Fox & Friends

Is this the network all of the Democrats were afraid of just months ago? Glowing from her victory in Pennsylvania, Senator Hillary Clinton braved the April 23 edition of FNC’s "Fox and Friends" to face a barrage of...softball questions. This is not new for the Fox News morning show as they've already given Senator Clinton two other easy interviews.

Co-host Gretchen Carlson started the segment asking "May I call you ‘Rocky’ this morning, Senator?" Carlson and fellow co-host Steve Doocy allowed Clinton to answer any way she pleases and did not interrupt the New York senator. At one point, it appeared as if Doocy was setting up a tough question, recounting some of the many Clinton scandals, but gave Clinton a tee-ball, opining "I thought Barack Obama wasn’t going to run that kind of a campaign." [audio available here]

Dan Gainor appeared on Fox News's "Fox and Friends" to talk about the latest issue of Time magazine, which had a Photoshopped cover of World War II Marines raising a tree instead of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Gainor told viewers of the Saturday morning broadcast April 19, "Time magazine basically tried to co-op an icon of American heroism to push their global warming agenda. They're trying to claim that their war against global warming is similar to what our veterans endured during WWII."

He went on to say that there were 28,000 casualties and more than 6,000 people killed at Iwo Jima, exclaiming, "That's real war."

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell was on "Fox & Friends" during the 7 a.m. EDT hour today to recap last night's "DisHonors Awards."

You can find videos of the Awards program here at EyeBlast.tv, the MRC's online archive and video-bookmarking site. You can also sign up for an EyeBlast.tv account here.

[Audio available here]

I have to give props to the "Fox & Friends" graphics guys for this graphic for our "How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award," which you can see below the page break:

Before ABC News on Sunday night described Charlton Heston as “polarizing” for his conservative views and CBS News dubbed him “controversial,” the Fox News Channel aired a obituary piece which impugned Heston as “infamous for his politics, including his belief that the Bill of Rights is built upon the bedrock of the Second Amendment.”

The MRC's Rich Noyes caught the characterization on Fox & Friends Weekend, at about 7:12 AM EDT Sunday morning, in a pre-packaged piece narrated by Bill McCuddy, though he was never identified or shown, possibly because he is no longer with FNC.

The Oxford dictionary defines “infamous” as “well known for some bad quality or deed” or “morally bad; shocking.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary: “Having a reputation of the worst kind: notoriously evil,” or “causing or bringing infamy: disgraceful.”

Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee appeared on "Fox & Friends" on April 2 to discuss the media's involvement in sparking recession fears.

Rescuing viewers from "solid recession talk," Menefee said that specifically network news reports already "have gone far beyond recession, they are already concerned about a depression."

"They're not tell-they're not allowing people on the networks to say ‘Hey, let's get this in perspective right now,' as you said we haven't had a quarter of negative growth yet."

Here's something you never hear from a Democrat: of all the cable networks, Fox News is doing the fairest job covering an issue.

Yet, that's exactly what Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Penn.), an outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, said on "Fox & Friends" Monday.

I kid you not.

Speaking with host Steve Doocy, Rendell said the following (h/t TVNewser via NBer Thomas Stewart):

Who's the best political talk show host on television every Sunday? Tim Russert? George Stephanopoulos? Bob Schieffer? Wolf Blitzer?

Get real! There's nobody on the television landscape that comes close to Fox News's Chris Wallace. And, there's nobody on Fox News that better exemplifies and understands what the network's slogan "fair and balanced" means.

To drive home the point, Wallace was Steve Malzberg's guest on WOR radio Wednesday, and quite candidly discussed how his little tiff with the good folks at "Fox and Friends" last Friday demonstrates vividly why FNC is indeed the only fair and balanced news network on television (15-minute audio available here):

[This was first posted on January 1, 2008] On the Tuesday, January 1 Fox and Friends, Democratic strategist and FNC contributor Bob Beckel found amusing Hillary Clinton's contention that her trip to Bosnia in 1996, which Clinton has been accused of exaggerating as a dangerous mission despite the presence of daughter Chelsea and comedian Sinbad on the plane as she mentioned the need for a "corkscrew" landing and running on the tarmac in case of sniper attack, was evidence of her foreign policy experience. Clinton's comments, which were a response to Barack Obama's charges that her foreign policy experience consisted only of talking and "having tea" with foreign dignitaries, evoked an amused and cynical reaction from the liberal Beckel: "It's almost too hard to say this straight. I mean, I've had a few corkscrew landings myself, but I was not, well, it had been a long night before I did it. I mean, I don't know what that gives you in terms of foreign policy experience except a bad case of heartburn. I probably would have thought of something else besides that. I wonder what Sinbad did during that landing. I wonder if she hid behind him or not. Dangerous that would probably be." (Transcript follows)

