Birth Control

Updated [14:38 et]:  Audio available here and video added after the jump.

Appearing on NBC's Sunday web-based feature Press Pass, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley tore apart the media obsession with the contraception debate: "The media thinks that women only care about contraception, that's not true. They care about contraception, and education, and health care, and jobs, and the economy."

Haley leveled the criticism after Meet the Press host David Gregory grilled her on the "gender gap" in Republican support being an obstacle to Mitt Romney defeating President Obama in November. Haley took Gregory to task for the question: "I find it comical that the news media wants to continue to talk about a gender gap, and so I'll challenge you to ask a man about the gender gap as well."

NBC anchor Brian Williams on Monday night used Republican troubles with women to trumpet how “a former candidate, who now happens to be Secretary of State, is speaking out.” Andrea Mitchell claimed Republicans spurred “a national debate over contraception and women’s rights. Now it’s produced a huge gender advantage for President Obama.” She insisted, without naming a single Republican, that “across party lines, American women are fired up, including Hillary Clinton...”
 
Mitchell cued up Clinton: “Did Rush Limbaugh go too far this time?” Mitchell then laid out the case for the former First Lady, relaying how “she’s the most popular woman in America” and, as if it should matter, “Meryl Streep recently delivered what sounded like a nominating speech for Clinton.” She pressed Clinton: “There is a growing expectation that you will run for President.” When she didn’t get an immediate affirmation, Mitchell pleaded: “Why not?”

Update/correction (30 March 2012, 16:12 p.m. EDT): Brewer is no longer employed with MSNBC. I was going off of outdated information on her Facebook fan page. The post below is corrected accordingly.

"A compelling, alarming case against the GOP and its 'War on Women.' Lest you think it can't happen here, just ask Iranian women how conservative, religious fanatics ripped their rights away." [see screen capture below page break; h/t @mattjmobile]

That's how former MSNBC host Contessa Brewer introduced her Facebook fans to a March 25 New York magazine piece by Frank Rich entitled "Stag Party: The GOP’s woman problem is that it has a serious problem with women."

Saturday's front-page New York Times story by Susan Saulny focused on the Santorum campaign in Louisiana before Santorum's easy win in the Republican primary there: "On the Right, Santorum Has Women's Vote."

Saulny emphasized the religious angle of Santorum's appeal. The condescending story provided slight corrective to the paper's misleading previous coverage assuming Santorum lacked support from women, but maintained the unsubstantiated idea, embraced by the Times, that moderate Republican women are turned off by appeals to social conservatism.

As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, the Obama-loving media - quite contrary to what they did when George W. Bush was in office - are doing their darnedest to downplay the seriousness of the exploding prices people are paying at the pump.

Doing its part Wednesday was CNN Money which actually published a piece with the laughable headline, "Rising Gas Prices Aren't as Bad as You Think."

Desperately trying to keep the issue alive for the general election, Tuesday's NBC Nightly News continued to decry the supposed Republican war on women, with anchor Brian Williams proclaiming: "One issue that's been percolating through this presidential primary season, a push by some in the GOP to limit women's access to contraceptives and abortion."

In the report that followed, correspondent Andrea Mitchell promoted left-wing activism against the GOP: "Across the country, protests like this one in Texas, against new state laws restricting access to contraception and other women's health care." One protestor ranted: "It's a war against women's health."

CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday actually asked Karen Santorum if her husband Rick is "anti-women?"

Without batting an eye, Mrs. Santorum gave an answer that would put this entire issue to rest if her husband were a Democrat (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday the New York Times offered yet another unsubstantiated tale of the GOP scaring away female voters. Reporter Ashley Parker's story, under the headline "Romneys Court Women Alienated by Contraception Issue," not only fails to back up the headline, but contradicts itself.

The paper's own recent poll finding, buried by the paper last week, found most women oppose the Obamacare mandate that religious institutions provide contraception coverage. That tidbit from the poll didn't make it into Parker's story. And Parker didn't seem to realize the implications of a poll result she did cite: Social conservative candidate Rick Santorum is far ahead of the more moderate Mitt Romney among female Republican primary voters. If the paper's headline were true, wouldn't those "alienated women" be flocking to moderate Mitt instead of scary Santorum?

