2008 Presidential

NBC's Chuck Todd couched it in terms of how “both parties” are peddling “fear” in this year's election season -- but his formulation Tuesday night of how 2008 was “the hope election” while this one will be “the fear election” – offered a likely preview of how the MSM will try to discredit voter repudiation of liberal Democratic Obama allies when they hardly cast in a negative light the 2008 voter rejection of a third Republican term.

Todd concluded a short NBC Nightly News story:

I had one observer tell me, if 2008 was the “hope election,” 2010 may be known as the “fear election,” as both Republicans and Democrats are playing on the fears of voters about the future of the economy to try to win votes in November.

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

"And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."  -- candidate Barack Obama, remarks at fundraiser, April, 2008

Discussing with Andrea Mitchell today the kerfuffle over Pres. Obama's Christianity, Chuck Todd hearkened back to PBO's infamous bitter-clinger line. Obama offered his pronouncement at a private, hoity-toity fundraiser in San Francisco—and Todd claimed Obama didn't mean to demean by it.  

According to Todd [quoting Paul Begala], Obama is his mother's son, and like the anthropologist she was, he was simply offering an anthropological analysis of the plight of those poor rural Pennsylvanians.

Comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday bashed Fox News for parent company News Corporation's $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association.

Unfortunately, Stewart failed to inform his viewers that Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, has so far given disproportionately to Democrats this year.

Also missing in the "Daily Show" host's attack of FNC and Glenn Beck was that News Corp. prior to this contribution had historically given more to Democrats than Republicans.

Such facts were unimportant Wednesday evening, for Stewart was on another in a long line of Fox News is the devil incarnate rants (video follows with commentary):

Are even the most liberal media members starting to realize the administration's "Recovery Summer" campaign was a complete joke?

Such appears to be the case for New York Times columnist Bob Herbert who on Saturday published a piece absolutely excoriating President Obama for not exclusively focusing on jobs after his inauguration last year:

The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for itself. Robert Gibbs, the president's press secretary, is perturbed that Mr. Obama is not getting more hosannas from liberals. Spare me. The country is a mess. The economy is horrendous, and millions of American families are running out of ammunition in their fight against destitution. Steadily increasing numbers of middle-class families, who never thought they'd be seeking charity, have been showing up at food pantries.  

That was just the beginning:

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest.

It's time once again for "Five for Five," this time around we unveil the top five Journalistic Obamagasms Exposed by NewsBusters.

We know what you're thinking: "Only five?!"

Since they're all so equally good, or bad, as the case may be, I'll leave it to you folks to rank them in the comments section.

They are:

On the heels of a new College Board report that the United States is struggling to compete with other countries when it comes to college completion rates, Vanity Fair's resident straight talker, Henry Rollins, has figured out the problem.  The education system isn't struggling because of possible factors contained within the report, such as:

• Inadequate funding of preschool programs
• Poor college counseling programs for middle and high school aged children
• High school dropout rates
• A lack of international standardization for curriculum
• Skyrocketing costs of education

No, Henry has stumbled onto the real, super secret reason why students are failing to finish their college work:  Sarah Palin and George Bush. 

To be accurate, it's not so much the direct fault of Palin and Bush - rather, it is those of you who support them, their stupid comments, and their intellectually uninterested ways.  Their fans see them as real people and because of that, they feel comfort in an unchallenging environment.

Rollins explains why ‘America doesn't seem to value a college education the way it used to':

Ed Schultz on Thursday blamed Republicans for all the unemployed people living in America today.

As he began the most recent installment of the "Ed Show" on MSNBC, the host said, "The Republican Party has been on a crusade against the middle class and the poor for the last 30 years. We're now seeing the wreckage of that race to the bottom line culture."

He disgracefully continued, "Today a government report showed weekly jobless claims at a five-month high. 484,000 new unemployment claims were filed in the week ending August 7th. And you know what folks, you can lay this right at the feet, right at the altar of the Republican Party."

Sadly, he wasn't close to done, claiming, "The people you see flooding the streets begging for help, begging for an opportunity are victims of the Republican agenda just to make sure that President Obama fails" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

There's a phrase that has been conspicuously absent the media's coverage of the recent flap between White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and those he dubbed the "professional left": civil war. In contrast, media coverage of Republican infighting consistently pushes the term.

Gibbs is under fire from the left for sharply criticizing liberal critics of President Obama saying that "they need to be drug-tested" and "will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

His comments have drawn heated criticism from the left. Democratic firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson, Fla., wants "Bozo the Spokesman" fired. Prominent activist and blogger Jane Hamsher claimed Obama is "having trouble across the board" with liberals. Lefties at the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground were frantic.

Yet almost no "civil war" labels from the media, in contrast to coverage of other instances of intra-party squabbling. The ouster of Dede Scozzafava in the special election in New York's 23rd District earned the "civil war" label 23 times from major media players, according to a Nexis search.

For approaching ten years, America's media have depicted the tax cuts implemented by former President George W. Bush as almost exclusively favoring the rich.

This dishonest characterization has picked up steam recently as these tax cuts are about to expire, and the tax-loving press have campaigned for their departure as if a plague on the society.

For his part, President Obama is advocating the expiration of tax cuts only to couples making over $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000.

With this in mind, the Tax Policy Center, a division of the liberal Brookings Institution, published a report on July 29 that included Treasury Department estimates of tax revenue losses that would accompany an extension of Bush's cuts.

Inside the accompanying PDF was evidence the Left and their media minions have been misrepresenting the beneficiaries of these cuts for a very long time:

Earlier today, NB's Lachlan Markey covered Bill O'Reilly's interview with the Fox Business Channel's Charles Gasparino.

In that interview, Gasparino confirmed what the New York Post reported in April of last year, namely that "GE Execs Encouraged CNBC Staff to Go Easy on Obama."

The suits at GE, including Chairman Jeff Inmelt, had a clear motivation for encouraging their reporters to lighten up, namely that "General Electric at the time was hoping to profit handsomely from policies that would benefit a few companies, including GE, at the expense of the majority of the economy"-- specifically cap and trade.

But speaking of motivation: What about former CNBCer Gasparino's?

The easy answer would be that sometime in the past two years he has seen the light and realizes his past reporting at CNBC was lacking in fairness and balance. Despite his move to Fox, there's reason to doubt that.

New Black Panther Party leader Samir Shabazz on Monday made an anti-Semitic remark while blaming the Fox News Channel for fanning the fires of discontent over his involvement in voter intimidation back in November 2008.

As NewsBusters reported on Election Day that year, two Black Panthers were situated outside a polling station in Philadelphia (video right).

This eventually led to complaints by the Bush administration which the Justice Department recently dropped fueling accusations that the charges were dismissed for racial reasons.

With this in mind, the Associated Press reported the following Monday (h/t Rusty Weiss):

As part of the 5th anniversary celebration of NewsBusters we have started a weekly Five for Five feature to list the blog's top twenty five posts. Last week, we looked at the top five posts of embarrassing media moments. Today we continue with the top five posts that broke news.

We have picked out a couple posts from each of the five categories and asked the authors to reflect back on writing them up. In this series of short videos, they share their thoughts on how they caught the particular media moment and describe the impact their post had.

We continue our video look back by reflecting on two of top posts that broke news: "Hillary Shot At in '96? No Media Mention of Bosnia 'Sniper Fire'" by Rich Noyes and "MSNBC: ObamaCare Protesters 'Racist,' Including Black Gun-Owner" by Kyle Drennen.

Check out last week's video of NewsBusters' Matthew Balan and Geoffrey Dickens remembering some of the top posts embarrassing the media. 

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest.

It's time once again for "Five for Five," this time our list of the Top Five News Stories Broken or Advanced by NewsBusters.

We start with an honorable mention that just barely failed to make the cut, but is worth noting for its impact on the blogosphere, Noel Sheppard's August 1, 2009 post, "Obama Joker Poster Popping Up in Los Angeles."

As for our top five, they are blog posts that uncovered:

• The beginnings of ClimateGate ["Possible Conspiracy to Falsify Temperature Data Uncovered" from Nov. 20, 2009] 
• The early beginnings of the Tea Party movement ["CNBC's Santelli Explains His Anti-Obamanomics Call for Revolt" from February 19, 2009]

Want more evidence of an elitist vibe coming from the upper echelons of the mainstream media?

You ought to remember the Sept. 24, 2008 Katie Couric interview of Sarah Palin. It's been celebrated time and time again as a heralded part of American journalism. However, raw footage appearing to be from Aug. 29, 2008 shows that Couric, anchor of the "CBS Evening News," was already predisposed not to have a high regard for the Alaska governor long before that interview. (h/t Conservatives4Palin.com)

Outtakes of CBS's "Evening News" show Couric taking a few petty shots at Palin in her coverage leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention. This five-minute clip has several highlights, showing Couric favoring "moose burgers and beauty pageants," instead of her professional credentials as mayor of Wasilla, a town Couric has trouble announcing, and her tenure as governor of Alaska.

President Barack Obama told disabled veterans in Atlanta on Monday that he was fulfilling a campaign promise by ending U.S. combat operations in Iraq "on schedule."

But the timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops in Iraq was decided during the Bush administration with the signing of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) by U.S. and Iraq officials on Nov. 16, 2008. The Iraqi parliament signed SOFA on Nov. 27, 2008.

The agreement, which had been in negotiations since 2007, set a timetable calling for most U.S. troops to leave Iraqi towns and cities by June 30, 2009, with about 50,000 troops left in place until the final withdrawal of all U.S. military forces by Dec. 31, 2011.

On Friday’s The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz trashed conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, repeatedly mispronouncing her name as "Schafly," for linking being a single woman and having a greater likelihood of depending on government programs, as she noted at a recent GOP fundraiser that 70 percent of single women voted for Barack Obama. At the top of the show, Schultz teased: "I`ve got some choice words for the ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ tonight – and that`s what she is." He later plugged before a commercial break: "Speaking of ‘Psycho Talkers,’ ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ Phyllis Schafly [sic] got off her broomstick long enough to take a shot at unmarried women of America."

Later in the show, after conservative talk radio host Heidi Harris had appeared in a segment to defend Schlafly, Daily Show co-creator and regular guest Lizz Winstead appeared for the "Club Ed" segment and bashed Harris as "that teabagging Carol Brady," advising Schultz that "you have got to slam her down when she is absolutely wrong." After the Daily Show co-creator went on to charge that Schlafly "can empty her bowels through her mouth and just exhaust horrifying crap onto the universe," an impressed Schultz laughed and cheered her on as he seemed to refer to Winstead’s rant declaring, "That’s great stuff":

Some very persuasive evidence of a double standard at work in The Washington Post came to light today. Today's Post featured a front page headline about the Securities and Exchange Commission charging billionaire brothers Sam and Charlers Wyly with fraud.

The double standard came in when it became clear that the news a couple weeks ago about the conviction of Democratic fundraiser Hassan Nemazee had gotten almost no notice. The Post printed an Associated Press item on the third page. Nemazee had defrauded almost $300 million and was a major contributor and fundraiser to John Kerry's presidential campaign and Hilary Clinton's campaign to be 2008's Democratic nominee.

The Wylys have donated to Republicans and the Republican Party in the past, a fact The Post made very prominent both in its headline: "SEC charges billionaire Texas brothers who donate to Gop with fraud" and put in a quick reminder right in the story's first paragraph:

Sam and Charles Wyly, billionaire Texas brothers who gained prominence spending millions of dollars on conservative political causes, committed fraud by using secret overseas accounts to generate more than $550 million in profit through illegal stock trades, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Thursday.

Roger Simon's Wednesday morning column ("Journolist veers out of bounds"), an item Rush brought up on his show this afternoon, may be one of the most delusional items ever written by a journalist attempting to defend his profession.

Rich Noyes at NewsBusters covered one aspect of Simon's column on Wednesday, namely the deliciously hypocritical outrage of NBC/MSNBC reporter Chuck Todd over how the Journolist scandal "has been keeping him up nights, and he's especially frustrated that 'the right' would use it as 'a sledgehammer' against everyday journalists, 'those of us who don't practice advocacy journalism.'"

I'll suggest that Simon's rendition of journalistic history is at least as offensive as Todd's reaction, in that it's laughably and obviously false on so many fronts (numbered tags are mine):

... when I became a reporter, it was almost a holy calling. (1)

The Daily Caller released a new JournoList scoop today, and this one's a doozy. It confirms that reporters on the liberal media listserv did in fact collaborate with political operatives and campaign officials to spin media coverage in favor of Barack Obama.

The latest piece further debunks JournoList founder Ezra Klein's claims - also taken on by this humble blogger - that the email list did not include campaign or government officials, and was not used to manufacture talking points.

In fact, two members of the Obama campaign, Jared Bernstein and Jason Furman, were JournoList members during the race. Jeff Hauser reportedly signed a number of JournoList emails "Campaign Manager, Shulman for Congress," while he worked on New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Dennis Shulman's campaign.

And talking points were a much-discussed issue. "JournoList’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama translates into winning the battle for political impact," Houser stated on one occasion. It doesn't get more explicit than that.

Barack Obama will make history this week when he becomes the first sitting president to appear on ABC's daytime ladies talk show "The View."

I guess when you're likely the most liberal Commander in Chief the nation has ever seen with poll numbers plummeting faster than a coin tossed off the Empire State Building there isn't a better place to have your ego massaged than on a couch surrounded by gushing females tossing softballs at you as the cameras roll.

Most interestingly, the announcement published at ABCNews.com referred to the President's sagging approval ratings giving one the impression that even the show's producers know why he's coming to chat with the girls (h/t NBer SickofLibs):

A surprise video of Barack Obama was presented to the ultra-liberal gathering of the Netroots Nation in Las Vegas on Saturday that included MSNBC's Rachel Maddow listing his accomplishments.

What does it say about this administration that it wouldn't find it at all unseemly to use the most left-leaning television network, along with one of its most liberal hosts, to propagandize political conference attendees?

Unconcerned with the picture this painted, Obama told the gathering, "Change hasn't come fast enough for too many Americans...But I hope you take a moment to consider all we've accomplished so far." 

With that, the video switched to short clips from the June 25 "Rachel Maddow Show" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary: 

(Update:  Reuters quietly improves statement by eliminating the word 'often'.  Thank you Reuters, for being forthright in the error, er, slipping this in, in the hopes that your readers won't notice.  We're certain that all of the Tea Party Patriots being wrongfully portrayed as racist appreciate the effort.) 

Reuters recently ran a piece that analyzed persistent race issues amidst the Obama presidency, and managed to take a racial swipe at the Tea Party in the process. 

As always, the piece diverts attention away from the President and toward conservatives.  Any controversy involving the administration is portrayed as a mere distraction for the President in his alleged post-racial presidency.  The analysis draws a conclusion that the ‘right-wing noise machine', conservative groups, conservative media, and the Tea Party/NAACP debate are all implicit in creating this racial distraction - and ultimately taking the spotlight off of Obama and his ‘biggest achievements'.  (Is consistently usurping the will of the American people an achievement?)

But what stands out in the article (h/t NewsBuster reader Texndoc) is an obvious misstatement of facts.  An implication that racist imagery at Tea Party rallies is prevalent, has been presented as truth.  Patricia Zengerle, the White House correspondent at Reuters, writes (emphasis mine), "Images such as Obama with a bone through his nose and the White House with a lawn full of watermelons are often displayed at Tea Party rallies."

Reuters and Zengerle were contacted via e-mail several times for clarification on the statement, but the only response thus far has been ...

Last week, CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer made the incredible confession that he was unaware of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation cast on CNN's July 18 "Reliable Sources." The show's host Howard Kurtz asked why Schieffer didn't ask Attorney General Eric Holder about the case when he had the opportunity in an appearance on his show.

"I was on vacation that week," Schieffer said. "This happened -- apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn't know about it"

To compensate for this oversight, Schieffer has assembled a panel for his July 25 broadcast of "Face the Nation" to discuss this issue. The problem - it's heavily stacked in favor of the Obama administration's perspective on the issue.

According to the "Face the Nation" website, Schieffer's panel will Abigail Thernstrom, Vice Chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  Michael Eric Dyson, Georgetown University, Cornel West, Princeton University, John Fund, a Wall Street Journal columnist and Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist.

The more details emerge about the liberal media listserv JournoList, the more it resembles the cabal of leftist message-coordination many conservatives feared. Though perhaps not the "vast left-wing media conspiracy" Fred Barnes proclaims, evidence points to concerted efforts to coordinate talking points, and now, to direct links between the Obama White House and JournoList members.

Ironically, those are two elements of the listserv of which creator Ezra Klein explicity claimed JournoList was completely devoid. "Is it an ornate temple where liberals get together to work out "talking points?" Of course not," Klein stated last year. He added, "There are no government or campaign employees on the list."

Both of those assertions are provably false (whether or not they were at the time). The former has been contradicted by a number of instances of JournoList members doing just that: coordinating talking points. The second claim is upended by recent revelations that Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden's chief economic adviser, and unpaid "surrogate" adviser to the Obama campaign, was a member of JournoList while advising then-candidate Obama on economic issues.

The ongoing controversy surrounding the actions of two members of the New Black Panther Party at a Philadelphia polling place during the last presidential election has become increasingly less about facts and more about opinions. The mainstream media ignored the story for so long, basically giving Fox News exclusive rights to deliver the story to a mass audience and now they’re incensed over Fox’s coverage.

On Sunday Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote “Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories” and “For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case.” Alexander’s column prompted a response by Joel Meares in the Columbia Journalism Review. His point was that Fox News’ coverage cannot be trusted because of the channel’s alleged conservatism and, in a nice example of ideological bigotry, that the story is not worth being covered because conservatives are interested in seeing it covered.

He wrote “The story has been mostly told online and on TV by those whose political shadings have dictated the angle, and the content” and questions The Post’s motivation in publishing something its readers apparently want to read:

On the very day America learned so-called journalists conspired to destroy Sarah Palin from the moment John McCain chose her as his running mate, Politico's Roger Simon declared she's at the top of the Republican Party.

Assuming he's correct, what does that tell us about all those in the mainstream media that have been looking down their noses for almost two years as they worked overtime to smear this woman?

Before we attempt to answer that question, let's see what Simon had to say:

As it continues its exponential expansion to cellphones, mobile advertising, television sets and book publishing internet giant Google has been simultaneously expanding its presence in the U.S. political scene, adding lobbyists, DC-based employees, and ramping up its campaign donations.

Writing for Politico on Friday, Kim Hart provides some details on how the company is becoming much more politicized than ever before:

Google boss Eric Schmidt is one of the nation’s most politically active business leaders — a man who uses the cachet of the company he leads, as well as his own charisma, to build strategic alliances in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill.

Schmidt, 55, grew up in Washington and returns frequently to visit his mother, who still lives in Northern Virginia. Those trips often double as chances to meet with President Barack Obama, chat with staffers at the Federal Communications Commission and meet with top lawmakers.

Managing Editor's Note:  NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell today reprimanded members of the press in light of the recently exposed e-mails from the now-defunct JournoList that show a blatant, deliberate campaign to smear conservatives. That statement is published below. Click here for more background on JournoList.

The revelation of these e-mails simply proves that we have been right all along.  The liberal media have no interest in being fair or unbiased.  In fact, they are deliberately violating any sense of journalistic ethics.

There is no excuse – none- for the attitudes and lack of professionalism these so-called journalists displayed not only in these e-mails but in their reporting.  Any member of the media that was privy to these Journolist emails, and remained silent, is just as much to blame as the folks that crafted these e-mails. Their silence indicts them. 

We said in 2008 that the media were making excuses for Jeremiah Wright and now we have the proof. Just today we learned from the Daily Caller that these people went so far as to say that Rush Limbaugh ‘deserves’ their hate.  Sadly, I am not surprised, as this is what we have been exposing year after year about the media.  And it’s exactly why Americans refuse to trust them.

If you're going to write an article blasting the opposition for distorting facts, it absolutely behooves one to double check all of their own statements for accuracy.

Such is the case of Joan Walsh, Editor-in-Chief of Salon, who recently penned a piece titled, The Shame of Right-Wing "Journalism".  The article includes the sub-heading, "Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson distort facts to smear liberals, and it works. What liberals should learn."

Apparently, it didn't take long for liberals to learn at all, as Walsh was quickly called out by Chris Hayes of The Nation, feeling it necessary to make ‘a factual correction' in the piece.

Oh, sweet irony.

Walsh updates her piece with Hayes' response at the end, and admitting to the error, but it remains an amusing endeavor to combat alleged distorted facts with actual distorted facts.

The problem, as Hayes explains it to Walsh (emphasis mine throughout):

Memo to media members wishing to invite the Tea Party Founder on your show, or use him as a source for your biased reports:  He isn't exactly who you think he is.

Since the NAACP voted to condemn extremist elements in the Tea Party, news networks, sites, and liberal blogs have rushed to include ‘Tea Party Founder', Dale Robertson, in their reports.  Problem being, Dale Robertson as Tea Party anything has frequently and thoroughly been, um ... ‘refudiated'.   

Despite this, the media has a history of holding Robertson up as a shining example of Tea Party racism.  Why?  Robertson once demonstrated a level of ignorance that boggles the mind by holding a sign reading "Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = (N-Word)", at a Houston Tea Party Society (TPS) event.

The reality however, is that Robertson has predominantly self-described, if any, links to the Tea Party movement, while legitimate factions of the movement have had to repeatedly distance themselves from the man.  Robertson was expelled from the event at which he was holding the aforementioned sign on the very same day.  He was formally denounced in a statement released by the Houston TPS.  He was called ‘no friend' of the Tea Party at Pajamas Media, and mocked at RedState.  He was shown to be for his infamous sign, before he was against it.

So logically, the media has decided to help further the cause of the NAACP by bringing Robertson back out of the shadows.  Since word of the the NAACP resolution got out, Robertson's name has appeared at...