I count Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace among the fairest and most incisive interviewers in the business, and hope his tenure at Fox News is a long one. Anyone who can relentlessly cross-exam Mitt Romney on his changed position on abortion the way Wallace did a while back, then turn around and have Bill Clinton near the point of taking a poke at him, is doing his job and playing no favorites. But should Wallace ever wish a change of venue, never fear: MSNBC apparently can find a place for him.

Wallace made some news when, appearing on this past Friday's Fox & Friends, he criticized the hosts for dwelling longer than Chris thought appropriate on Obama's comment that his grandmother was a "typical white person."

On this evening's Hardball, Chris Matthews devoted a segment to the exchange. Eugene Robinson, the affable WaPo columnist and MSNBC political analyst, suggested that refuge awaited Wallace should he need it.

Imagine for a moment Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, or Bob Schieffer being interviewed on their respective network's morning show, and scolding the co-hosts for excessive George Bush or John McCain bashing.

Wouldn't happen in a million years, right?

Well, Fox News's Chris Wallace was the guest of "Fox & Friends" Friday morning, and before allowing any of the co-hosts to ask him a question, he actually admonished them for spending too much time in the first two hours of the show on Barack Obama's "typical white person" remark (h/t Politico):

As conditions in Iraq improve to the point where even adamant Iraq War opponents concede the surge has worked, the press seems less interested in questioning the Bush administration on the war. On the March 6 edition of "Fox and Friends," co-host Brian Kilmeade asked White House press secretary Dana Perino when she last received a question about Iraq. Perino responded that she does not remember "having sustained questions about Iraq...since probably early December," and added "I think that’s as a result of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in conjunction with the Iraqis really making some progress on the ground."

Does the media only want to report the bad news in Iraq? A recent MRC study suggests just that, noting "their zeal for reporting on Iraq declined as the violence and casualties did." The MRC documented that the number of stories declined in 2007 from 178 in September, 108 in October, to 68 in November.

The Fox & Friends crew welcomed both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on their airwaves on Wednesday morning. The Fox hosts were cheerful, but a bit tougher than in previous interviews this year. Here's the most interesting part of the Hillary interview, where she sends Rush Limbaugh a message:  

STEVE DOOCY: Let me ask you, let me ask about this. Over the last week or so, Rush Limbaugh has been suggesting to his listeners, Republicans, conservatives mainly, to go ahead in Texas and Ohio to vote for you. What’s your message to Rush Limbaugh today?

HILLARY CLINTON: Be careful what you wish for, Rush.

With new data out of the earth’s significant cooling, at least one morning show picked it up, predictably "Fox and Friends." On the February 28 edition, co-host Brian Kilmeade noted that worldwide snow cover is the highest it has been in over forty years. Steve Doocy quoted a meteorologist in California who noted that the temperature has dropped by "a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the last 100 years" and "it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded up or down."

"You know, Steve, I just wrote a book about the naked fawning for Hillary Clinton by the media over the past 15 years. I picked the wrong subject," MRC president Brent Bozell joked to "Fox & Friends" co-host Steve Doocy.

Bozell appeared on the February 26 program to discuss media coverage of the Democratic primary contest, including the latest dustup: a controversy about a photo of Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) from a 2006 Africa junket allegedly leaked by a Clinton staffer. Bozell noted that the Clinton campaign's tactics are "just goofy" and are "backfiring on them, every single time."

Bozell argued that Clinton's desperation is in part due to Obama's soft treatment by the press although, "there's no way you can say that the media have treated her [Sen. Clinton] poorly overall."

Below is a transcript of the interview:

With the New York Times smear on likely Republican nominee John McCain and his alleged inappropriate relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, Fox News political correspondent Carl Cameron called in to add his take. Cameron revealed on the February 21 edition of "Fox and Friends," that Fox News came across these rumors last fall. Cameron stated that they were "unable to substantiate any of it."

In regards to the alleged affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, Cameron asserted that they "were able to find precisely nobody who would go on the record or even suggest off the record that there was truth to the suggestion that there had been any sort of an inappropriate personal relationship."