While interviewing Arizona Senator John McCain on Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory took a line from the Democratic script as he wondered: "Are you concerned at all to see a focus with certain elements of the Republican Party on social issues?...Do you think that there is something of a war on women among Republicans?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

A rather testy exchange on today's Morning Joe, with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski going at it with Rick Santorum.  A full five minutes of Santorum's segment were devoted to questioning him on his views on contraception and religious freedom.  

Toward the end, seemingly to Scarborough's surprise, Santorum said that "yeah, sure" he thought Scarborough, like the MSM at large, was attempting to pigeonhole him on the matter.  Video after the jump.

On ABC's World News on Saturday, host David Muir played a clip of an ad from the far left group MoveOn.org attacking Republicans on the issues of abortion and contraception, and asked correspondent David Kerley for his take on the ad.

Without noting that President Obama raised the issue of contraception by requiring some religious institutions to pay for contraceptives for their employees, or that ABC's very own George Stephanopoulos had bizarrely raised the issue even earlier in a Republican presidential debate, persisting to get an answer from Mitt Romney, Kerley blamed Republicans for "talking about contraception" as he asserted that the GOP had handed Democrats a "gift."

After playing the ad, host Muir wondered:

As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, the Obama-loving media have concocted the fallacy that Republicans are suddenly in a war on women.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on PBS's Inside Washington Friday called this "a classic example of liberal echo chamber elite cocooning" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In an attempt to mock Rush Limbaugh, yet again, Stephen Colbert on Thursday compared the conservative radio host to the Taliban. Highlighting advertisers who have pulled out of Limbaugh's show in the wake of the Sandra Fluke controversy, the comedian insisted that the U.S. Army would no longer buy commercials.

Colbert smeared, "Yes, the Army is pulling out of Rush. Meanwhile, they're staying in Afghanistan to negotiate with the Taliban who evidently have a better track record on women's issues."  [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

Here's your daily dose of liberal hysteria, courtesy of New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal's Thursday evening post, "Grand, Old and Anti-Woman." Previously Rosenthal called Republican House Speaker John Boehner a racist  for asking President Obama to delay a speech to Congress.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asked a great question on his program Thursday.

"Will Bill Maher be the first casualty in the war on women? Ha! Who woulda thought, folks?" (video follows courtesy Daily Rushbo with transcript and commentary):

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman portrayed conservative Republicans as reeling from the renewed focus on so-called women's issues, but only vaguely mentioned that Obama's approval ratings have actually slipped since the public focus on abortion and contraception, in his front-page story Thursday, "Women Figure Anew in Senate's Latest Battle."

CNN's Zoraida Sambolin questioned Rick Santorum's appeal with women voters nationwide as she targeted his "ultra-conservative" positions that "some women don't relate to," on Wednesday's Early Start.

Sambolin challenged Santorum's success among women voters in the deep south by noting that nationwide he lags behind President Obama in a recent poll of women voters. [Video below the break.]

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter wrote a column for Wednesday's Business section on the "offensive figure" Rush Limbaugh ("After Apology, National Advertisers Are Still Shunning Limbaugh") on the radio host losing advertisers after his "slut" comment on birth-control activist Sandra Fluke was inflamed by the left.

But the Times has thus far ignored the counterexample raised by conservatives of comedian and HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher, who used a far more vile word to describe Republican Sarah Palin in March 2011. (The word's very offensiveness makes it unprintable, unlike Limbaugh's comment, a standard of obscenity that actually shields Maher.)

A day after MSNBC featured a guest who compared Rush Limbaugh to a "serial murderer,"  Tamron Hall on Wednesday eagerly wondered if the radio host "should be canned." The News Nation anchor repeatedly teased a new Bloomberg poll claiming 53 percent of Americans want Limbaugh to be fired.

Stoking her liberal audience, Hall wondered, "And should Rush Limbaugh be canned? That's a question that's been floating around, but a new poll shows how many Americans feel it's time to say goodbye." A MSNBC graphic touted, "Fire Rush?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Forget everything New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written before about Hillary Clinton. In 1996 Dowd was scathing about the disconnect between Hillary's self-serving role as secular saint, and the vengeful politician lurking behind the scrim.

