Appearing on Monday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC contributor Bernie Goldberg commented on the dominant news media ignoring or downplaying congressional hearings on the Obama administration IRS scandal, and wondered why President Obama is so critical of the media as he asserted that the President's approval rating would be 20 points lower if the media covered Obama scandals "honestly." Goldberg:
But there's one thing I don't understand. It is said often that President Obama doesn't like the media, doesn't like the press. I can't figure this out. If they were doing their job honestly, if they were covering this honestly and Benghazi honestly, his approval ratings would be at least 20 points lower than they are.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, June 10, The O'Reilly Factor on FNC:
BILL O'REILLY: Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee heard riveting testimony from the leaders of six conservative groups who allege they were targeted by the IRS, and that scrutiny hurt both them and their organizations. The Factor covered the story fairly and extensively, but not everybody emulated us. ABC News and CNN primetime didn't cover the hearings at all. Nothing about them.
CBS evening and CBS morning news gave the hearings three minutes total. And NBC Nightly News and the Today show also gave the hearings three minutes. That's a minuscule amount of time. Joining us now from Nashville, North Carolina, purveyor of bernardgoldberg.com, Mr. Goldberg. So even with the left-leaning national television media, I was surprised ABC and CNN, in primetime, it wasn't a story at all. Did they forget?
BERNIE GOLDBERG: Yes, listen, I think there are just a couple of things that we should all be able to agree upon whether we're liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans. One of them is that, in a free country, the main role of the press is to keep an eye on government, especially to keep an eye on the abuses of government.
That's why the press has constitutional protections. And the second point we all ought to be able to agree on is that when Americans testify before the United States Congress about abuses of the IRS, that's a legitimate news story. Yet, television, where most Americans get their news, either, as you correctly say, ignored the story entirely or played it way, way down and gave it only a few minutes. I think it's a safe bet, Bill, that if this were, if we had a Republican in the White House-
O'REILLY: It would have been Armageddon.
GOLDBERG: -they would have been all over it. But there's one thing I don't understand. It is said often that President Obama doesn't like the media, doesn't like the press. I can't figure this out. If they were doing their job honestly, if they were covering this honestly and Benghazi honestly, his approval ratings would be at least 20 points lower than they are.
O'REILLY: So he should be happy the press likes him so much. You know, ABC News, that confuses me. Brian Ross, very aggressive investigative reporter, done fine work in uncovering government abuse, all right, doesn't seem, Diane Sawyer doesn't seem to be a far-left, agenda-driven person. See, you know, and they don't cover it at all.
GOLDBERG: This is great, you're making a great point, Bill. I would have said, even if you didn't say that, ABC News is the worst. Shame on Diane Sawyer. She is an intelligent person. She used to work at CBS. I knew her there. She's an intelligent journalist. They had time the night of the testimony before Congress, to run a story about window washers dressing up as superheroes to entertain kids in a hospital. I am not against that kind of story. But not at the expense of something as important as Americans testifying about the IRS abuses.
O'REILLY: Yeah, that I don't get it.
GOLDBERG: I don't know if what's going on there is political or simply that they're going light. But it's shame on, ABC is the worst of all of them, as far as I'm concerned.
