in production.”  Talk about President Obama being on the side of workers.

CBS Late Show host David Letterman on Tuesday actually asked Barack Obama if his reelection is pivotal.

The question came during a discussion about the gridlock in Congress and the differing views of the two Parties concerning how to cut the deficit (video follows with transcript and commentary):

David Letterman didn't only suck up to President Obama during his interview Tuesday night.

The CBS Late Show host also gushed and fawned over the first lady saying, "I feel very good when I'm with her" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

On September 14 at Andrews Air Force Base just outside the Washington Beltway, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton welcomed home the remains of four Americans killed at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It was a moment of national mourning. The president was presidential; Mrs. Clinton dignified. But for some journalists, it was, quite strangely and inappropriately, something to view only through the tacky lens of politics.

On “Hardball,” Chris Matthews was tingling away. It was an “amazing ceremony,” he insisted.  After an Obama clip, he said “there was a moment in American history right there. Last week, when Obama spoke at the Democratic National Committee down in Charlotte, he said, 'I am the president.' Well, this week, he showed what it means to be president.”

CBS Late Show host David Letterman actually told the President of the United States Tuesday, "You haven't seen me naked."

During the much-anticipated interview, Barack Obama responded, "We're gonna keep it that way" (video follows with transcript and commentary).

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu on Tuesday took New York Times columnist David Brooks to task for his Romney-bashing piece "Thurston Howell Romney."

In the middle of a heated debate with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell about the Republican presidential nominee's comments regarding the 47 percent of Americans that don't pay taxes, Sununu asserted, "David Brooks ought to be ashamed of himself for recategorizing what Mitt Romney said" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu made a marvelous observation about the current hyperventilation going on in the press concerning Mitt Romney's just revealed remarks concerning the 47 percent of Americans that don't pay federal income taxes.

Appearing on Fox News's America Live, Sununu said, "You have a liberal media out there is looking for the tiniest little wart that they can blow up into a giant cancer" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

President Barack Obama will appear on tonight’s Late Show with David Letterman for the second time during his presidency. Below, a reprint of my short rundown of his first appearance on the CBS show back on Monday, September 21, 2009:

David Letterman, who still regularly ridicules former President George W. Bush – and has even accused him of committing “war crimes” and lacking “humanity” – didn't hide his affinity for Barack Obama during his Monday night Late Show interview of the President, while remaining unable to contain his disgust for Bush. “I can't tell you how satisfying it is to watch you work,” a beaming Letterman gushed to Obama at the conclusion of the program.

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford stood out as the only Big Three network journalist to play a clip of Barack Obama's infamous "cling to guns and religion" barb at conservatives, as she covered the recently-released secret recordings of Mitt Romney remarking about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government."

Crawford remarked that Obama "spurred similar controversy" with the 2008 comment, but neither ABC's Good Morning America nor NBC's Today mentioned it in their coverage of the Romney video recordings, which were released by the left-wing magazine Mother Jones. [audio of Crawford available here; video below the jump]

The hosts and reporters of ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday launched a hyperbolic attack on Mitt Romney's "secret tapes," trumpeting the "bombshell" that is sending "shock waves" through the campaign.

The ABC program devoted three segments to the release of tapes of the presidential candidate talking at a fund-raiser about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government." Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos breathlessly began the show: "Breaking now, Mitt Romney caught on tape at a private fund-raiser. His candid comments causing shock waves." The host intoned that "the campaign [is] rushing to contain the damage." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno made a joke Monday about President Obama and the economy that would be funny if it didn't hit so close to home.

Talking about how the unemployment rate only fell last month because of the number of people that dropped out of the labor force, Leno quipped that the President is "encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work so the numbers will come down a little bit" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Call it "Politico Protection."

Clay Waters at NewsBusters has already exposed the passive-aggressive anti-Semitism in Maureen Dowd's Sunday rant ("Neocons Slither Back") at the New York Times. So did Politico's Dylan Byers, who nonetheless thought that the Obama campaign's tweet supporting Dowd's column via its "Truth Team" (and, by inference,their  endorsement of her "neocon puppet master" premise) was so unimportant that he didn't mention it until his final paragraph. Excerpts from Byers weakly headlined item follow (HT Twitchy):

Tonight, Barack Obama will make his seventh appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, his second as Commander-in-Chief.

This is a man who can’t make room in his busy campaign fundraising schedule for critical intelligence briefings, or his jobs council, or even a sit-down with the Prime Minister of Israel while Iran’s uranium centrifuges are whizzing away toward Armageddon. Instead he is on his way to the Ed Sullivan Theater for yet another cutesy campaign infomercial courtesy of his boosters at CBS and Worldwide Pants.

In other words, Emperor Nero is yukking it up with his court jester while the world burns.

NPR’s Terry Gross brought on CNN judicial analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Monday to discuss his new book on the Supreme Court (called The Oath) for 44 minutes of her program Fresh Air. Toobin proclaimed that Barack Obama is the conservative when it comes to the Supreme Court, and John Roberts is the radical revolutionary. This is the same Toobin who complained overturning ObamaCare would be "judicial activism."

Toobin also claimed with a straight face (or at least an ungiggly voice) that Roberts voted to uphold ObamaCare to pave the way for more conservative decisions, to insulate the court from being found as political in the future -- as if liberals won't denounce every conservative decision as political. Toobin also continued his tradition of bashing Clarence Thomas as "way out there" on the right-wing fringes.

In a campaign season which is on track to go down as the worst ever for cooked polling, one from CBS News and the New York Times has outdone everyone to this point.

Clearly, they didn't like what a properly weighted result would have told them, which is that Mitt Romney is in a deadlock with Barack Obama if one uses Gallup's party affiliation numbers from before Democratic National Convention, or that he's up by five points if one opts for Rasmussen's affiliation numbers. In their latest poll, with registered voters, CBS/NYT not only oversampled Democrats, but they took the number of actual responses and further weighted them towards Dems, as seen after the jump.

Keep up the good work, Rachel, even when it's not at all what you intended.

In the wake of last week's deadly attack against the US consulate in Benghazi, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow helpfully provided Mitt Romney with plenty of damning information for use against President Obama in their upcoming debates. (Video clip after page break)

MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson made a comment on the Martin Bashir show Monday that left the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart totally speechless.

Talking about Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's position on abortion and marriage, Dyson said, "He needs to speak to his fellow Republicans whose numbers ain’t so hot in that regard, and who watch more porn and go to more strip clubs than other people" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Like their colleagues on NBC's Today show, Monday's CBS This Morning forwarded a recent Politico report about supposed "turmoil inside the Romney campaign," which was stuffed with unnamed sources. Norah O'Donnell spotlighted "this finger-pointing that's going on...and whether or not they mismanaged the messaging in terms of Romney's big convention speech." John Dickerson hyped that "what's extraordinary about this, is that it's all happening in public."

O'Donnell also touted "four different national polls that show that Obama now has the lead on the issue of taxes over Romney. I mean, that has traditionally been where most people trust Republicans more than Democrats."

In a stunning display of group-think on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, a panel of journalists all concluded that no American president could have possibly prevented the ongoing crisis in Middle East or responded to it any better than Barack Obama. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

The hand-wringing began with The Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg absolving the President of any responsibility for chaos in the region: "There are some very, very deep and troubling things going on in – in the Middle East that have very little to do with what a president does or doesn't do.... so to blame the President for – for an attack on – on these embassies, I think, is a bit much."

"The public is waiting for Mitt Romney to say, 'I've had enough of you folks,'"  NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox Business Network's Stuart Varney this morning. The Media Research Center founder and president noted that unlike President Obama, Romney actually entertained questions from the media after his September 11 statement, where he was subjected to six different iterations of the same question about the appropriateness of his statement the evening prior.

As we now know  because of a hot microphone catching an exchange among reporters before the presser, that was a planned ambush by the journalists, Bozell argued [watch the full video below the page break].

The New York Times is milking its latest poll, showing some good news for Obama, to maximum effect. Sunday's front-page featured a poll story from one of the paper's top Obama boosters, White House correspondent Jackie Calmes (pictured): "Challenged on Medicare, G.O.P. Loses Ground." Text box: "Polls Show Favor for Obama on Issue of Party Trust." Calmes writes from Orlando:

CNN's Soledad O'Brien on Monday felt the need to defend Barack Obama from criticism that his policies are at least partially responsible for the recent anti-American hostilities transpiring in the Middle East and other parts of the globe.

During a heated debate with Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Starting Point, O'Brien got a much-needed education on the President's "apology tour" (video follows with CNN transcript and commentary):

For several years, the Obama-loving media have harped on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) October 2010 remark, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward not only proved that the media have been misrepresenting this quote since it was made, host Joe Scarborough apologized to McConnell for being part of the echo chamber (video follows with transcript and commentary):