But now Hillary is a feminist heroine (and perhaps a presidential candidate?) once again, at least in a battle with Republican pols suffering an "insane bout of mass misogyny," her term for Republican positions against forcing employers to pay for birth control, and legislation in some states requiring an ultrasound before an abortion: "Women have watched a chilling cascade of efforts in Congress and a succession of states to turn women into chattel, to shame them about sex and curb their reproductive rights."

Almost a month after touting on-air their poll finding that 61% of Catholics supposedly backed President Obama's controversial birth control mandate, CBS failed to mention their most recent poll that found that 57% are now against the regulation. The network devoted an article to the new poll statistic on their website, but failed to cover it on their morning and evening newscasts Monday into Tuesday.

Instead, CBS Evening News and CBS This Morning did some damage control on behalf of the President, downplaying his "all-time low" approval number and claiming that "there's little that he [Obama] can do...in the short term to affect gas prices, and gas prices hurts his political chances," as anchor Charlie Rose put it. Their poll partners at the New York Times also buried the finding in their front-page article on the poll, and spun it by suggesting that women were "split" on the controversy.

The New York Times focused on the "treacherous political ground" occupied by President Obama as the election draws closer, while proving wrong pro-Obama assumptions made in recent stories by Times reporters Susan Saulny and Jackie Calmes, in Tuesday's front-page poll analysis "Obama's Rating Falls as Poll Reflects Volatility," by Jim Rutenberg and Marjorie Connelly. But it also buried some interesting findings that defied the liberal conventional wisdom about social conservatism and women voters.

Liberal MSNBC on Tuesday adopted Democratic talking points for the contraceptive fight. As anchor Chris Jansing offered softball questions to left-wing Senator Patty Murray, a MSNBC graphic flatly declared: "War on Women: 12 Dem Women Senators Send Letter to Speaker Boehner."

Usually, MSNBC can at least provide a question mark ("War on women?") as the network spins for Democrats. Jansing framed the issue as hostile to females, offering this loaded question: "You were one of 12 Democratic women in the Senate that sent a letter to House Speaker Boehner asking him to abandon plans to continue the fight against contraception coverage in the House."

CNN's Soledad O'Brien told her critics on Monday to "stop tweeting" her and that the particular debate over Obama's past was over. Then on Tuesday she hosted birth control activist Sandra Fluke and simply rolled out the red carpet for her guest to knock her own conservative critics.

Fluke slammed her critics for spewing "misinformation" and silencing women "regarding their own health care." CNN host Soledad O'Brien pointed viewers to Fluke's CNN.com op-ed and teed her guest up with easy questions like "How have the last couple of weeks been?" [Video below the break.]

"There's a lot of anxiety for thousands of women in Texas today about their health care," MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell alarmed viewers of her 1 p.m. Eastern program today. "They're going to lose health care coverage this week, on Wednesday, when the Texas state legislature enforces a law cutting funds to any health care center affiliated with an abortion provider, and that means Planned Parenthood," Mitchell noted as she introduced the Daily Beast's Michelle Goldberg to elaborate. [emphases mine]

What commenced was a segment -- entitled onscreen, "Women's Health Under Attack" -- devoted to painting the decision by the Texas legislature as an assault on women's health care, even though the health care provided by Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas is far from comprehensive, as a cursory review of the organization's website clearly spells out.

The New York Times went all-out Sunday to prove that "centrist women" were fleeing the GOP in droves. Reporter Susan Saulny and six other reporters from across the country filed "Centrist Women Tell of Disenchantment With G.O.P.," for Sunday's paper.

Quick question: Is the Times counting the woman featured in the story's top photograph at a "Rally for Women's Rights," holding a Planned Parenthood sign that says "Stop the War On Women!", as a "centrist"?

Appearing as a panel member on Sunday's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, as the group discussed Rush Limbaugh's "slut" comment, the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman - also of MSNBC and formerly of Newsweek - asserted that Mitt Romney missed out on the "riskless opportunity" of having a "Sister Souljah moment" by not telling Limbaugh to "stuff it." Fineman: