David Corn

Integrity in journalism is not only optional, being dishonest is actually commendable. That was the message sent last night by the American Society of Magazine Editors as it gave one of its highly coveted National Magazine Awards to Mother Jones, the far-left publication which published a surreptitiously recorded video of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking to a Florida fund-raiser in 2012.

The Romney speech, in which he made his infamous reference to “47 percent” of Americans being willing to support President Obama because of their dependence on the welfare state, was secretly recorded by a hotel bartender and then released subsequently by Mother Jones.

While polling data show that public trust of the news media is in the single digits, the real salient issue in media bias these days is bias by omission, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Dennis Miller in an April 30 interview for the comedian's podcast program.  It's what the media refuse to report on, censoring stories from public view, that helps to shield liberals from scrutiny on salient public policy issues.

"For example, the Gosnell story. The average person out there has no idea what I'm talking about when I say Gosnell," Bozell noted of the Philadelphia abortionist who allegedly killed babies who survived attempted abortions. "You don't have to be pro-life to be disgusted and feel like throwing up when you hear some of these details and yet, no coverage from the national media." [To download and listen to the full interview, click here; For information on how to subscribe to Miller's podcast, click here ]

The leftists at Mother Jones are brandishing another secret tape. Pollster Frank Luntz, denounced as too conservative by liberals when he turns up on liberal networks, told a group of college students at the University of Pennsylvania this week that Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio are "problematic" for the GOP and that he and Mark Levin were “killing” Marco Rubio for his immigration proposals.

Democrats have “got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others.” This might be a surprise to anyone who's listened to Rubio's actual interviews on conservative talk radio.

**UPDATE** As of this posting, Politico reports that a Democratic official told a local Kentucky radio station that Progress Kentucky was responsible for the secret recording of McConnell's campaign office. 

Leave it to the Washington Post to provide a sympathetic puff piece to liberal journalist David Corn’s recent release of secretly-recorded audio attempting to smear a Republican politician. 

Corn, you may recall, published an exclusive in Mother Jones featuring a strategy session for Sen. Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign, where opposition research into potential opponent Ashley Judd was discussed.

Not surprisingly, most of the folks on MSNBC have being having a field day Thursday ridiculing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for his historic filibuster the day before.

Doing his part on the Martin Bashir show was MSNBC political analyst David Corn who said that Attorney General Eric Holder’s letter to Paul “had a very silent FU in it” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The hyperventilating over gun restrictions by the liberal media is getting absurd.

On Friday, MSNBC's David Corn appearing on Hardball actually said that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is "calling for John Wilkes Booth" by discussing on his program the possibility that the government in the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, might take away people's firearms (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Back in April, MSNBC's Martin Bashir charged Gov. Mitt Romney with being a liar, went on to quote Mormon doctrinal texts, and strongly hinted that the Republican presidential candidate was in danger of hellfire. In early December 2011, Bashir hinted at a similar pronouncement of anathema on GOP candidate Herman Cain.

But now with just five days left until the election, Bashir is infuriated by a TV ad cut by former Baptist minister and ex-governor Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) which simply reminds Christian voters that God is watching their vote and that their choices at the ballot box ring through to eternity. "Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire?" Huckabee asks in the spot. Bashir, no biblical illiterate he, erroneously took this to be a suggestion that Huckabee was suggesting the "unpardonable sin" was casting a vote for Obama. Both a review of the full context of the ad [embedded below the page break] and a basic understanding of the relevant biblical text Huckabee alludes to shows it's nothing of the sort. [MP3 audio of segment here; video excerpt of Bashir segment also follows page break]

Patricia Zengerle's coverage of U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine at Reuters assumes that the Democratic former Virginia Governor committed the mother of all gaffes today. I'm not so sure. It may be that David Corn's secret video of Mitt Romney commenting on the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes and are dependent on the government is sending polling data in the opposite direction from what was intended and is starting to rattle Democrats.

Look at how Zengerle framed what Kaine said:

Once again, Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection is doing the work the mainstream media should do but won't do. This morning your humble correspondent posted how Jacobson got David Corn to finally admit that there was a gap in the Romney tape after initially claiming that it was complete. However, now that Corn was forced to make that admission only after being pressed by Jacobson, he is now absurdly claiming that he was upfront about that tape gap from the start. Here is Corn's latest laughable claim:

Romney had pivoted from expressing his sentiments about the “47 percent” to discussing how to appeal to independents when the tape ended, and it was the “47 percent” description that were the focus of this clip. All the clips we posted, of course, were edited out of the longer video. They all needed to have start and end points. When we posted the complete tape, we stated there was a gap of one to two minutes, or less, according to the source. That seemed to be the appropriate time to do so. I will note that Romney, who clearly has thought about how to respond to this clip, has not said in the statements he has made since its release, “But then I went on to say….

David Corn of Mother Jones magazine has claimed that the audio and video recording of Mitt Romney taken surreptitiously at a fundraiser was complete...until it was revealed that it had a critical gap of up to two minutes.  At first Corn refused to admit to any gap until undeniable proof was presented to him by William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection:

There is a gap in the recording immediately after Romney’s now famous discussion of the 47% of voters who don’t pay taxes. The cut in the audio and video comes while Romney is in mid-sentence, so we actually do not have the full audio of what Romney said on the subject.

Let's see. The supposed consensus at Real Clear Politics shows Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama by less than three points. As shown yesterday, one of the most recent five polls used in RCP's calculations from CBS and the New York Times is so cooked that it weighted registered Democrats over registered Republicans by 35%-22% -- so you can easily knock more than a point from Obama's lead for that item alone. Rasmussen has Romney up by two, and Gallup has gone from Obama +6 to Obama +1 in just a week.

So naturally, according to John Whitesides at Reuters, it's Romney's campaign which is "reeling" (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Once again serving as the broadcast arm of MSNBC, Monday’s NBC Nightly News devoted a full segment to the supposed outrage over what Mitt Romney said in a surreptitiously-recorded video promoted by the left wing Mother Jones magazine, remarks which Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow put at the top of their MSNBC shows. And CNN soon joined in the hysteria with Anderson Cooper 360 treating it as “Breaking News.”

Of course, Romney had simply provided an obvious assessment of the state of the electorate where many have an “entitlement” mentality and nearly half avoid the income tax.

One of the recent lies told by the Obama campaign and the liberal media is that companies owned by Bain Capital outsourced thousands of jobs while Mitt Romney was CEO.

A headline in the July 12  Boston Globe blared, “Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated” causing the liberal media and MSNBC to jump on the story.  The story hyped SEC filings by Bain Capitol listing Mitt Romney as CEO of Bain for three years after he left his official duties with the organization suggesting that he had a far more active role at Bain far after he claims he left the company.

Since President Obama flip-flopped on his position on same-sex marriage last month, NewsBusters has reported extensively on how the media cover such policy changes differently when made by Republicans such as Mitt Romney.

On MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner Thursday, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele gave the perilously liberal David Corn a much-needed education in this very fact (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A furious Chris Matthews on Monday railed against Cory Booker for his "betrayal" and "sabotage" of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. A bewildered Matthews couldn't understand why the Newark mayor would "trash" the President.

Howling over Booker's break from party loyalty, Matthews snarled, "... I think [this] was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, [Booker] was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer." The Hardball host then played a clip of Obama "trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

David Corn, the perilously liberal Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, got a much-needed civics lesson from the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

After Corn carped and whined about House Republicans blocking Barack Obama's fiscal agenda, Noonan replied, "When a President wants to make something happen, he can make it happen, and he can't sit back and say, 'Oh, they wouldn't talk. They wouldn't do this. I'm so sorry.' You make it happen if you are President" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the April 30 edition of NOW with Alex Wagner, panelist Robert Traynham had the courage to confront the liberal panel on the Left's hypocrisy on a gender "pay gap" and the so-called War on Women.  The panel took off in typical liberal fashion with Wagner criticizing Mitt Romney and all Republicans for showing a lack of empathy about how women's median pay in America is about 77 percent of the median pay for men.

In response, Traynham called out Wagner for her liberal attacks by pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left on the subject.  Traynham skillfully reminded Wagner and his fellow panelists that former Obama staffers Anita Dunn and Christine Romer were quoted on the record in a book published last year criticizing the unequal pay women within the Obama White House receive. Romer also was quoted by liberal journalist Ron Suskind as having said she felt treated like a "piece of meat" by Obama staffers.  [Video follows page break  MP3 audio here.]   

Politico reported Monday that a new book by Mother Jones's David Corn claims President Obama blamed his 2010 midterm elections defeat on Fox News constantly calling him a Muslim.

Fox News's Bret Baier struck back on Monday's Special Report saying, "For the record, we found no examples of a host saying President Obama is a Muslim" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is very upset about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney saying President Obama is pursuing a foreign policy of "appeasement."

On Wednesday's Hardball, the host was so outraged by this that his Republican Strategist guest, Florida's Sally Bradshaw, ended up laughing in his face and mocking him when he talked about "sophisticated voters" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Hardball host Chris Matthews honestly believes that Rep. Michele Bachmann's "devil's in the details" joke about Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan may be something more sinister, or at least cynically calculated to appeal to "strange, far right" Christian voters.

"Well, last night, Congressman and David, they were supposed to stick to economics, but of course Michele Bachmann couldn't avoid religious concerns," the MSNBC host complained to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and David Corn of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones on his October 12 program. [MP3 audio available here for download; Video follow page break]

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan got into quite a heated debate on Monday's "Hardball."

At issue was the battle of the debt ceiling with Matthews calling Tea Partiers opposed to raising it "crazy protesters" and telling his guest, "You want to join" them (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has for weeks been dishonestly telling his viewers Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) budget proposal would kill Medicare.

On Wednesday's "Hardball," former Republican National Committee chair just-turned MSNBC contributor Michael Steele struck back (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews on Friday said that Hosni Mubarak's exit from Egypt and the jubilation now happening in Tahrir Square took Barack Obama to have happen.

As soon as he said it on the 5 p.m. installment of MSNBC's "Hardball," the host quipped, "His critics will probably say, 'Yeah, we knew this was coming'” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Having mercilessly attacked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for six days in a row, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday set his sights on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.

After an opening teaser in which the "Hardball" host referred to "the right-wing freak-out over Egypt," Matthews ended up doing two segments about the Fox News star in which he and his perilously liberal guests called the object of their disaffection a "fear mongering," "completely crazy," "full mooner," "Captain Queeg" (videos follow with partial transcripts and lengthy commentary):

Chris Matthews' renewed attacks on George W. Bush continued Tuesday as he accused the former President of having no real motive to go to war with Iraq in March 2003.

Implying that Bush was basically an idiot that was "in over his head," the "Hardball" host stated, "Maybe you ought to put this guy in a lie detector" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was almost a full-fledged panic attack on Thursday's "Hardball" as three devout liberal media members fretted over the possibility that Tea Party success at the polls next month could make the GOP more conservative.

Horrors!

So worried about this was MSNBC's Chris Matthews that he opined at the end of the segment, "At some point, they`ll become not the party of the elephant but the party of the barking dogs as the cars go by" (video follows with commentary and full transcript at end of the article):

An extraordinary thing happened on MSNBC Tuesday: Chris Matthews scolded a fellow liberal journalist for endorsing all of the Democrat candidates up for election in the Senate this November.

While discussing the battle between Republican candidate Linda McMahon and Democrat candidate Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut, the "Hardball" host expressed serious concerns about the latter lying about his military service.

After playing a tape from Monday's debate of Blumenthal haplessly trying to explain his position, Matthews asked liberal guest David Corn, "How do you say you served in Vietnam unintentionally when they`ve got the quotes?"

Quite surprisingly, Matthews aggressively took exception with Corn's answer (video follows with transcript and commentary):