Mitt Romney

As NewsBusters previously reported, CBS Late Show host David Letterman last Thursday begged Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to come on his show.

On Friday, Letterman continued groveling actually telling viewers, "If he's not here in 39 days, don't vote for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Thursday the New York Times's Romney-beat campaign reporter Ashley Parker returned to Romney's tired "47 percent" controversy in "Romney Ad Reaches Out to Working Class." Not content with recycling old anti-Romney issues, Parker also recycled her criticism of Romney – so far she has described Romney as "defensive" in at least 12 news stories, including this one, according to a Nexis search.

While ignoring breaking news in the Obama administration's Libya fiasco on Thursday night, CNN's Piers Morgan dumped on the Romney campaign for a good portion of his show, saying Mitt is "in a hell of a lot of trouble."

Morgan cited four polls in Virginia showing "Obama comfortably ahead," even though one of the polls was actually a tie and another had Obama leading within the margin of error. "Your guy's in a hell of a lot of trouble, isn't he?" Morgan asked GOP pollster Kristen Soltis. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell got caught in June selectively editing a video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to make him look like an out of touch moron.

As the Blaze reported Thursday, Morning Joe aired a video this week that has aroused similar suspicion.

On Friday's NBC Today, special correspondent Tom Brokaw demonstrated the blatant media effort to ignore Obama administration failures surrounding the consulate attack in Libya: "Romney turned out to give the President air cover. There are serious questions about what happened in Libya and the absence of security and what is our Middle East policy, but Romney's missteps really have given the President more camouflage than he would have expected." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Brokaw lamely attempting to blame Mitt Romney for the failure of the media to ask tough national security questions of Obama echoed a recent revealing statement by CBS News political director John Dickerson, who declared that it was solely Romney's responsibility to hold the President to account over Libya because the media would not.

When he's not shamelessly touting his conservative bona fides, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough spends most of his time bashing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Apparently these attacks have become so well-known throughout the liberal media that CBS Late Show host David Letterman Thursday night played one for his audience in a brief segment he called "Joe Scarborough: Sweet Jesus" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On September 25, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell was joined by numerous other conservatives in an open letter to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN executives protesting their blatant bias and noting that they are encouraging Americans to get their news from other, more balanced sources.

The following night, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren referenced the letter in a segment with fellow FNCer Brit Hume, who noted that while every presidential election he's covered he's observed the media's bias against the Republican candidate, that this year is markedly different in the intensity of that bias (watch the video embedded below the page break):

Appearing on MSNBC’s Jansing and Co., Vanity Fair contributing editor Carl Berstein joined the ranks of his fellow liberal journalists who are slamming the Romney campaign and the entire Republican Party as radical.  Naturally, anchor Chris Jansing failed to challenge the premise or balance out the segment with someone who would. Bernstein insisted that polls showing President Obama with a lead over Governor Romney show that:

There's a fundamental problem and that is the Republican Party. That their polls reflect the fact that the real issue in this campaign has become the Republican Party in Washington.

Throughout the segment, Bernstein argued that Romney has been taken captive by a radical party with what he says has a radical message that Romney is saddled with and can’t get out of.  Bernstein continued his anti- Republican rant by claiming that:  [See video below break.  MP3 audio here.]

Libtalker Ed Schultz and The Nation magazine's John Nichols could soon be receiving a flood of offers to buy swampland in Florida. Perhaps by then they will each be a bit more skeptical.

Both were among numerous liberals who yesterday took hold of a bogus story by the hook and swam for all it was worth. (audio clips after page break)

CNN sounded alarm bells for the Romney campaign on Wednesday, touting a "stunning" new poll showing Mitt Romney down 10 points in Ohio and reporting it every hour save one from the 7 a.m. hour of Starting Point through the 4 p.m. hour of The Situation Room.

"Holy Toledo! Mitt Romney is losing Ohio now by 10 points. 10 points," exclaimed anchor Brooke Baldwin. "And it's got to be very disturbing right now for the Romney campaign," political director Mark Preston expressed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Norah O'Donnell was ready to tie the toe tag on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, as the morning newscast hyped the latest numbers from the Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll, especially President Obama's 10-point lead in Ohio. After mentioning Romney's latest 60-second TV spot, O'Donnell twice wondered, "Is it too late? The voting in Ohio starts next week."

Charlie Rose spotlighted the President's "growing lead" in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, according to his network's poll. But it took the program more than an hour to mention only in passing that "Republican voters remain more enthusiastic about voting than the Democrats," without mentioning the specific numbers.

According to CNN, Mitt Romney "doubled down" on a "false claim" on Tuesday, but it was CNN that doubled down on its own faulty fact-check of the Obama administration and welfare reform.

"We begin tonight 'Keeping Them Honest' on a campaign distortion that will not seem to die. The false claim that President Obama is trying to take the work requirement out of welfare," began Anderson Cooper on his Tuesday show. As NewsBusters reported, CNN canned the Romney claim back in August despite conservative experts arguing that Obama indeed gutted the work requirements at the heart of welfare reform.

Good Morning America on Wednesday touted "stunning" new polls out of Ohio that show Mitt Romney trailing. ABC reporter David Muir pushed a minor comment by the Republican as a "sudden shift." Muir hyped, "After repeatedly saying President Obama raised taxes during his first term...suddenly Romney appeared to be saying the President hasn't raised taxes." [See MP3 audio here. Video below.]

Romney's remark that Obama "did not" raise taxes was in reference to income taxes. Yet, this slight change in phraseology led Muir to position himself as a surrogate for the President, defending, "Romney's comments made immediate headlines. In fact, the President has not raised income tax rates in his first term." But, of course, Obama has increased taxes. As Forbes.com pointed out, Obamacare is now a tax that applies to the middle class. Additionally, the President has promised more taxes in his second term.

If you only get your news from the cadre of liberal journalists who call themselves the “mainstream media,” you no doubt think that GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney probably ought to throw in the towel by now.

Subconsciously and otherwise, the left-leaning elite media has been eagerly trying to place the Romney campaign into an early grave, despite numerous polls showing that the race is far closer than it would be be after months of journalists doing their best to hammer Romney on the outrage du jour put forward by liberal blogs and Democratic election consultants.

From the Department of Damned if You Do, Damned If You Don't . . .

The MSM delighted in raking Mitt Romney over its coals [solar cells?] for his 47% remarks.  So how do they react when Romney issues an ad saying that whereas both he and President Obama care about the poor, his plans will actually help them?  With scorn, of course.

Check out the headline from today's Morning Score at Politico: "Mitt Oozes Empathy In New Ad."  View the ad after the jump.

With absolutely no surprise, America's Hollywood elites are stepping up to the plate to endorse Barack Obama.

Following Madonna's vulgarity-laden endorsement Monday, and Barbara Streisand's love letter last week, Alec Baldwin took to the Huffington Post to show his support for our 44th president.

This one requires a reality check before proceeding. First, a long list of Democratic Party candidates (per ABC on September 4, five for the Senate and eight for the House) -- including many incumbents, chose not to attend the Democratic Convention in Charlotte because (let's get real) they wanted to put distance between themselves, Barack Obama, and Obama's policies (and still do). Candidate absences from the Republican Convention were relatively rare. Second, six of the most recent seven polls listed at Real Clear Politics as of 10 p.m. ET showed Obama leading Mitt Romney nationally by three or fewer points. Third, state polls have turned in a couple of surprises this week showing Obama leading by just two points and one point, respectively in Pennsylvania and Ohio -- despite Ohio's poll giving Democrats a 10-point sample advantage.

It would therefore seem that you must live in a tightly sealed, Obama-loving bubble to believe that it is Mitt Romney's campaign which is "faltering" and that GOP House candidates would therefore try to avoid being seen with him. Politico's Alex Isenstadt lives in such a bubble (bolds are mine):

CNN's Jim Acosta on Tuesday's Situation Room asked what many will think was a truly offensive question.

"If you were to somehow beat the first African-American president, what would you say to the black community to assure them that you would be their president also?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There is clearly no embarrassment threshold at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press.

