NewsBusters Interview

Last month, NewsBusters reported 60 Minutes cherry-picking Peter Schweizer's book about Congressional insider trading to make it appear the problem was largely a Republican one.

Schweizer did a phone interview with NewsBusters last week to discuss this matter in greater detail including how with the exception of Fox News, despite this being a bipartisan issue, the media have largely ignored it to protect liberal politicians they revere (video follows with transcript):

NewsBusters readers should be quite familiar with Ron Christie, the Republican strategist who loves to tangle with the liberal commentators on MSNBC.

Following his terrific encounter with Chris Matthews last week, NewsBusters spoke by phone with Christie about his experiences on the nation's most left-leaning cable news outlet as well as what it's like to be a black conservative in the year 2011 (video follows with transcript):

For conservatives, one of the bright spots of the Occupy Wall Street protests was when millionaire investor Peter Schiff went down to Zuccotti Park with video camera and a sign reading "I Am The 1% - Let's Talk."

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Schiff by telephone in a sweeping interview about his experience at OWS, how the financial media are doing, and ending with his rather frightening view of the economy and the future of our nation (video follows with transcript):

As the lone conservative host on the nation's most liberal news network, Joe Scarborough is used to taking heat from folks on both sides of the political aisle.

Despite NewsBusters at times being one of his program's critics, the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe spent over an hour with us on the phone Thursday discussing his show, how the media have been covering recent events like the Republican presidential race, and finishing by offering an optimistic vision of America's future that is sorely needed at this dark time in our history (video follows with transcript):

Treasured friend of the Media Research Center's and NewsBusters favorite Ann Coulter did an absolutely scintillating telephone interview with us on Thursday.

The primary topics of discussion were the media's coverage of the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations as well as how they've been reporting Occupy Wall Street protests around the country (video follows with transcript):

Earlier this week, NewsBusters managing editor Ken Shepherd had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Groseclose, a conservative political science professor from UCLA who's out with a new book about liberal media bias entitled "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind."

In the interview, recorded on July 27, Groseclose explained how his research proves the media's liberal bias has a tendency to skew the electorate's perception of the political world, making all of us more liberal than we would be were it not for the media's liberal distortions.

[You can watch the full interview in the embed that follows the page break]

Unless you've been hibernating somewhere, you know that conservative author Ann Coulter has a new book out called "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America."

In an email interview with NewsBusters, Coulter talked about her book, liberals, and other subjects including how the "MSM is both part of the mob and inciters of the mob. That’s with the exception of Ed Schultz, whom I’m pretty sure is an extraterrestrial":

During the 2008 campaign, much of the press succeeded in painting a portrait of Barack Obama that bore almost no resemblance to either the Chicago politician he was before, or the president he's been since. We were sold Hope and Change, but ended up with what Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso decries as "Gangster Government" in a new book bearing that title.

Gangster government is "about governing without recognizing the legitimate limits of one's power," as Freddoso describes it. "It's about officials who use public office to make winners into losers and losers into winners; who bend, break and make the law to help their friends and punish their enemies."

Freddoso contends that the term describes Obama's administration better than any before it. The man cut his teeth in Chicago, the mecca of gangster government, by Freddoso's telling, and exported that brand of public policy - with the aid of a pair of complacent watchdogs in the news media and Congress - into the Oval Office.

NewsBusters readers should be quite familiar with John Ziegler, the independent filmmaker that produced the spectacular documentary about the 2008 presidential campaign "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin was Targeted."

In the past few weeks the film has been re-released using a different marketing format, and Ziegler was kind enough to answer some questions about this and other media bias issues via e-mail:

Ask a journalist to name an example of the power of his profession. Odds are he will bring up Woodward and Bernstein's takedown of President Nixon, or Walter Cronkite's role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War, or maybe Edward R. Murrow's exposes about Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare.

Just one problem: all of these iconic moments in journalistic history are myths.

So writes W. Joseph Campbell, professor of communication at American University, and a long-time reporter for news outlets including the Associated Press and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

On Wednesday, the far-left blog ThinkProgress unveiled an "investigation" that alleged, without any conclusive evidence, that the Chamber of Commerce was spending funds acquired from foreign-owned companies on political activities in the United States, a crime under U.S. law.

