Special Report

File under: you read it here first. “The Washington Post ignored a few historical facts when it proclaimed in a front page article Wednesday that President Obama is quote, ‘a rare President who comes from the middle class,’” FNC’s Bret Baier pointed out during his Thursday “Grapevine” segment. Baier explained what escaped Post reporter Eli Saslow:

There have actually been many Presidents who hailed from the middle class. Lyndon Johnson was born in a small farmhouse and worked his way through college. Harry Truman worked for the railroad and lived in hobo camps. Richard Nixon's parents ran a grocery store. Ronald Reagan was born in a small apartment above a bank in Northern Illinois. His father was a salesman. And Bill Clinton was born to a widow in Hope, Arkansas.

Baier quipped: “So, maybe not so rare.”

On Sunday, I noted the U.S. Air Force Academy was making a public space for pagan worship, and wondered if the media would notice. Fox’s Special Report noted it on Monday, quoting a Catholic priest who disapproved. CNN and NBC noticed it briefly on Wednesday. CNN’s Rick Sanchez found its promoter "Today’s most intriguing" person. NBC’s Brian Williams relayed there had already been a "desecration incident."

To consult the dictionary, NBC was saying someone "violated the sacred character" of an object or place. What if the viewer at home doesn’t consider a pagan circle to be "sacred"? Here’s the entirety of the Williams brief on Nightly News:

The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has now set aside a new outdoor worship area for followers of earth-centered religions. That includes pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans. It's a double circle of stones on a hilltop. One of the chaplains there, a lieutenant colonel, calls it, quote, "Another example of celebrating the freedom we enjoy as well as the freedom we, as airmen, have pledged to defend." There has been one desecration incident since its opening, and officials are repeating that message of tolerance on campus.

Sanchez suggested paganism is somehow a brand new idea during his show Rick's List:

The Washington Times’s Jennifer Harper picked up on a new study from the non-partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs showing President Obama getting much more flattering news coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC (46% positive vs. 54% negative) during his first year in office than did Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, all of whom received roughly three times more bad press than good from those same broadcast networks.

But one network did offer scrutiny roughly equal to that provided by the old networks in the past, according to CMPA: the Fox News Channel. Reviewing the first thirty minutes of FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier, CMPA found roughly three times more negative coverage of Obama (78%) vs. positive coverage (22%) during 2009. This compares to the broadcast networks doling out 74% bad press for Ronald Reagan in 1981 and 77% bad press for George W. Bush in 2001. In 1993, Bill Clinton fared better than his GOP counterparts (28% positive vs. 72% negative), but much worse than President Obama. (Chart below the jump).

As the MRC’s Tim Graham noted in a just-released special report from MRC, Omitting for Obama, the three broadcast networks were routinely late in picking up on negative storylines about the Obama administration, and gave paltry attention to major scandals such as the radical affiliations of ex-White House aide Van Jones, ACORN, and the pro-communist musings of then-White House communications director Anita Dunn. Instead, those stories were brought to light by alternative news sources, such as Fox News, talk radio and the conservative blogosphere, and then only grudgingly covered by the old media.

Last Sunday, NewsBusters reported that the United Nations might be about to retract a claim its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made back in 2007 concerning Himalayan glaciers being completely gone by 2035 as a result of global warming.

On Wednesday, the IPCC issued a statement concerning the matter:

It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

Despite the seriousness of this apology and its implications for the veracity of the entire manmade global warming myth, the announcement was completely ignored by America's major television news outlets EXCEPT Fox News (partial transcript of January 20's "Special Report" below the fold):

Quip of the day, from columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday's (January 22) Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC. Baier wondered: “Conservatives, pretty good week?” Krauthammer affirmed:

You know, this is an amazing week. Massachusetts goes Republican, health care dies and the Supreme Court unshackles the First Amendment. It's the best week I've had since spring break in medical school -- and I don't even remember it [laughter from other panelists].

And there was another item which you mentioned: Air America, the liberal talk show network went out of business -- which is a redundancy because nobody was listening anyway.

It was a year ago this weekend that the Israeli military halted its three-week campaign, Operation Cast Lead, against Hamas militants in Gaza, during which Israel had responded to thousands of rockets and mortars launched from Gaza over several years. During Israel’s military campaign, on a number of major stories, many American television newscasts were more inclined to report accusations made by U.N. or Palestinian officials that the Israeli military had acted improperly than they were to update viewers after the military held investigations and released reports disputing the accusations made against it. At one point, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric went so far as to claim that the Israelis "may have used a banned weapon."