In a dispatch today, an unbylined AP report headlined "Romney: Benghazi a 'Terrorist Attack'" seems to act as if this is some kind of revelation to the GOP nominee even though everyone except Obama administration insiders desperately trying to bring life to the corpse formerly known as the Arab Spring have been saying that for well over a week. It gets much worse than that in the report's third paragraph:

Even though it was near the top of the raw news wire at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, when I saw it, I had to check the date on Tom Raum's item entitled "Why It Matters: Debt." Sure enough, it really does have a September 24. 1:36 p.m. time stamp.

That is intensely ironic and somewhat delicious, because the final sentence of Raum's dispatch directly contradicts something President Barack Obama said in his appearance on David Letterman's show last week -- something I believe (but can't prove, due to frequent wire service revisions) the AP originally failed to report.

The New York Times is certainly not treating Barack Obama's statement on 60 Minutes that the death of four Americans in Libya, including Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens, as one of a few "bumps in the road," as a callous and politically damaging gaffe. Reporter Ashley Parker reluctantly covered Romney delivering "talking points" to the media on the matter, in "Republican Team Attacks Obama on Foreign Policy," but her story opened by highlighting Romney's "tough" time, including yet another mention of Romney's "47 percent" comment at a private fundraiser.

In an interview that aired Sunday, Obama was asked by CBS's Steve Kroft whether "the recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?"

Obama responded in part: "But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam."

In a surprisingly tough interview with President Obama aired on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie cited Mitt Romney's criticism that the President has sided with teachers' unions against education reform, to which Obama shot back: "I think Governor Romney and a number of folks try to politicize the issue and do a lot of teacher-bashing."

Guthrie followed up: "Can you really say that teachers' unions aren't slowing the pace of reform?" Obama repeated the anti-Romney talking point: "I just really get frustrated when I hear teacher-bashing as evidence of reform." While Guthrie made some effort to pin down the President, she ultimately allowed him to build up the "teacher-bashing" straw man as he dodged her questions.

"A civil rights group said today that up to 10 million Hispanics could be blocked from voting in the upcoming election because of these changes to the voting laws. 10 million. And that's just here in L.A."

So quipped NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno Monday (video follows with commentary):

He clearly doesn't suffer from a shortage of chutzpah.

According to the Politico's Josh Gerstein, President Barack Obama was asked the following question by The View's Barabara Walters in a Monday appearance to be broadcast on Tuesday: "What would be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? Would it be disastrous for the country?" His response: "We can survive a lot. But the American people don't want to just survive. We want to thrive. I've just got a different vision of how we grow an economy. We grow fastest when the middle class is doing well."

Demonstrating that he would have made the same news judgments hostile to Mitt Romney as those who succeeded him at ABC News, in an address Thursday night to students at Quinnipiac University, Charles Gibson declared “the Republican Party has done Romney no favors by forcing him so far to the right that he may not be able to scramble back by November 6th,” castigated Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge as “absurd, absolutely absurd” and denigrated as “silly” the point that 47 percent don’t pay federal income tax.

He fretted, yet “it becomes a legitimate subject for debate for a lot of people who are Governor Romney supporters.”

Ann Coulter is an eight-time New York Times bestselling author as well as the legal correspondent for Human Events and a syndicated columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.

She has been a dear friend of the Media Research Center’s for decades and is beloved by NewsBusters readers around the world.

We’re very pleased to have an opportunity to discuss her new book with her entitled, “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.”

Saturday, Joel Pollak at Breitbart's Big Journalism observed that President Obama is having some trouble drawing big crowds these days, and that the national press is exaggerating the turnout at his events.

He specifically cited the situation this weekend where Politico and the Wall Street Journal claimed there were "18,000 people inside a 5,000-seat arena at an Obama event in Milwaukee on Saturday." I looked at the Associated Press's national site, and the AP did the same thing, while adding that the crowd with the made-up size was "the largest yet of Obama's reelection campaign." Really.

Bay Buchanan, one of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's senior advisers, got into quite a heated exchange with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.

After Scarborough took issue with Buchanan implying that she was the only conservative present on a panel filled with liberals, Buchanan replied, "You know, Joe, on this set, you appear to be one of the four" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday oddly went counter to the liberal media meme concerning Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's taxes.

In a State of the Union discussion on the subject with Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Crowley actually said, "It is the IRS system and he took advantage of it which I do, which I assume both of you do" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):