ThinkProgress demonstrated that such funds entered the Chamber's general fund, and that money from the general fund was used to pay for political activities. But it readily admitted that it could not show the same funds attained abroad were used for those activities. Instead, it demanded the Chamber prove the licit nature of its political funds. Some in the media ran with the story, despite that lack of evidence.

So was the Chamber consulted or asked for comment by media outlets that reported on the ThinkProgress post? In an interview with NewsBusters, Chamber COO David Chavern says they were not. And while the New York Times's initial coverage was an editorial, MSNBC discussed the issue on two separate programs. Neither, Chavern claims, made an attempt at balanced coverage.

I asked Chavern during a phone conversation on Thursday how he explained this apparent breach of the most basic standards of journalism.

Greg Gutfeld is a rare breed. A conservative former magazine editor turned host of Fox News late night talk show "Red Eye," Gutfeld masterfully mixes keen political insight and scathing critiques of contemporary Amerian culture with a healthy dose of humor.

His new book, "The Bible of Unspeakable Truths" fits that M.O. perfectly. Gutfeld dissects thousands of "unspeakable truths" ranging from "for twenty million dollars, you'd sleep with MIchael Jackson (even now)" to "speaking truth to power means 'shouting at people who remind me of daddy'" to "squirrels are just sexier rats."

For avid "Red Eye" fans, the style of comedy will be familiar. Those who have yet to enjoy an episode will be fans by the time they put the book down. Occasionally vulgar, often provocative, and always funny, Gutfeld's absurd style has the potential to disarm even the skeptical, and then bombard them with political and cultural insights profound in their simplicity and logic.

Greg was kind enough to grant NewsBusters an interview. In it, he discusses writing for the Huffington Post, his view of "Red Eye," and his own political transformation (full audio and transcript below the fold).

On Thursday, I had the honor and the pleasure to participate in a blogger conference call with Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma.

The topic was the looming federal budget crisis caused by the runaway spending of the current President and his fiscally irresponsible Party.

As many of you are aware, I've been studying and analyzing the historical budgets of the United States for over a decade making this subject right up my alley.

Even more enjoyable for me, the other attendees didn't have a lot of questions which ended up making this at times mostly a conversation between the Senator and myself  (30-minute audio available here). 

Are young people completely in the tank for Barack Obama and the left? They voted for Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2-1 margin. Obama was young, cool, good looking, and well-spoken -- all the characteristics for a winning candidate in the eyes of the nation's youth.

But it was more than just Obama's charisma that handed him the youth vote in 2008. He was abetted by lapdogs in the press, reliably liberal pop-culture icons, and ultra-leftists in academia. Combined, they created a bloc of "Obama Zombies," writes Jason Mattera, author of a new book by that name.

Mattera was kind enough to give NewsBusters an interview. He described some of the themes of his book, including the incessantly liberal mainstream press -- "pre-pubescent little girls at a Jonas Brothers concert" is how he described the Obamaniacs in the press corps. NB's Steve Gutowski noted the book's tremendous assessment of media bias in his review yesterday.

"Obama Zombies" is the perfect primer for all conservatives worried about the movement's past troubles and hopefully brighter future with newly minted voters. Read the transcript of the interview below, or listen to the audio file here.

On Feb. 6, former President Ronald Reagan would have celebrated his 99th birthday. Since he's thought of as a conservative icon, some have wondered what he would have thought of the modern conservative movement, specifically the tea parties and the rise of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. 

If you listen to Reagan's son Ron, who has recently appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" and HLN's "The Joy Behar Show," and tends to have a left-of-center perspective, one might think Reagan would have looked down upon the tea party protests and Palin. That's not the case according to his other son Michael.

Michael Reagan, who is said to have played more of a prominent role with the former president's campaign than his brother, spoke with the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute on Feb. 12 and ardently disputed his brother's claim that Ronald Reagan would have looked down upon the conservative movement. 

