On the Record

On Thursday night, the Whitman-Walker Health Clinic will hold its annual “Be The Care” fundraiser honoring lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) with its “Partner for Life” award. Once again this year, journalists don't seem to think supporting this is a conflict of interest.

This liberal-Democrat event is being co-chaired by former Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, and she and her husband, current Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia (whose recent book targeted Sen. Marco Rubio) are “presenting hosts.” So is Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. That title goes to people donating $2500 to this activist group.

Former Congressman Allen West (R-Fl.) had some harsh words for America's media Monday.

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record, West said, "I think that we cannot continue to go on believing that all we can do is ask the President what his favorite color is and continue to have these softball interviews" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As America's media predictably fall in line behind any attempts President Obama makes to reform immigration policy, one has to wonder if they're going to recall how he cast the pivotal vote in the Senate in 2007 to block such legislation.

Keeping the press on their toes, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Fox New's On the Record Monday, "In 2007 when we tried to do immigration reform, he folded like a cheap suit" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported, President Obama, in an interview published Sunday by The New Republic, said, "If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you'll see more of them doing it."

Within a few hours, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren struck back:

Teamsters Union president James Hoffa warned on CNN Tuesday that there would be "civil war" in Michigan over thepassage of right-to-work legislation, but after anchor Brooke Baldwin made two brief mentions of it the CNN blackout began. In contrast, on the next day Fox News hammered the "civil war" threat as an example of radical rhetoric.

How bad was CNN's blind spot to the controversy? After Hoffa warned of "civil war," Baldwin simply repeated his words back to him. "[I]n the meantime, as you wage this civil war, what does this mean for unionized workers moving forward in Michigan?" she asked, without demanding how violent the union pushback would be.

Greta Van Susteren on ABC's This Week Sunday took exception with a cheap shot at Fox News from Nation magazine's Katrina vanden Heuvel.

This came after vanden Heuvel said of former CIA director David Petraeus, "Don't forget that over at your network at Fox, he was your candidate for a while" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Donald Trump on Monday had some harsh words for Bill Maher's incessant attacks on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record, the real estate mogul said, "If a conservative Republican made a like statement about somebody else's religion, there’d be hell to pay. It’ll be all over the place. It would be the end of that person's career as you know it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich scolded Meet the Press host David Gregory for beginning their interview with a question about the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy.

On Fox News's On the Record Monday, Karl Rove said of this exchange, "God bless Speaker Gingrich for taking David Gregory out behind the barn and giving him a whooping" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Having followed Democratic former Ohio governor Ted "Holier Than Thou" Strickland lo these many painful years, including the memorable episode when as a Congressman he called out 355 of his colleagues as liars for unanimously supporting an anti-pedophilia resolution (seriously), it's remarkable (actually, it's clear evidence of Ohio media bias) that it's current Republican governor John Kasich who has the reputation for arrogance. During the administration of "Turnaround Ted," who Kasich defeated in 2010, Ohio lost over 400,000 jobs. It should be self-evident to any Ohioan who endured his four long years in office that Strickland's authority to opine on anything relating to the welfare of the Buckeye State is non-existent.

Yet there Strickland was Tuesday night, being interviewed by Fox News's Greta Van Susteren about the meaning of Ohio voters' 66%-34% landslide approval of Issue 3, which put prohibitions of Obamacare’s mandates to buy health insurance and participate in a health care plan into Ohio’s constitution (y'know, the document Ted swore to uphold when he was the state's chief executive). Watch the exchange, as Van Susteren calls out Ted's contempt for the expressed will of Ohio's voters:

Donald Trump on Wednesday upped the ante to his April call for America to stay in Iraq and take the oil as compensation for our efforts.

Speaking with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News's "On the Record," the real estate tycoon said, "We’ve lost tremendous numbers of great, young, beautiful soldiers. Those families should be given a couple of million dollars apiece from the Iraqi oil" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) got quite a grilling from David Gregory on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

This caught the eye of real estate tycoon Donald Trump who told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren Monday, "Michele was so unfairly treated...I don't think I've seen anything like it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record Wednesday night, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich slammed NBC News for its reporting earlier that day that Callista Gingrich was a main cause of the exodus of Gingrich staffers last week: "I believe NBC owes Callista an apology....I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible and personally reprehensible..."     

Host Greta Van Susteren asked Gingrich: "What was her role in the campaign prior to the departure? What is her role now? And had there been any internal conflicts with Callista and any of the people who left?" Gingrich responded: "Look, Callista and I have a very similar relationship to Nancy and Ronnie Reagan. And people blame Nancy Reagan for things that Ronald Reagan did."

Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Saturday took issue with New York Times columnist Charles Blow's recent piece "False Choice."

In it, the perilously liberal commentator criticized Republicans for wanting to solve the nation's economic woes with a mixture of tax and spending cuts:

After comedian Bill Maher referred to Sarah Palin as a derogatory term for a vagina a little over week a ago, NewsBusters asked, "Can the dreaded C-word be far behind?"

According to the Dallas Voice, this happened on Sunday while Maher was "performing" at the Winspear Opera House (photo courtesy Reuters):

It's certainly not surprising that the New York Times would publish a hit piece on Glenn Beck, but coming hours after CNN's Howard Kurtz spent almost ten minutes bashing the Fox News commentator makes me smell a rat.

Add to this the increased pressure Beck has come up against from MSNBC personalities since Keith Olbermann surprisingly left America's most liberal television news network in January, and one has to wonder what Times author David Carr had in mind with his Monday piece "The Fading Power of Beck’s Alarms":

Despite heavy promotion for MSNBC's Monday presentation of "President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon," Chris Matthews' love letter to the 42nd president didn't get the ratings the network was likely hoping for.

In fact, the special was bested by Fox News's "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren:

Chris Matthews on Thursday attacked Sarah Palin for making what appeared to be a hip double entendre concerning President Obama's oft-used State of the Union slogan "Winning the Future."

Even less surprising, the "Hardball" host also went after Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) slavery remarks - for the third night in a row (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Politico published another Sarah Palin hit piece on Sunday evening, and much like the last one, authors Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei couldn't find one disparaging source to actually go on the record with his or her negative opinions.

Grabbing the article hot off the presses, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren and her guest Palin trashed "all these brave" faceless people as well as the so-called journalists willing to write hit pieces without any named sources (video follows with transcript and commentary, h/t Mediaite):

Greta Van Susteren on Friday absolutely skewered Gloria Allred, the attorney representing California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper.

In a fiery nine minute discussion on Fox's "On the Record," the host accused her guest of being "unthinkable" and "rotten" by bringing this issue to light, especially right before an election.  

"You're getting your client deported by putting a big neon sign, 'Hey, I'm here illegally, I signed documents falsely, and I've done that under penalty of perjury,'" scolded Van Susteren.  

"On the eve of an election, to raise something like this, which has the possibility of smearing unfairly, calling someone a liar and subverting the electoral process...I think all three things are rotten" (video follows with comments and highlights along with full transcript at end of post, h/t Ed Morrissey): 

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik on Sunday made fools out of CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid and former CNNer Frank Sesno.

Ironically, this happened during a "Reliable Sources" segment on CNN dealing with today's "Poisonous Press."

With host Howard Kurtz leading a discussion about how news outlets today are spending a great deal of time bashing each other, the conversation predictably led to Fox News.

Both Reid and Sesno tried to make the case that FNC is irrelevant because nobody watches the network.

Zurawik marvelously clued them both in (videos and transcripts follow with commentary):

On Tuesday’s Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as host Maddow complained that a video clip of former USDA official Shirley Sherrod had been edited to make it appear that she currently has a tendency to discriminate against white farmers at USDA – a clip that led to her firing by the Obama administration – the MSNBC host not only incorrectly claimed that FNC coverage of the clip had helped incite her firing, but she also suggested that FNC would never show her side of the story even though, by that time Tuesday night, several FNC shows had already informed viewers of some of the details in Sherrod’s favor. And, in fact, Sherrod had already been forced to resign before the O’Reilly Factor became the first FNC show to report the story of her comments on Monday night, although host Bill O’Reilly at the time did not realize she had already been fired.

Maddow’s show even chose to only present to her viewers clips from FNC that ran Monday and Tuesday morning which portrayed Sherrod’s comments as racist, without airing any of the clips from shows later Tuesday which showed FNC personalities conveying more of her side of the story. As Maddow filled in her viewers on some of the details in Sherrod’s favor, the MSNBC host used such phrases as "you would never know this if you got all your information from Fox News," and, after explaining that Sherrod, in fact, helped the white farmers in question, she added: "That`s what happened – unless, of course, you watch Fox News." FNC had already reported most of those same details hours earlier, and O’Reilly even informed his viewers Tuesday that Sherrod had declined an invitation to appear as a guest on his show, so liberal FNC analyst Alan Colmes appeared in her place.

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren says the just-announced new CNN show pitting former New York governor Eliot Spitzer against faux conservative Kathleen Parker is bad news for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

Writing at her Greta Wire blog Wednesday, Van Susteren said, "[I]f CNN is to be successful, it will have to draw viewers from Keith Olbermann's viewers."  

She continued, "The total number of cable news viewers seems to be a limited number so they have to grab from Olberman [sic]."

Van Susteren elaborated as to why she doesn't think Spitzer-Parker will take viewers from "The O'Reilly Factor":

Not this again. There is obviously not enough going on in the world for Newsweek magazine this week because once again Sarah Palin is on the cover.

Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee was also on the cover of Newsweek back in November 2009, in running shorts. This time she is featured as "Saint Sarah: What's Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and the future of the religious right" in Newsweek's June 21 issue. Palin is depicted with halo on the cover for the story written by Lisa Miller, which attempts to rationalize Palin's convictions about the issue of abortion and her Christian faith.

However, Palin didn't think too highly of Newsweek's gesture. She responded on Fox News' June 11 broadcast of "On the Record with Greta van Sustren."

"Haven't seen it, but if the title and what I hear about the content is any indication of where Newsweek is going, it is no wonder Newsweek is doing so poorly," Palin said. "People are not reading that stuff. It is not relevant. It's not interesting stuff that they are making up and writing and that's why they are going down."

Video Below Fold

Ordinarily, one wouldn't take much notice of a gallon jug losing only a drop or two of water a day. But if you came back a year later and saw it half-empty, that would get your attention.

Such is the case with the steep ratings declines at CNN and MSNBC. A year ago, they already trailed Fox News badly -- so badly that Fox's audience in a given hour of prime time was sometimes greater than CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News (HLN) combined.

Revise "sometimes" to "virtually always." A comparison of Media Bistro's scoreboard for Thursday, February 4, 2010 to the same report for Thursday, February 5, 2009 shows stunning leakage from CNN and MSNBC. The jug is less than half full:

When Maine Republican Olympia Snowe backed aspects of health care reform early last fall, CBS’s Nancy Cordes cheered the "rebel Republican." Now that Snowe is sounding a tougher, more skeptical tone on the legislation, how will journalists treat the moderate Senator?

Appearing on Thursday’s edition of On the Record, host Greta Van Susteren asked Snowe if health care was dead. She bluntly replied, "I think that this particular legislation. I think its going to be very difficult to reach an agreement even within, I think, the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate to accept this legislation one way or the other."

For those that missed it Wednesday evening, Karl Rove had a lengthy discussion with Fox News's Greta Van Susteren about a variety of issues including Sarah Palin's future.

Early on in this "On the Record" segment, Rove made a statement about the former Alaska governor that's guaranteed to anger liberals across the fruited plain:

I think she's an interesting personality who relates well to a lot of Americans. And a lot of people who have been heretofore on the fringes of politics and sitting on the sidelines were motivated during the campaign to get involved and since that time have become even more enamored of her. 

Rove also referred to a recent column by our friend Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times "where he pointed out Barack Obama's approval rating is 49 and Sarah Palin's approval rating has now risen to 43" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Joe the Plumber was certainly on to something when he got then-candidate Barack Obama to admit he wanted to redistribute the wealth, according to former Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. 

Huckabee, who now hosts a show aired on the weekends on the Fox News Channel, told "On The Record" host Greta Van Sustren on Nov. 16 that Obama's policies go beyond just the redistribution of wealth, especially on health care. He likened a provision in the House health care bill that would require people to have some sort of health care coverage to a "poll tax."

"[W]hile we really wish [the president's priorities] were recovery, getting jobs back - that's the number one thing we ought to be focused on - but it appears to be redistribution," Huckabee said. "That's what's going on in the health care world, where we're trying to make sure that we've redistributed health care, taking it from people who have it, taking from them, giving it to people who may not even desire to have it, and forcing people into an unconstitutional system where they're going to have to virtually pay into a private marketplace in order to get full rights of citizenship. It's the equivalent of a poll tax."