Time

For the past few weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious examples of liberal media bias the Media Research Center has uncovered in our 25-year history, all leading up to tonight’s 25th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards in Washington, D.C.

To close out this series, I’ve pulled together what I consider the 25 most obnoxious quotes of the MRC’s history. It’s a pretty offensive display of smug disdain for everyday conservatives, rabid hatred for conservative leaders, embarrassing sycophancy for liberals, and a little anti-American treason thrown in for good measure.

These worst-of-the-worst quotes and video appear below the jump; or you can check out the year-by-year posts here.

NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala tomorrow evening. (Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2011.)

Today, the worst bias of 2012 (so far): Newsweek sees Barack Obama as “grotesquely underappreciated,” afflicted by critics who are simply “dumb;” Chief Justice John Roberts becomes a media hero by voting to save ObamaCare; and an ex-CNN correspondent charges Republicans are trying to take the country back “to the good old days of Jim Crow.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

He's a liberal Catholic who thinks the Catholic Church needs to just give it up already with its silly fixation with defending the sanctity of life for the unborn. He also once compared the Church's bishops to Southern segregationists. So it should come as no surprise that Tim Padgett -- who is previously on record as dissenting from the Church on the celibate male priesthood -- should use the "Jesus wife" papyrus discovery as a fresh opportunity to attack the Church on the issue, working in a swipe at the Vatican for its rebuke of theologically-errant nuns for good measure.

From his September 25 TIME Ideas blog post (emphases mine):

NewsBusters is showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday, September 27.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2007. Today, the worst bias of 2008: Keith Olbermann shrieks at President Bush to “shut the hell up!” while his colleague Chris Matthews gets a tingle over hearing Barack Obama: “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2000, you can find them here. Today, the worst bias of 2001, including shocking displays of moral equivalence after 9/11 and Dan Rather’s salute to Bill Clinton’s honesty. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

The caption accompanying a September 13 TIME magazine photo slide tags the filmmakers behind "The Innocence of Muslims" as "Islamophobes" while those rioting in the Arab street supposedly in reaction against said film are merely "orthodox Muslims.":

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came down strong on the Obama adminstration Tuesday for its failure to implement a foreign policy that would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday, Time magazine's Joe Klein called Netanyahu's actions "absolutely outrageous and disgusting" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Each morning, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27. (Click here for details and ticket information.)

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 1997, you can find them here. Today, the worst bias of 1998: Journalists disparage Ken Starr for investigating Bill Clinton's tawdry scandals, while an ex-Time magazine correspondent reveals the depth of her appreciation for Clinton's pro-abortion policies. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Time columnist and MSNBC host Toure could really be quite a humorist. Take this unintentional entry: "Do Democrats use racial code? No. The Democratic party is a racially diverse coalition. There would be no value to playing this game." I doubt he means hey, liberals don't use subtle codes: they blatantly accuse Republicans of killing, like in the NAACP's James Byrd ad.

This came in an article headlined "How To Read Political Racial Code." Apparently words like "welfare" and "crime" and "Muslim" and "socialist" are all hate-Obama code words, or as Mr. One Name puts it, "linguistic mustard gas" for our democracy:

For the past week, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27. (Click here for ticket information.)

If you’ve missed our recounting of the worst quotes from 1988 through 1994, you can find those here). Today, the worst bias of 1995, when Time magazine blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on “hot talk on the radio” even as NPR’s Nina Totenberg wished one of Jesse Helms’ grandchildren would get AIDS. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Each morning, NewsBusters is showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information)

Already this week, we’ve published the worst quotes of 1988, 1989 and 1990; today, the worst bias of 1991. Highlights include journalists saluting Anita Hill while disparaging Clarence Thomas (“if you gave Clarence Thomas a little flour on his face, you’d think you had [former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke talking”), and a Boston Globe arts critic writing about patriotism: “Oh, say, we’ve seen too much. The Star-Spangled Banner pushes like a cough through America’s mouth...” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Each morning, NewsBusters is showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information)

We’ve already published the worst quotes of 1988 and 1989; today, the worst of 1990. Highlights include: Time magazine saluting Mikhail Gorbachev as “the communist Pope and the Soviet Martin Luther;” CBS finding “nostalgia” for the Berlin Wall; and Knight Ridder’s economics reporter giving this slanted take on the 1980s: “Reaganomics delivered a feast to the greedheads and starvation to the poor.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is a Catholic – but not a good enough Catholic in the eyes of the media. Writers, bloggers, and talking heads have hammered Ryan for his supposed “dissent” from Catholic teaching.

Journalists have falsely claimed that the bishops “rebuked” Ryan and called his budget “un-Christian.” Writers who usually scorn the Church and its hierarchy fretted that the bishops found Ryan’s budget “uncompassionate.”

Whatever happened to American exceptionalism? Liberal abhorrence of the concept has been well-documented in the past. One of the latest examples can be found at Time Ideas, where Eric Liu has published a case for mandatory voting laws. Liu never outright admits as much, but it’s abundantly clear he feels such a policy would help elect more liberal Democrats to office and hence put the country further leftward than it would otherwise be.

Liu, a former speechwriter and policy advisor to President Clinton, joined a growing sect of the liberal media punditocracy who have publicly admitted that they want to see an America that mirrors the rest of the world. Twenty-three nations -- most famously Australia -- have adopted more of a compulsory approach to suffrage, so why not us?

Time magazine just e-mailed Newsbusters with an announcement: Fareed Zakaria's column will return early, in the September 7 issue. His offending plagiarism-soiled column appeared in the August 20 edition, so the one-month suspension became a one-week slap on the wrist. (Update: CNN also announced today that their suspension of Zakaria would end on Sunday, August 26.)

"We have completed a thorough review of each of Fareed Zakaria’s columns for TIME, and we are entirely satisfied that the language in question in his recent column was an unintentional error and an isolated incident for which he has apologized. We look forward to having Fareed's thoughtful and important voice back in the magazine with his next column in the issue that comes out on September 7."

Jesus Christ would favor a tax rate as little as 50 percent and as high as 100 percent. So really, President Obama's preferred tax rates are a bargain. That's one of the big "idea" of Erika Christakis's August 14 Time magazine Ideas blog post, "Is Paul Ryan's Budget 'Un-Christian'?"

Christakis has a master's in education but apparently hasn't a clue about exegeting Scripture, nor does she seem to care. Jesus is just a convenient figure to use to make a flawed political talking point:

Rep. Paul Ryan's 100 percent rating by the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and his support of the "Protect Life Act" are evidence of the Wisconsin Republican's extremism on abortion and as such, should hurt the appeal of the Romney/Ryan ticket with women voters, MSNBC's Alex Wagner argued on the August 14 edition of her noon Eastern Now with Alex Wagner program.

Of course the 100 percent pro-choice record that Barack Obama has with NARAL Pro-Choice America might strike centrist voters as equally "extreme," but Wagner failed to note Obama has never deviated from the NARAL line. What's more, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted AGAINST an Illinois state version of the "Born-Alive Act" which was designed to punish abortionists who kill babies who were born before the abortion procedure was finished in utero. Nothing says pro-abortion extremist like voting against a bill to penalize infanticide, especially considering that a federal version of the bill passed the U.S. Congress in 2002 without any votes in the negative. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was heckled Monday by protesters at a campaign event in Iowa.

Time senior political analyst Mark Halperin told MSNBC's Chris Matthews these were Democrats "on duty" (video follows with transcript and commentary, photo courtesy Des Moines Register):

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz lashed out at CNN’s own host Fareed Zakaria for committing plagiarism in a gun control article for Time magazine. Kurtz gave credit to us: “A conservative watchdog site Newsbusters, acting on a tip from the NRA, broke the story that Fareed's column was not entirely his own work.”

Kurtz put the two passages side by side on the screen to underline Zakaria’s copycat routine and pounded Zakaria for committing a “cardinal journalistic sin,” and the “latest case study of an insidious journalistic disease.” It’s too bad journalists aren’t this upset about sloppy bias. (Video and transcript below)

[UPDATED below page break: TIME magazine, CNN have suspended Zakaria.] When CNN host and Time editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria wrote a new piece called “The Case for Gun Control,” it ended with a bang: “So when people throw up their hands and say we can't do anything about guns, tell them they're being un-American--and unintelligent.”

Here’s something that suggests a lack of intelligence: plagiarism. Cam Edwards at NRANews.com suggested to me that Zakaria seemed to plagiarize a paragraph from an April article in The New Yorker magazine -- with a modicum word-usage changes and interjections (Texas!) in an attempt to paper it over. Here’s a paragraph from his Time piece:

He's compared Chick-fil-A to apartheid-era South Africa, News Corps chief Rupert Murdoch to an Arab dictator, and called Christianity a death cult. So naturally Time magazine humor writer Joel Stein is the perfect person to appoint himself write a "tongue-in-cheek" Democratic Party platform heavy on snark and equally heavy on hard-left positions on fiscal and social issues. Just as well, I suppose, as left-wing screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is too busy dreaming up fictional biased newscasting that embodies his dream of an even bolder, more transparently liberal media.

Stein noted that he "enlisted the help of Elaine Kamarck, a public policy lecturer at Harvard and former platform author," adding that her take on his seven-page draft was that he "mostly... [has] the tone right" although the actual platform wound doubtless be "a bit drier."

Within hours of the horrible massacre at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater, liberal reporters hijacked the tragedy to advance their anti-gun rights agenda. As they did in the wake of school shootings like Columbine (Back in 2000 the MRC documented, stories advocating gun control outnumbered those in favor of gun rights by a 10 to 1 ratio), the media were quick to heap blame on the NRA and Second Amendment supporters in their quest for more restrictions on guns.   

On the very day of the Aurora shooting Time’s Michael Grunwald justified the oncoming push for gun control by the media when he pronounced: “There is nothing wrong with politicizing tragedy....Gun control and the Second Amendment are issues, too, and now seems like a pretty good time to talk about them.” (videos after the jump)

Appearing on Monday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, Time magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin confessed a broad media consensus to curtail gun rights: "If you walk the halls of most major news organizations or of the OEOB at the White House or West Wing, I think you'd find overwhelming sentiment that there should be stricter gun control laws in the United States." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Michael Grunwald is doubling down on what many liberals in the media are only hinting at. "[T]here is nothing wrong with politicizing tragedy," the Time senior national correspondent wrote this morning, reacting to the Aurora movie theater shooting. "If advocates or experts or even politicians think their policy ideas can prevent the next Aurora—by preventing potential killers from obtaining guns, by making sure potential victims can carry guns, or by some other method—then by all means, now is the time to spread the word."

Grunwald's callousness on this count has generated criticism, and not just from conservatives. Noah Rothman of Mediaite complained:

Appearing as a panel member on Sunday's Face the Nation on CBS, Time magazine's Rana Foroohar - identified as assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business on Time's Web site - lamented that she was "sad" at how much taxes are being discussed as she asserted that "one thing that's not going to get us some kind of a growth boom is a tax cut," and then called for more government spending which she claimed would entice businesses into more economic activity.

Without clarifying that the recent political debate about taxes has been about preventing tax rates from increasing as the Bush tax cuts expire, Foroohar dismissed the effectiveness of tax cuts and explained her prescription for the economy:

"The only thing weaker than the economy is Mitt Romney's electoral skills."

Such was actually said on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday by Rana Foroohar, Time magazine's assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Left-wing author Touré Neblett wildly accused Mitt Romney of playing the race card in a Thursday item on Time's website, claiming that Romney "went to the NAACP's National Convention planning to get booed," so he could "elicit an emotional reaction from white voters. Romney's performance wasn't intended to win more black votes, it was intended to help win more white votes."

Touré, the resident 9/11 truther at MSNBC, ranted that "when Romney called the Affordable Care Act 'Obamacare,' he purposely used a term that would not work with the audience in the room. When he said, 'If you want a President who'll make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. Take a look!' he was virtually taunting them the way a pro wrestler who's playing a villain eggs on the crowd saying things he knows will elicit boos."

On Saturday's NBC Today, co-host Lester Holt pondered why President Obama's poll numbers were not lower given the poor economy: "...you look at the polls, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the President still maintaining a three-point lead. Is he defying gravity here, and if so, why?"

Holt directed the question to Time's Mark Halperin, who proclaimed: "Well, he is....People like the President. They still think he – they recognize what he argues, he inherited a lot of problems....people want the President to have more of a chance..." Halperin added: "Governor Romney is still introducing himself to the country....The President's arguing that Governor Romney's not the right way to bet on the country's future..."