Interview Transcript Below Fold

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans were treated to a number of populist sermons on the "special interests" who would oppose "reform" at any cost to maintain the "status quo" from which they "profit financially or politically." The drug companies, the energy companies, the Wall Street bankers, and the health insurers were the corporate enemies of a just and harmonious America, or so one might have gathered.

Obama was at the vanguard of this populist charge. But since his election, he has proposed health care legislation that would subsidize Pfizer and PhRMA, a cap and trade plan that would drive profits to General Electric, and Wall Street bailouts that lined the pockets of the same Goldman Sachs bankers he so reviled during the campaign. What happened?

Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney exposes and investigates this monumental disconnect in his new book "Obamanomics: How Barack Obama is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses." Carney explores the "political strategy of partnering with the biggest businesses in order to create new regulations, taxes, and subsidies." Those measures, he argues, actually benefit the biggest businesses by crowding out competition, consolidating market share, or giving billions in subsidies directly to those companies.

Earlier today, the Joe Scarborough radio show, with Mika Brzezinski, aired a wide-ranging interview with this NewsBuster. 

Highlights:

• Mika justified her nanny-state proposal of a tax on fatty foods by saying eating habits are not a matter of personal choice because others must bear the health care cost.  Finkelstein's response: kill two birds with one stone by getting government out of the health care business.
• Regarding the White House war on Fox News, Finkelstein observed that the White House should know its strategy has backfired when the likes of Helen Thomas and Dan Rather have defended Fox.
• Mark complimented Mika on exposing the 99 44/100ths liberal environment she experienced at CBS, but chided her for denying that the network has an agenda.  A discussion of the MSM media bubble ensues.

Listen to audio here.

Last night's "apology" to Gov. Palin by comedian David Letterman "is slippery and Clintonian" but Gov. Sarah Palin "was right to rise above it and accept it," Media Research Center President Brent Bozell noted in a statement released today. 

While the CBS "Late Show" host issued what many are calling a full and complete apology to Gov. Palin, Mr. Bozell argued it is far from an unequivocal apology:

Letterman's ‘apology' is slippery and Clintonian. He talked about the ‘perception' of his joke three times in his statement. He then goes on to say twice that he was ‘misunderstood.'

There's no perception, no misunderstanding. The public understood exactly what he said - joking about statutory rape - and was outraged. It was David Letterman who misunderstood who was in the audience, as if making a degrading joke about an 18-year-old girl is much more acceptable than taking the cheap shot at her 14-year-old sister. 

Senators John Ensign (R-Nev.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) participated in a blogger conference call on Monday.

On the agenda was President Obama's 2010 budget proposal which Thune cautioned if enacted in its current form would double the federal debt in five years and triple it in ten.

Those interested can listen to this fascinating discussion here (5.9 mb MP3).

Last month NewsBusters introduced readers to John Ziegler, a conservative filmmaker creating a documentary about the astoundingly poor job the press did covering 2008's presidential campaign.

Marvelously entitled "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted," the movie is set for release on February 23.

I chatted with Ziegler earlier in the week about last year's campaign shenanigans and the film. Some of the highlights include (60-minute audio available here):    

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) participated in a blogger conference call Monday to discuss President Obama's stimulus package and its prospects for passage in the Senate.

NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard participated in this discussion, and had an interesting exchange with the Senator concerning current tax receipt projections by the White House and what they suggest about the economy.

Those interested can listen here.

Newsweek's Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him. The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline "She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem)," and Meacham writes the accompanying cover story. Be clear about what this means: This is a direct attack on Mr. and Mrs. America. We are all too stupid to be president in the elite opinion of Jon Meacham and Newsweek magazine.

Meacham finds Palin to be incurious, unprepared, and even finds it "dangerous" if she were to become our vice president but he offers us nothing but his opinion to judge by. And it's all because she doesn't measure up to his personal standards. Sadly for Meacham's elitism, however, Palin easily satisfies the standards that the Founding Fathers set as criteria for stepping into the highest office in the land. Curiously, Meacham does not once mention the actual Constitutional requirements to run for office in his entire sarcastic attack on Sarah Palin. Like most of his ilk, the Constitution seems meaningless minutia to him.

Former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift was diplomatic, but her message was clear: because Sarah Palin remains doubtful of getting a fair shake from the MSM, she wants to take her message directly to the American people. Swift, speaking on behalf of the McCain-Palin campaign, made the remark in response to a question from this NewsBuster during the course of a conference call this afternoon.

Swift took the question after making opening remarks in which she said that Governor Palin won last night's debate in part because she was able to connect with Americans as "a person from the middle class who [expressed] the real anxieties that families have about our economy right now." After suggesting that Senator Biden didn't connect as well, Swift added that Biden made a significant number of incorrect statements "that kept the fact-checkers busy."

It was then that NewsBusters had the opportunity to pose its question. Listen to audio here.

Washington Post staff writer Kevin Merida talked to NewsBusters at a rally for John McCain in Fairfax, VA and denied that the media are biased. He asserted, "I think that most journalists are really conscientious about, you know, really looking at all sides of issues and subjects." However, he did hedge that "there's always some bias in media coverage and some, just, not-terrific journalism."

When asked about intense scrutiny into the life of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Merida didn't see an issue of unfair coverage. "...She's somebody new on the scene and she's getting a lot of, you know, scrutiny, like anyone would, I think, in her position, with her background, her resume and, kind of, bursting onto the national scene in this sudden way." Asked specifically about possible double standards, such as when "Today" reporter Amy Robach speculated on September 3 about whether a Vice President Palin will "be shortchanging her kids or will she be shortchanging the country," Merida declined to comment on other media outlets.

[Audio available here.]

ST. PAUL, Minn.-- NewsBusters Editor Matthew Sheffield and Associate Editor Noel Sheppard appeared on the Steve Malzberg Show live from Radio Row at the Republican Convention at 4:30 p.m. EDT today. The topic: Gov. Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican convention and the intensely biased coverage of her nomination.

Introducing Sheffield and Sheppard, Malzberg praised NewsBusters as "one of the greatest Web sites of all time" and said he frequently refers liberal friends to the site for documented evidence of liberal media bias.

A few highlights follow below the fold (video embedded right):

ST. PAUL, Minn. - On Thursday, NewsBusters had a quick chat with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay about the media's coverage of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

After praising Palin for being the "answer for what we've been begging for for over two years," he then spoke both frankly and optimistically about how the press have been attacking the Alaska governor since John McCain first introduced her as his running mate (video embedded right):

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Moments before Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave her history making speech at the Xcel Energy Center Wednesday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told NewsBusters that the left-wing media are trying to destroy her because she represents a threat to their ability to define what a successful, professional woman is in America today.

Offering some of the strongest media criticisms we've encountered at the Republican National Convention, Gingrich painted a picture of exactly what's at stake for the liberal press if Palin is successful in her bid to become the first female vice president in American history, and that people should not underestimate what they are willing to do to prevent that from happening (video embedded right):

ST. PAUL, Minn.-- CNN's John Roberts spent a few minutes chatting with a woman about convention paraphernalia, but had only a few seconds to talk to NewsBusters. (see video at right)

We caught John Roberts on the street outside a security checkpoint for the Republican Convention this morning. Editor Matthew Sheffield asked Roberts for his thoughts on Gov. Sarah Palin's remarks about the liberal media. Roberts dismissed the complaint as a "convenient thing to do." When pressed by Sheffield if Palin is wrong, he didn't answer and continued walking away.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- On Tuesday, NewsBusters caught up with Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight who's appearing in the about to be released comedy "An American Carol."

Amongst other things, he told us:

There are conservatives, quite a lot of them in Hollywood, but they're quiet. 

After we asked him why Hollywood, which used to be filled with a lot of conservatives decades ago changed, he responded (video embedded right):

ST. PAUL, Minn.-- Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton came down strongly Wednesday on how the press have treated Sarah Palin since she was announced as John McCain's running mate last Friday:

I think some of the coverage of Governor Palin has been vile. Period.

Talking to NewsBusters at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bolton said (video embedded right):