"The New York Times" uses fuzzy math to smear volunteer soldiers and "Fox and Friends" picked it up. MRC’s Clay Waters reported on the "Sunday Times" January 13 story, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," essentially smearing soldiers linking some committed murders to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.

However, the numbers show that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are far less likely to commit murder. On the January 16 edition of "Fox and Friends," co-host Steve Doocy noted that veterans are "five times less likely to commit murder." Gretchen Carlson noted the danger of putting out these dubious stories adding "You don't have time to actually get to the bottom of all of these articles. People just assume that what they read, wrong or right, is truth."

The Democrats may still refuse to debate on Fox News Channel, but they’re getting increasingly competitive enough with each other to appear on the morning show Fox & Friends all of a sudden. Hillary Clinton made her second appearance of the year on Wednesday after her New Hampshire squeaker, and Barack Obama followed. But this may be the one media outlet where Obama gets tougher treatment than Mrs. Clinton. While co-host Brian Kilmeade turned at the end to some tougher questions on al-Qaeda, it was smooth sailing for Hillary.

Here were the toughies Hillary had to face on the supposedly harsh and right-wing Fox News Channel [transcripts by MRC's Justin McCarthy]:

1. Gretchen Carlson asked: "You know, I thought of course the line of your speech last night that everyone will be talking about this morning is the one where you said ‘I listened to you,’ meaning the people in New Hampshire, ‘and in the process I found my own voice.’ What did you mean by that?"

Is Fox News really the hard right news outlet that left wing bloggers and presidential candidates to even a former president accuse? When contrasting interviews between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Mike Huckabee, that charge appears almost laughable.

After asking Senator Clinton all softball questions such as how she keeps herself "going everyday," to what nick name she would like if she wins Iowa, "Fox and Friends" asked Governor Huckabee fair but much tougher questions.

The leftist Fox News Channel-monitoring bloggers at News Hounds are quite sensitive about how fiercely the Democrats are questioned. On Wednesday, "Donna" was thrilled at how well former DNC chairman and Hillary campaign operative Terry McAuliffe did on Fox & Friends. (Well, she kept calling him "McCauliffe.") He was a spin-control role model, apparently. But FNC’s Gretchen Carlson was reportedly throwing McAuliffe digs and disses. Notice there are no transcripts as she claims:

Gretchen tried to steer the conversation to how close it was in Iowa between Sen Obama and Sen Clinton. McCauliffe didn't engage and talked about the how well the campaign was going.

Gretchen got a dig in about Sen Clinton having babysitters, buses and snow shovels given out to help people to get out to vote. McCauliffe [sic] turned the diss around and said that they just wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted to caucus got a chance to caucus. He said this is the most important election for many many years and they wanted everyone who wanted to caucus to be able to do so.

On Tuesday's Fox and Friends, Democratic strategist and FNC contributor Bob Beckel found amusing Hillary Clinton's contention that her trip to Bosnia in 1996, which Clinton has been accused of exaggerating as a dangerous mission despite the presence of daughter Chelsea and comedian Sinbad on the plane as she mentioned the need for a "corkscrew" landing and running on the tarmac in case of sniper attack, was evidence of her foreign policy experience. Clinton's comments, which were a response to Barack Obama's charges that her foreign policy experience consisted only of talking and "having tea" with foreign dignitaries, evoked an amused and cynical reaction from the liberal Beckel: "I don't know what that gives you in terms of foreign policy experience except a bad case of heartburn. I probably would have thought of something else besides that. I wonder what Sinbad did during that landing. I wonder if she hid behind him or not. Dangerous that would probably be." (Transcript follows)

Despite what former President Bill Clinton and most Democrats think, Fox News's Chris Wallace really is the epitome of fair and balanced.

In case you had any doubt, his interview Thursday with WOR radio's Steve Malzberg was a perfect example of why Wallace is the most impartial of all the Sunday talk show hosts.

To give you an idea of just how unbiased he is, during this extraordinary segment, Wallace strongly disagreed with Rush Limbaugh's recent remarks concerning Hillary Clinton's aging appearance, and actually came to her defense.

Later, Wallace supported media's questions concerning Mitt Romney being a Mormon even though Sen. Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) belief in this faith is totally ignored.

On the flipside, Wallace ridiculed MSNBC's David Shuster for some of his recent comments about Fox News, and mocked those that find water-boarding so deplorable.

Here are some of the highlights of this absolutely spectacular interview (15-minute audio available here, readers are cautioned to prepare themselves for an almost astounding level of candor from someone regularly depicted as a GOP mouthpiece):

Is this the evil conservative Fox News that those on the left portray? From the December 17 "Fox and Friends" interview with Senator Hillary Clinton, one has to wonder where it came from. After a surprisingly tough interview with David Gregory on NBC’s "Today," Senator Clinton sailed through a softball interview with the allegedly right wing Fox News.

After Hillary’s husband accused "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace of engaging in a "right wing hit job," and the left wing blog campaign to boycott the Fox News debates, co-host Gretchen Carlson asked such hard hitting questions like "how do you keep yourself going everyday?"

Co-host Steve Doocy asked the tough question of what her name would be if she pulls off a victory in Iowa.

In conjunction with the tour for his new book Whitewash, NewsBusters publisher and MRC president Brent Bozell was invited on to FNC's "Fox and Friends" to discuss the liberal media's constant search for bad news in Iraq.

In his Thursday appearance, Bozell noted that things are so ridiculous that some liberal journalists are bemoaning how fewer deaths in Iraq harms the cemetery business there. Watch the video above, on YouTube, or download the video in Windows Media, Real or listen to MP3 audio.

Transcript is below the fold...

Even liberal Bush administration critics are, as Hillary Clinton would say, "piling on" the Senator from New York and Democratic presidential candidate. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a regular guest on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," who suggested that President Bush "could well have committed a federal crime...30 times" with the NSA wiretapping program, offered harsh words for Senator Clinton on the November 6 "Fox and Friends."

Turley opined that the Clintons "seem to want" documents being released "at a glacial pace." Turley noted that "it’s not just health care stuff" but also "things like pardons, controversies involving Hillary Clinton’s brothers."

As NewsBusters previously reported, Rosie O’Donnell is reportedly negotiating a talk show with MSNBC, the same Rosie O’Donnell who did not last a full season on "The View" with her left wing ravings. The co-hosts on the November 6 edition of "Fox and Friends" discussed it. Gretchen Carlson predicted that "it probably won’t last because Rosie doesn’t stick too long with any particular show."

The co-hosts proceeded to play two inflammatory clips of Rosie O’Donnell, previously documented by NewsBusters. First, was Rosie O’Donnell comparing radical Islam with "radical Christianity" and then her September 11 conspiracy rant that for "the first time in history, that steel was melted by fire."

Besides the illegal immigrant driver’s license controversy, Hillary Clinton’s biggest stumbling point during last week’s debate involved communications between her husband regarding health care. Senator Clinton’s defense is "that’s not my decision to make."

Documents uncovered by "Newsweek," however, revealed that in 1994, President Clinton named his wife along with his adviser Bruce Lindsey in charge of the former president’s papers. Senator Clinton’s spokesman said "we don’t control their process. We’re not holding anything up."

Senator Clinton also claimed that "all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care, those are already available." However, "Newsweek" also reports that most records relating to the health care task force have not been released.

All of the networks, and CNN have thus far ignored the story. However, "Fox and Friends" discussed the story on the November 5 edition. The transcript of the discussion is below.

NewsBusters reported on October 29 that Chris Matthews wrote a speech for Barack Obama attacking his primary rival Hillary Clinton from the left. The following morning, "Fox and Friends" picked it up. Co-host Steve Doocy noted, just as Geoffrey Dickens did in his post, that Matthews is a former Jimmy Carter speech writer.

Doocy read an e-mail from Jonathan in Sag Harbor, New York calling Matthews a "Democratic stalwart" and "will do anything to get a little face time" for his "low rated program." Co-host Gretchen Carlson observed that it "sounds a lot maybe like a speech that MoveOn.org would also write."

The transcript of the discussion is below.

Fox News, just as Glenn Beck previously, picked up on an observation that the rest of the mainstream media largely ignored: brush left in place under environmental groups’ pressure fueled much of the fires in southern California. While all of the network’s morning shows ignored this angle (NBC’s "Today," ABC’s "Good Morning America," and CBS’s "The Early Show") the October 25 edition of "Fox and Friends" contained this report from Adam Housley.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, the old saying goes. It's certainly applicable to liberal talk show host Bill Maher, who got a taste of venom from the far-left 9/11 conspiracy crowd during a recent taping of his "Real Time" program before a live studio audience.

Video (2:55): Real (2.14 MB) and Windows (1.79 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.33 MB).

MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell reacted to the development in a segment on the October 22 "Fox & Friends" program. Said Bozell: