Martha Raddatz

Friday's revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups prior to last year's elections was certainly reported but not with nearly the outrage as if a Republican administration went after liberals this way.

Driving home the point, George Will just before reading from the Impeachment Articles of Richard Nixon said on ABC's This Week Sunday, "If the George W. Bush administration had IRS underlings, out in Cincinnati of course, saying, 'We're going to target groups with the word progressive in their title,' we would have all hell breaking loose" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

White House press secretary Jay Carney had a tough week last week concluding with an absolutely deplorable press conference wherein he continued to spin totally unbelievable yarns about the administration's talking points regarding Benghazi.

This led George Will to say on ABC's This Week Sunday that Carney's "usefulness to this administration is diminishing rapidly" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberal media have for days been trashing virtually every speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

On ABC's This Week Sunday, George Will exposed the hypocrisy particularly at the New York Times (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Will on Sunday took a swipe at the media's love affair with Barack Obama.

Appearing on ABC's This Week, Will marvelously said, "Any charm offensive that is labeled a charm offensive thereby loses some of its charm" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Allegations of shady campaign contributors and procurement of prostitutes are usually the ingredients of a political scandal that send the media into a feeding frenzy – unless, of course, the figure involved is a Democrat.

When news broke that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez’s jaunts (that may have included solicitation of prostitutes) to the Dominican Republic with a longtime campaign contributor, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks responded with barely a murmur.

On Sunday’s edition of ABC’s The Week, Martha Raddatz managed to conduct a six minute-long interview with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (N.J.) without asking a single question about an FBI investigation into allegations that he slept with underage prostitutes while in the Dominican Republic. Instead Raddatz lobbed softball questions at Menendez about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance during the Benghazi hearings, immigration reform, Chuck Hagel, and the upcoming Senate race in New Jersey.

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell reacted:

The journalists at Good Morning America on Monday could barely restrain the hype as they gushed over the "lovefest" joint interview between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. An ABC graphic even used an exclamation point, as in "lovefest!" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Recounting the 60 Minutes segment, a credulous Martha Raddatz lauded, "From the moment they sat down to talk with CBS' News 60 Minutes, President Obama and Secretary Clinton seemed like they've been the best of friends for decades." Guest co-host Elizabeth Vargas insisted that the "revealing and rare joint interview has everyone reading the tea leaves." The terrorist attack in Libya never came up in the ABC piece. 

On Friday it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) for allegedly sleeping with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.

Despite this, when Menendez was given a six-minute interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC's This Week Sunday, he was not asked one question about the investigation or the allegations (commentary follows with full transcript at end of post):

ABC and CNN contributor Donna Brazile - posing as one of Barack Obama's trusted defenders in the media like she always does! - got a much-needed education Sunday about the President's profligate spending.

Countering Brazile's propaganda on ABC's This Week, George Will said, "A dollar spent on A cannot be spent on B...This is our future. We're going to be an assisted living home with an Army. That's going to be the American government" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ABC's Martha Raddatz on Thursday swooned over Hillary Clinton's Senate testimony on Benghazi, lauding the outgoing Secretary of State as "combative, charming, disarming and clearly ready for a fight." The Good Morning America correspondent seemed to enjoy the day as theater, hyping, " It was truly a riveting day on Capitol Hill...with Secretary Clinton as some have never seen her before."

Raddatz allowed that Clinton didn't convince "some Republicans," but returned to a style discussion. She continued, "But this was certainly a memorable way to close out her tenure." Focusing on the emotion of the Senate appearance, the journalist empathized that "when Clinton spoke of her four fallen colleagues, the pain, the memories were still raw." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Mark January 23rd as the launch date for the news media’s fresh campaign to have Hillary Clinton replace Barack Obama in the Oval Office in 2017. ABC and NBC, and CBS to a lesser extent, on Wednesday night treated Secretary of State Clinton’s appearances before Senate and House committees not as an chance to explore Obama administration dissembling on Benghazi, but as an opportunity to boost Clinton’s supposed brilliant performance.

“The indignation. And then, the tears in her eyes,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer announced before trumpeting: “It was a valedictory that showed her indignation and emotion as she ends this tenure on the public stage. ABC’s chief global affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, brings us the riveting encounter today.”  

Previewing Hillary Clinton's testimony on the terrorist incident in Benghazi, George Stephanopoulos scoffed at the idea that members of Congress would dare grill the outgoing Secretary of State. Talking to Martha Raddatz on Tuesday, the Good Morning America co-host predicted, "But she's very well practiced at [testifying] and I can't imagine they're really going to beat her up on her last few days as Secretary of State."

In fact, Senator Rand Paul did aggressively question Senator Clinton, telling her, "Had I been President at the time and I found out you had not read the cables… I would have relieved you of your post." Additionally, since when has someone leaving been an excuse not to press them on important issues?

ABC's Martha Raddatz on Monday continued touting Democratic talking points, sneering that conservatives who oppose Chuck Hagel's nomination to be Secretary of Defense will have to "look" the Vietnam veteran "in the eye" and tell him he's not "tough enough."

Raddatz appeared during live coverage of the President's official announcement. The reporter parroted, "And I think the thing you have to remember is that Chuck Hagel is a Vietnam veteran, so whoever is opposing him now would have to look him in the eye and say, you're not tough enough to be the Secretary of Defense even though you served in Vietnam." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Good Morning America's Martha Raddatz on Monday seemed perplexed as to why conservatives would oppose Chuck Hagel's nomination for Secretary of Defense. According to the journalist, one might think the former Republican senator is the "perfect choice," a man who "dared [to] speak out" against George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq  -- the same surge that candidate Obama later admitted had "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

Raddatz mentioned concern about Hagel's stance toward Israel, but didn't explain what his "controversial" votes were. Instead, she blurbed, "You might think that a Republican Vietnam veteran, former senator with all kinds of foreign policy experience would be the perfect choice to ease the rancor on Capitol Hill." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

TV Guide published a “Cheers and Jeers” issue to analyze “2012's Best and Worst in TV.” When it came to political TV, the magazine made it quite clear that Obama’s re-election was a highlight, and conservative celebrities were only mentioned in “Jeers.”

Raddatz was hailed for “asking direct questions and keeping the candidates on point,” which does not describe her first question to Joe Biden on Benghazi. She noted the State Department now admitted there were no protests, but could ask Biden if the Benghazi attack was a “massive intelligence failure,” not a massive campaign of misleading the American people:

News of the State Department report on the U.S. government’s failures surrounding the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, broke too late last night for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, but all three broadcast networks had full reports on their Wednesday morning shows.

Of the three, ABC’s Good Morning America was the most perfunctory, with a less-than 90 second report from correspondent Martha Raddatz that completely failed to mention the controversy over the Obama administration’s preposterous initial explanation that the attack was the result of a “spontaneous” demonstration over an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube.

But as detailed in the very first of the official report’s “Findings,” the determination that there was no “spontaneous” demonstration: “The Board concluded that there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity.”

Good Morning America's reporters on Wednesday continued to fret about the fate of Susan Rice, lamenting the GOP "buzz saw" the UN Ambassador ran into on Tuesday. ABC's Martha Raddatz hyped all the pressing issues in the world as a possible reason to just confirm the potential Secretary of State nominee quickly.

Martha Raddatz worried, "You have got Iran that is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. You have got North Korea. There's satellite photos just out showing that North Korea would like to test another long-range ballistic missile." She then reminded that this is "such a critical time in Afghanistan." GMA co-anchor George Stephanopoulos referenced the fall of David Petraeus and hyped that all of these vacancies are "happening when there's a lot of hot spots in the world bubbling up."

Two ABC News stars have proven, once again, the media’s obsession with raising taxes over any effort to cut a cent of spending. Two days after the election, anchor Diane Sawyer repeatedly pushed House Speaker John Boehner to move away from a conservative position and agree to President Obama’s wish to hike income tax rates, but on Sunday’s This Week, Martha Raddatz refused to press House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi about getting Democrats to shift from their position and accede to any reduced spending.
 
Instead, she quizzed Pelosi about getting Republicans to accept a tax hike and how to get around such intransigence: “Have you seen any indication that the Republicans are open to raising rates?”

For approaching two weeks, liberal media members have been contorting themselves to make the case the President's victory on Election Day represented a mandate for his agenda.

When CNN contributor Donna Brazile tried this on ABC's This Week Sunday, George Will marvelously responded, "Almost every member of John Boehner's caucus won his or her seat by a much bigger margin than Mr. Obama won his renewed term" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Now that the 2012 presidential election is over and Barack Obama has been safely reelected, the journalists at ABC's Good Morning America woke up to the fact that the President has "refused" to provide details the terrorist attack in Libya and that the administration "didn't want to talk about it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Fill-in host Elizabeth Vargas blithely announced, "In the meantime, the Libya issue has been overhanging this election. Allegations of a, quote, massive cover-up, by Senator John McCain about this administration's, really, refusal to really put to rest this issue before voting day." Martha Raddatz, who moderated the vice presidential debate, agreed, saying, "They didn't want to talk about it. Everybody tried to pin them down on that. They did not want to talk about it." "Everybody" tried to pin them down on Libya? 

Martha Raddatz boosted President Obama on ABC after the final presidential debate on Monday evening, just as she did during the earlier vice presidential debate that she moderated. Raddatz asserted that Obama "humanized what he was talking about. He talked a lot about the troops; he talked about the survivors from 9/11; he talked about the people in Israel. So if, in fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their attention with that sort of approach." [audio available here; video below the jump]

ABC's post-debate coverage also spotlighted a Tweet from Nightline's Bill Weir, who channeled something that Al Gore had whined about just minutes earlier on Twitter: "Four #debates come and go without a single question on climate change."

Smoking-gun evidence that ABC's Martha Raddatz was a biased moderator in the vice presidential debate -- Rachel Maddow is gushing about her.

On her MSNBC show Friday night, Maddow went so far as to suggest that Raddatz was worthy of the presidency (video after page break) --

NBC’s Saturday Night Live began its program last night with a vulgarity that although bleeped was as obvious as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face.

In the opening segment spoofing Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Kate McKinnon playing ABC’s Martha Raddatz channeled Samuel L. Jackson in the movie "Pulp Fiction" telling the contestants, “Don’t try to f—k me like I’m Jim Lehrer” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Jay Leno spent nearly three minutes of his opening monologue Friday trashing Vice President Joe Biden for his performance during Thursday's debate.

Although the Tonight Show host did poke some fun at Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin, the bulk of his jokes targeted Biden including him saying it was "really smart" of moderator Martha Raddatz "to cut Joe off after that third scotch and soda" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

No one was more over the top in praising ABC's Martha Raddatz as debate moderator than her colleagues at ABC. Former ABC News president David Westin -- the man so deeply biased to the left that he declared a journalist can't judge if the Pentagon is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack -- honored Raddatz on The Huffington Post with an article titled "Why and How Martha Won the Debate -- Over Media Bias."

He said the public reaction was "overwhelmingly favorable," and then guess who he quoted? "I vote for Martha Raddatz to moderate all the debates," from Roger Ebert. "Everyone seems to agree that @martharaddatz is the star of this debate," from Charlie Rose. Liberal opinion equals public opinion?

Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard reported that White House records show ABC’s Martha Raddatz “visited the VPR (or, the vice president's residence) for a "Women's History Month Reception." That record was released on June 29, 2012.

The White House Blog relayed that “The Bidens hosted their first Women’s History Month reception to celebrate the history, accomplishments, and contributions of women across the spectrum of American life, including academia and science, business and labor, philanthropy and advocacy, athletics and the arts, as well as the military and government. So Raddatz was honored?" A press release from the University of Delaware reports other TV-news women attended, too:

Martha Raddatz’s friends in the media are swooning over her performance in last night’s Vice Presidential debate.  And certainly she deserves a good deal of credit for taking Joe Biden to task for the Obama administration’s failures in Benghazi. She asked the hard, pointed questions that the administration has managed to dodge for weeks. Her conduct during the opening segment was refreshing and professional.

But over the course of the 90-minute debate the wheels came off, especially when she shifted to domestic economic policy. Any moderator whose weighted questions favor liberals over conservatives by a 19-12 margin is biased.

Reviewing the questions posed at Thursday night's vice presidential debate, ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz clearly favored Team Obama. Out of 48 discrete questions and follow-ups, a plurality (19, or 40%) incorporated a pro-Obama/Biden or anti-Romney/Ryan agenda, vs. 25% (12 questions) that skewed in the other direction and 35% (17 questions) that were neutral or purely information-seeking.

Raddatz showed almost no bias in her foreign policy questions, which split down the middle: eight pro-Romney vs. seven pro-Obama (not counting the neutrals). But on domestic issues, especially on the budget and taxes, she practically joined Joe Biden in pounding on Paul Ryan, with a dozen questions that incorporated liberal campaign themes, compared to just four based on a conservative premises, a stark three-to-one liberal tilt.

Former Clinton administration flack and current ABC personality George Stephanopoulos slanted towards Joe Biden after Thursday night's vice presidential debate between the incumbent and challenger Paul Ryan. However, unlike his definitive pro-Democratic track record with debates, he initially wouldn't give a clear answer as to who won the match-up.

Stephanopoulos trumpeted how "Joe Biden came in and gave the game that a lot of Democrats wanted from Barack Obama last week, but did not get", and later claimed, "over the course of the debate, more of issues fell in Biden's corner. He was able to take control of more of the debate." When Diane Sawyer asked whether there was a "clear winner", he replied, "I'm saying exactly what I said, Diane," and acknowledged that "Ryan held his own – did not make any big mistakes; humanized himself, when he had to humanize himself."

With the Vice Presidential debate hours away, new developments concerning its moderator, Martha Raddatz have been disturbing. As Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart reported today, during the 1990 Massachusetts gubernatorial race, Raddatz, who was then known as Martha Bradlee (she was married to Ben Bradlee Jr.), moderated the debate where, like a good race-baiting liberal, she asked Democratic candidate John Silber “why he had not campaigned more frequently in poor minority communities, prompting him to respond: "There is no point in my making a speech on crime control to a group of drug addicts."