Below is a compilation of NewsBusters postings which document how the morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNC, and PBS reported a number of major stories from the Gaza War, highlighting examples of the media either engaging in distortion or omitting relevant information that would have cast Israel in a more favorable light, including several times when the broadcast and news networks even ignored reports issued by the Israeli military after it had taken time to investigate and dispute accusations made against its troops which had previously been reported by the media.

Yesterday, Fox News Channel's Bret Baier picked up on a statement NewsBusters Publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell made about "60 Minutes" failing to note Harry Reid's controversial "Negro dialect" remark, even as the news magazine program devoted plenty of time to other revelations from the just-published book "Game Change".

Said Bozell (audio excerpt available here):

It's utterly shameless for CBS to cover this book, and ignore the scoops about the racially charged comments of Harry Reid and Bill Clinton, but devote a very slanted 10 minutes to more of the same old McCain aides slashing Sarah Palin. 

A year ago today, when U.N. officials accused the Israeli military of killing the driver of a vehicle delivering relief aid to Gaza during the Israeli campaign against Hamas, all the broadcast and news networks reported the accusation on January 8, 2009, noting the U.N.'s resulting cessation of relief aid deliveries. But, after the Israeli military conducted an investigation and charged that Hamas was responsible for the killing, very few of the shows that reported the initial charges by the U.N. updated viewers on this important development. An examination of the morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNC, and PBS – including American Morning and The Situation Room on CNN; as well as Fox and Friends, the Fox Report, and Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC; and PBS's NewsHour – between January 8 and January 12, 2009, found that all these shows – with the exception of ABC’s Good Morning America – reported on the truck driver’s death at least once, with nearly all shows also directly relaying the U.N.’s charge of Israeli military culpability.

But only CNN's The Situation Room, on the January 9 show, took the time to briefly inform viewers that the Israeli military had denied responsibility for the incident as correspondent Nic Robertson related: "[The U.N.] said that two of their workers were killed by Israeli tank and machine gun fire. Israeli Defense Forces say they have investigated it. Now, they say it wasn't them, which implies that it must have been Hamas."

Fox News's Brit Hume Monday said the growing ClimateGate scandal suggests manmade global warming may be a fraud.

As NewsBusters has been reporting since e-mail messages from the British Climatic Research Unit were first revealed ten days ago, the only television news network that has been regularly informing viewers about this matter has been the Fox News Channel.

On Monday, Fox's "Special Report" continued this trend, and brought Hume on to offer his thoughts (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

In the past several days, FNC has given attention to the plight of three Navy SEALs who helped capture one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq – a man named Ahmed Hashim Abed who is believed to have planned the savage murder of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah in 2004. Due to accusations of prisoner abuse by Abed, these American troops are now facing the possibility of court-martial. On Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, correspondent Steve Centanni began his report:

It was March of 2004. Fallujah was a hotbed of insurgent activity. Four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and killed. Their bodies were mutilated and burned, then dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The man believed to have planned that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed ... had long evaded capture. But when a team of Navy SEALs finally did catch up with him in September of this year, they weren't hailed as heroes. Instead, three of them were brought up on charges.

Fox and Friends also raised the story Wednesday morning, and Thursday’s show delved further into the matter as former JAG officer and defense attorney Tom Kenniff appeared as a guest and argued that the accusations of abuse are consistent with al-Qaeda’s practice of advising its members to level false accusations of abuse against American troops if captured. Kenniff:

Well, it's not quite as bad as Paul Krugman critiquing the Fox Business Network, but a little troubling because tax dollars are being spent to undertake such an effort.

A Nov. 27 post by incoming White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer on the The White House Blog attempted to fact check a Nov. 27 column by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, proving the left-wing noise machine isn't the only shop in Washington, D.C. criticizing conservative voices (h/t Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times).

"In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer takes great pains to paint a bleak picture of health care reform as ‘monstrous,' ‘overregulated,' and rife with ‘arbitrary bureaucratic inventions,'" Pfeiffer wrote. "The columnist's argument may be cogent and well-written, but it is wholly inaccurate."

Even though all three of Wednesday’s broadcast network evening newscasts reported on President Obama’s decision to attend the climate change summit in Copenhagen, they also continued to ignore email evidence that scientists who push global warming theory have distorted data to support their assertions while trying to suppress the views of dissenters. FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier gave attention to the Climategate controversy on Monday and Wednesday, while Wednesday’s The Situation Room on CNN, guest hosted by Suzanne Malveaux, ran what appears to be CNN’s first story on the controversy, but correspondent Brooke Baldwin downplayed the story’s significance. The same story ran twice on the Friday, November 27, American Morning on CNN.

Baldwin began and ended her report fretting over the timing of the revelation as coming so soon before the climate change summit in Copenhagen. She also twice referred to a climate change "consensus," a loaded term which is normally employed by those who believe global warming theory is not debatable. Baldwin began her report by rhetorically asking, "How about the timing of all of this?"

After the U.S. House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation earlier this year by a thin seven-vote margin earlier this year, the possibility that it could become law seemed like it was a real one.

But after the dust settled some, the White House shifted its focused to so-called health care reform. And additionally, leaked emails surrounding the recent event known ClimateGate have put the entire premise of anthropogenic global warming in doubt. Thus, the likelihood of congressional Democrats getting a bill to the President's desk and signed into law has somewhat dimmed.

And that's a topic a special Thanksgiving Nov. 26 broadcast of Fox News "Special Report" took on. Host Bret Baier explained that there's pending legislation put forward by Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., with some rigid guidelines for carbon emissions.

On Fox's Nov. 22 "Fox News Sunday," former "Special Report" anchor and Fox News senior political correspondent was dead spot on target in many regards when it came to criticizing the tack President Barack Obama has taken with his foreign policy gestures.

First, Hume reflected on how Obama reacted on his trip to Asia last week. He noted that Obama was in a tough position, having to rely on borrowed Chinese money. However, "embracing weakness" was not the proper way for Obama to represent the country in Hume's view (emphasis added).

"Look, the president is in a weaker position than he might have been, not least because his policies have contributed mightily to the immense amount of new borrowing that's being done, much of it from the Chinese," Hume said. "So now you have the Chinese even worried about the size of the health care plan. That is unfortunate. But this president seems quite willing to embrace weakness as a position for the United States. I mean, the bowing and scraping that we see -- Saudi Arabia we saw it. We saw it on this trip in Japan."

Remember earlier this year when the new era of hope and change was ushered into Washington, D.C. and President Barack Obama made the statement on day one his policies would "represent a clean break from business as usual"?

Not so fast says Charles Krauthammer, columnist for The Washington Post and Fox News regular. Krauthammer on the Nov. 20 broadcast of Fox News "Special Report with Bret Baier" explained that a certain provision put into to the Senate version of health care legislation to favor undecided Democratic senators, specifically Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., represents a different brand of politics from what Obama advertised (emphasis added).

"You asked what [Sen.] Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas will ask for," Krauthammer said. "Well, after watching Louisiana get $100 million in what have some have called 'The Louisiana Purchase,' she ought to ask for $500 million at least. And that's because Obama said he would end business as usual in Washington. If you look at the sections, it is 2006 in which the Louisiana money, it looks as if it is provision for all states which have had a proclamation of a disaster area in the last seven years, and then the fine print inside eliminates all the others except Louisiana. So it's a new kind of business as usual. I think that Steve [Hayes] is right. There is almost no way imaginable that the vote will fail tomorrow. If it is, it is the ultimate humiliation. It's the rejection of the debate even before it starts."

Leftists including those in the White House who presumptively and obsessively attack Fox News will not be pleased with this.

At Forbes (HT Hot Air Headlines), S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, asks the question, "Fox News: Fair And Balanced?" -- and answers in the affirmative. In the process, the GMU Professor of Communications also makes a number of interesting points about Fox's competitors, discusses the convergence of news and analysis, and provides useful historical context.

Using a methodology that would be difficult to refute, Lichter's work relating to campaign 2008 is in sync with what CMPA found in late 2007 (noted at the time at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) during the opening stages of the presidential campaign.

Here are key paragraphs from Lichter's commentary (bolds are mine):

Almost six years since he coined the phrase Bush Derangement Syndrome, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer is accusing Barack Obama of having the same malady.

On Fox News's "Special Report" Tuesday, Krauthammer called out the President's constant negative references to his predecessor saying, "There is something truly disgusting about the way he cannot refrain from attacking Bush when he is being defensive about himself."  

The topic under discussion at the time was the rising casualties in Afghanistan, and how Obama seems intent on deflecting blame to someone who has been out of office for ten months (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Hot Air):

Just when you thought the White House couldn't possibly do anything to make their bizarre feud with the Fox News Channel an even larger spectacle - the administration manages to take it to another level.

Over the past two weeks, three White House officials have publicly criticized the Fox News Channel by denigrating its status as a news outlet - White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And even the president himself commented on his opinion of Fox News. However, that pales in comparison to the latest petty stunt.

On the Oct. 22 broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Special Report," host Bret Baier revealed a White House pool announcement was offering Kenneth Feinberg, the "Special Master for Compensation," better known as the White House "pay czar" for interviews - all except for one network - Fox News.

A day after key White House officials declared the Fox News Channel wasn't a news organization, President Obama met with MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

Talk about your delicious hypocrisy.

Fittingly, the news was broken by FNC's Bret Baier during Tuesday's "Special Report" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, relevant section at 1:45, h/t Hot Air via NBer Thomas Stewart):

By now, the cat is out of the bag - President Barack Obama and his administration are no fans of the Fox News Channel and have been all too eager to wear that sentiment as a badge of honor.

However, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer identified the vigor with which the Obama administration has attacked Fox. He explained on the Fox News Oct. 20 broadcast of "Special Report with Bret Baier" that it's different than just fighting back; this is an effort to destroy the cable news channel.

"Look, it's one thing for the government, the administration to attack opponents, institutions, media," Krauthammer said. "It is another to go out to try and delegitimize them and destroy them."

Is Barack Obama turning into Spiro Agnew? The White House's attacks on the Fox News smack of the distaste for media opposition espoused by Nixon's vice president almost 40 years ago but are being met with a decidedly different reaction today by the elite media.

Pundits have wondered aloud since last week why the White House would pursue a strategy that seems to be boosting the ratings of a purported 'opposition' news network. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough posited today that the White House's attacks on Fox News are designed to prevent the mainstream media from picking up on stories damaging to the administration (video embedded below the fold, h/t to NB reader Kirk W.).

Every time Fox breaks a story on the radical connections of a White House advisor or appointee, the news is potentially damaging to the administration. But damage is only really done if the rest of the media picks up on the story, reports it, and turns it into a national news sensation, a la Van Jones.

After another round of attacks from the White House, this time from higher levels of the Obama administration, Brit Hume, a senior political analyst for Fox News, went to bat for his network.

On the Oct. 19 broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hume gave his best effort to rationalize why White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod used two Sunday morning news show appearances to beat up on the highly rated news channel. According to Hume, it was because they disapproved of the stories his channel broke over the last few months.

"It is a little hard to discern a strategy behind the White House campaign of criticism of Fox News unless it's simply this - an attempt to quarantine Fox and thereby discourage other media outlets from following up stories did originate here," Hume said. "The White House is clearly stung by the revelations about former aid Van Jones. He turned out to have harbored views that were out there where the buses don't run and he was forced to resign. And the White House could not much have cared for the hidden camera expose of ACORN - an organization with which the president had a past association and one whose voter registration drives have benefited the Democratic Party."

After months of investigation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released a report addressing accusations from some humanitarian groups that its use of white phosphorus (WP) munitions in the Gaza War was a violation of international law, as the report distinguishes between the use of WP as a weapon and the more common non-weapon purposes such as providing smoke screens to conceal troop movements. The pro-Israel group CAMERA recently quoted from the report in the article, "Did Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus Constitute a War Crime?" by Steven Stotsky, on its Web site. The report not only argued that the military's decision to explode the munition in the air was safer for civilians than it would have been to explode it on the ground, but it also suggested that the use of WP to facilitate troops movements also meant civilian casualties were lower than they otherwise would have been by making attacks on Hamas more accurate.

Last January, evening newscasts and some morning newscasts on the broadcast networks and on CNN and FNC reported on accusations from humanitarian groups – with varying degrees of accuracy – with CBS even referring to WP as a "banned weapon," and a "horrific new weapon, " and contending that the IDF may have committed "war crimes." At one point, CNN similarly incorrectly identified WP as a "banned substance." ABC showed a clip of a wounded Palestinian boy charging that Israelis have "no mercy" even for children. (MSNBC does not have a morning or evening newscast equivalent to NBC’s Today show or the NBC Nightly News, so MSNBC coverage was not examined.) But, according to a Nexis search, none of these news programs showed any interest in updating viewers once the Israeli military had made public its say on the matter.

As previously documented by NewsBusters, the January 22 CBS Evening News ran a report (video here), introduced by anchor Katie Couric, which left the impression that the Israeli military had used a "banned weapon," without informing viewers that there are non-weapon uses for WP, and passed on accusations of "war crimes." Couric: "Hamas just ended a bloody war with Israel in Gaza, and tonight there is growing evidence the Israelis may have used a banned weapon. Some even accuse them of war crimes."

On the January 25 World News Sunday on ABC, as he introduced a report by correspondent Simon McGregor-Wood, anchor Dan Harris played up complaints against "both sides" in the war, and even suggested that the Israeli side may have been worse in its conduct of the war as he highlighted that there was "especially tough criticism" leveled at Israel. Harris: "Both sides are being dogged now by complaints that they violated the rules of war. Israel has come under especially tough criticism for its use of a chemical agent."

Yesterday evening, Fox News Channel's Molly Henneberg filed a story on how some media outlets fell for unsubstantiated quotes attributed to radio talk show legend Rush Limbaugh.

NewsBusters's own Tim Graham was featured briefly in Henneberg's "Special Report" story.

We've included a transcribed portion below:

It's obvious the Obama administration has a low regard for Fox News as a media outlet - whether it has been President Barack Obama hinting at what he has thought about Fox News, the administration passing over Fox News in a recent round of Sunday morning interviews or as White House communications director Anita Dunn recently has done - just declare open season on the network.

However Brit Hume, now a senior political analyst for Fox News and regarded as a veteran figure at the news organization, took the White House head on. In his "Brit Hume Commentary" segment on Fox News Channel's Oct. 12 "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hume, pointed out this "feud" the Obama administration has decided to elevate is a bad idea.

"Every president ends up disgusted with the news media in general and with certain individuals or outlets in particular, but there is an old adage often attributed to Mark Twain that advises against picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel," Hume said. "He is speaking of the big media of his day, which were newspapers."

On Monday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, correspondent James Rosen filed a report describing the line of obstacles to acquiring a handgun legally in Washington, D.C., in spite of last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning the city's outright ban on handgun possession in the city. Host Baier introduced the report: "Correspondent James Rosen reports while it is now legal to get a handgun in the nation's capital, it is definitely not easy."

Rosen went through the steps of obtaining a gun during the report, and ended up playing a clip of NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre as he summed up the process. LaPierre: "What D.C. is doing is throwing up every obstacle, shackling the freedom to the point where it's no longer really a freedom."

Below is a compete transcript of the report from the Monday, October 5, Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC:

Former President Carter's recent claim that he never portrayed most tea party participants protesting against President Obama as being motivated by racism has been highlighted both on Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier and on Monday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC. As previously noted by NewsBuster Matt Balan, the Thursday, October 1, American Morning on CNN showed a clip of Carter denying what he previously seemed to suggest in an interview with correspondent Candy Crowley. Carter's original accusations of racism by conservatives were reported by NBC and CBS, but those networks have ignored Carter's attempt to backtrack.

On Friday's "Political Grapevine" segment on FNC's Special Report, host Baier relayed to viewers: "Former President Jimmy Carter is walking back from comments he made last month about President Obama and racism. Thursday, Mr. Carter said he did not mean protesters were upset at the reality of a black President."

After reading Carter's denial, Baier then played Carter's original words: "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity towards President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American."

On Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier, FNC correspondent Molly Henneberg filed a report relaying to viewers that a recently released Pew poll finds a continuing trend of pro-life sentiment gaining ground in public opinion in America. Last May, a Gallup poll showed a similar pro-life trend. After Baier introduced her report by observing that "popular support for abortion rights is on the decline," Henneberg began by relaying that, according to the poll, "fewer Americans than last year are comfortable with the idea of legal abortions in all or most cases."

She then summarized: