Bob Schieffer

Deaths, guns, whistle-blowers and the highest law officer in the land stonewalling a congressional investigation are the juicy ingredients of a story network news reporters would love to cover – if a Republican were in office. However, when Attorney General Eric Holder testified on Thursday (February 2) before a House oversight committee investigating Operation Fast and Furious, the news was completely ignored by NBC and ABC (there was one full story on Friday’s CBS This Morning). The virtual blackout of Holder’s testimony continues an overall trend of ABC and NBC burying one of the Obama administration’s biggest scandals, despite continual coverage by their competitors at CBS, CNN and Fox News.

MRC analysts reviewed the Big Three network evening and morning news shows and found that while CBS aired 29 stories and 1 brief on Fast and Furious, ABC aired only one brief on the June 15, 2011 edition of Good Morning America. That was still better than what NBC did on their morning and evening news programs, as the gunwalking story has never been mentioned on either NBC Nightly News or the Today show. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer, in a report primarily about a Mexican mother accusing border patrol agents of killing her 17-year old son as he tried to scale a wall, did note that “In December, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with bandits.” However, Almaguer never tied the Terry killing back to the gunwalking scandal.

Despite Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, Obama-loving media members love to blame gridlock in Washington on Republicans.

Doing his part Sunday was Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer who asked guest Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), "Has the Tea Party made compromise a dirty word, and is that why Congress can't seem to get anything done?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After President Barack Obama finished his State of the Union address, on NBC Andrea Mitchell set to work to convince viewers of how he had discredited Mitt Romney’s campaign trail criticisms of him. As to how “this President apologizes for America,” she countered: “Any viewer watching this...would look at this speech and it would be very hard to say that he is apologizing for America. This was resoundingly positive and optimistic in every way.”

Mitchell soon saw such an “exquisite contrast” between Obama’s call for “a minimum tax of 30 percent” on millionaires on the very day Romney “finally did release his tax returns. And we saw that his effective rate was under 14 percent for 2010.”

Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, and his sixth speech to a joint session of Congress since taking office in 2009. But there’s no need to spend a lot of time wondering about what the media will say after The Great One speaks, since — like a gaggle of corporate yes-men — journalists have gushed over every one of these major addresses.

“It was a big and bold speech,” ABC’s Terry Moran applauded on Nightline shortly after Obama’s budget address in February 2009, his first before Congress. “It was his debut and he wowed us,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews enthused the next day on Hardball.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer decided his viewers needed a special warning about how far out of the mainstream an upcoming guest dwells, plugging at the top of Sunday’s Face the Nation how he’d have as guests Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich – and then: “for context on how it’s going, we’ll bring in South Carolina’s very conservative Senator, Jim DeMint.”

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose acknowledged the widespread spinning of Mitt Romney's "I like to fire people" remark. The anchor asked Romney, "Do you regret the firing comment because of the way it was interpreted by some?" The previous morning, Rose's colleague, Bob Schieffer, was one who spun the GOP candidate's line, claiming it was just shy of saying "Herbert Hoover is my hero."

Schieffer pounced on Romney's "firing" line during a segment with Rose on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, even after correspondent Jan Crawford noted during a preceding report that the sentence was being "taken completely out of context" by several of his Republican competitors. The "Face The Nation" host all but said that the presidential candidate had stuck his foot in his mouth:

Bob Schieffer slammed Mitt Romney on Tuesday's CBS This Morning for his recent "I like to fire people" line, stating that he was "looking for every way he can try to lose and drive down his percentage of victory." He added, "I guess the only thing worse you could say...when people are out of work is that Herbert Hoover is my hero or something like that. It just boggles the mind."

Right after he harped about Romney's apparent incompetence, Schieffer slipped up himself when he confused Ron Paul, one of Romney's competitors, with Les Paul, an early pioneer of the electric guitar [audio available here; video below the jump].

CBS's Bob Schieffer led his interview of Herman Cain on Tuesday's Early Show by asking, "Why did you accept the invitation?" Cain must have been wondering that himself by the end of the segment, as Schieffer and Norah O'Donnell conducted a hostile interrogation of the entrepreneur, pressing him about his qualifications to be secretary of defense, and even asked about the state of his marriage.

The Face the Nation host, filling in as CBS transitions to its new morning show lineup, noted how someone at his network "had the idea...why don't we ask Herman Cain to come on?...Well, of all things he said, yes." Schieffer then turned to the former GOP presidential candidate and asked his "why accept the invitation" question, adding, "Do you have something you want to tell us this morning? Are you going to endorse a candidate? What brings you to television this morning?"

As he interviewed Iowa Republican Governor Terry Branstad on Monday's The Early Show on CBS, substitute co-anchor Bob Schieffer naively wondered why someone does not act to put an end to negative ads in political campaigns.

During a roundtable discussion on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, after asserting that in past years divided government had "produced some really remarkable pieces of legislation," correspondent Nancy Cordes blamed the presence of Tea Party Republicans for less congressional success in enacting legislation this year. (Video below)

Anchor Bob Schieffer raised the difficulty Congress has had in 2011 in making accomplishments, prompting Cordes to observe:

It's always interesting to see how the several thousand readers who voted in the MRC's "public ballot" differed from the 48 media experts who selected our Best Notable Quotables of 2011 (a panel which included talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Neal Boortz, Human Events editor-in-chief Tom Winter and Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby). This year, there were six categories where our readers and the judges disagreed -- although sometimes the margins were extremely close.

Let's start with the biggest disagreement, in the "Media Millionaires for Higher Taxes Award." By a healthy margin (68 to 53), our judges chose an April 17 quote from CBS's Bob Schieffer, as he was questioning Rep. Paul Ryan on Face the Nation: "Why do these rich people need another tax cut? I mean, they’re already rich....Why cut their taxes some more?"

CBS's Bob Schieffer displayed his liberal leanings on Sunday's Face the Nation when he raised the issue of illegal immigration. Schieffer claimed during an interview of Newt Gingrich that "Mitt Romney has taken such a hard line, it seems to me, on immigration that some within the Republican Party are saying he is simply running off Hispanic voters."

The journalist asked Gingrich for his take on this claim about halfway through the half-hour long interview. Gingrich replied, "I'm not going on comment on Governor Romney," and simply recited his policy recommendations on illegal immigration. When the candidate stated near the end of his answer that "I do not believe the American people are going to send police out to round up folks who have been here 25 years," Schieffer followed up and asked, "There are 11 million of these people. I mean, what are you going to do with them? I mean, you can't build that many prisons to put them in jail....and you can't get that many buses to haul them back."

Highlighting Grover Norquist’s upcoming appearance on 60 Minutes, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation, pointed to the anti-tax hike pledge Norquist asks politicians to sign as “one of the problems” undermining the failed “super-committee.”

After ruing the pledge with Republican Senator Pat Toomey, a super-committee member, Schieffer later also hit a Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, from the left on taxes: “Would you be willing to raise taxes if that’s what it takes to get our financial footing?” Manchin: “You don't need to raise taxes.”) 

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's Rebecca Jarvis wondered if Newt Gingrich would "have to play a little more dirty...to take on the other GOP contenders to win the bid." Bob Schieffer replied cynically that Gingrich would "save his criticism for attacking the media, which is always the safe thing to do." Chris Wragge prompted the former Speaker to criticize Herman Cain and Rick Perry on Friday, but he didn't bite.

Jarvis brought on the Face The Nation host for his take on Republican presidential debate hosted by CBS and National Journal on Saturday. Near the end of the interview, the fill-in anchor raised how Gingrich was "gaining momentum" and that he "held true to this no real confrontation with the other candidates" during the debate. She then directed her "dirty" question to Schieffer.

Moments after being introduced by Face the Nation host Bob Schiiffer as a "conservative" columnist, the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker on Sunday referred to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich as a "misanthrope" - aka a mankind hater (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ABC, CBS and NBC have continued their overly positive coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors, devoting a massive number of stories (81 in just the month of October) to the leftist, anti-capitalist movement. This is a far cry from the coverage they initially gave the Tea Party protest, granting them a scant 13 stories all of 2009. More troubling, the radicalism and criminal acts at some of the protests have been virtually ignored by the Big Three networks.

This was bound to happen given the overwhelming disparity in the number of soundbites (19 to 1 ratio) devoted to those who were sympathetic to the OWS cause. A staggering 190 (80%) soundbites were given to those who were in favor of the Occupiers, only 10 (4%) soundbites featured those who were critical of the movement, 38 (16%) were neutral. In addition, nine guests on the morning shows appreciated the OWS crowd, to just one against (Newt Gingrich).

While Bob Schieffer spent a goodly amount of time on Sunday's Face the Nation discussing the allegations made against Herman Cain this week as well as Rick Perry's strange speech in New Hampshire, Liz Cheney was the voice of reason asking why he was wasting so much time on these irrelevant issues.

"With all due respect, you know, the American people are out there afraid. They're afraid that the economy is going off a cliff...I think that that's what we ought to be talking about" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CBS’s Bob Schieffer unintentionally played the foil to Herman Cain on Sunday’s Face the Nation as Schieffer expressed his politically-correct displeasure with Cain’s “downright bizarre” Web video which briefly shows Cain’s chief of staff smoking, was flummoxed by Cain’s sense of humor (“You also said at one point that you might want to back that fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke too?”) and was baffled by Cain’s accurate claim Planned Parenthood was spurred by the eugenics movement’s desire to reduce the black population.
 
On the ad, Schieffer decried how “it sends a signal that it’s cool to smoke” before he scolded Cain: “Well, let me just tell you, it’s not funny to me....I don't think it serves the country well, and this is an editorial opinion here, to be showing someone smoking a cigarette.” (video below)

While media outlets such as CBS News celebrate Vice President Joe Biden's claim that rape and murder will increase if the President's jobs bill isn't passed, they've all ignored a crucial point.

According to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month, despite the recession with its associated state and city budget cuts, violent crime in America has declined four years in a row:

CBS's Early Show on Thursday stood out as the only Big Three network program that covered what anchor Jeff Glor labeled as Vice President Biden's "controversial comments linking rape and the jobs bill," where he attacked the GOP for opposing the legislation. ABC and NBC's morning shows on Thursday didn't air anything on the story, and none of the networks' evening news shows on Wednesday reported on it.

Despite correspondent Bill Plante's full report on Biden's attack on the GOP, which included a sound bite of the Democrat standing by his comments after a question from Human Events editor Jason Mattera, Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer all but defended the Vice President's remarks: "I think the Vice President is just drawing things in the starkest possible terms...it is a little bit difficult to argue with the logic. If you have fewer police on the streets, you're probably going to have more crime."

The Occupy Wall Street protestors have received overwhelmingly positive coverage from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks, as they used their airtime to publicize and promote the aggressively leftist movement. In just the first eleven days of October, ABC, CBS and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts with a whopping 33 full stories or interview segments on the protesters. This was a far cry from the greeting the Tea Party received from the Big Three as that conservative protest movement was initially ignored (only 13 total stories in all of 2009) and then reviled.

Where the Tea Party was met with skeptical claims of their motivations -- with some reporters claiming they were merely corporate backed puppets and others implying they were spurred on by their racist opposition to the first black president – the Occupy Wall Street crowd was depicted as an almost genial “grassroots” movement.

On Friday's Early Show, CBS's Bob Schieffer wildly spun Congress's 12% job approval as good news for President Obama, despite his own low poll numbers: "My heavens! He's 20 points ahead of the members of Congress....I mean, I think that probably some car thieves have a higher approval rating." But in 2010, when Democrats led Congress, The Early Show ignored a poll which showed low numbers for Nancy Pelosi.

The morning program led its 7 am Eastern hour with the ultra-low poll numbers for the Republican-led Congress. Anchor Erica Hill noted that "President Obama's job approval rating is reaching all-time low, but he is still miles ahead of Congress, when you look at the numbers. A CBS News/New York Times poll out just this morning shows only 12% of Americans say Congress is doing a good job. That is the worst showing in the history of our polling."

CBS's Bob Schieffer finished Sunday's "Face the Nation" with a fitting tribute to the feeling of unity the 9/11 attacks brought to our nation and its capital.

"Ten years later, I sometimes wonder if we could still come together as we did then" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberal media are predictably gushing over Colin Powell's supposed rebuke of Dick Cheney on Sunday's "Face the Nation."

Bucking the trend was Joe Scarborough Monday who on the MSNBC program bearing his name said Powell going on "Face the Nation" to defend himself proved Cheney right about heads exploding over his new book (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MRC has just posted the latest edition of Notable Quotables, our bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. This week, NQ is chock full of quotes from journalists slashing the Tea Party as the Republican Party’s “Hezbollah faction,” who have “strapped explosives to the Capitol” and “waged jihad on the American people.”

Oh, and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd disparaging the “Tea Party budget slashers” as “cannibals,” “zombies,” and “vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion.” So much for civility.

The full package is available at www.MRC.org; here are some of the best quotes:

For the past month, as the debt talks slogged on in Washington, the so-called mainstream media unleashed increasingly hysterical attacks on the Tea Party and anti-tax hike conservatives — epitomizing the liberal elite’s supreme annoyance at the push to curb federal spending and contain the size of government.

The media’s disdainful language has ranged from the merely condescending (wondering whether the Tea Partiers in Congress actually knew how things worked, or referring to them as children), to outright hostile (likening the Tea Party to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups). Here are some of the choicer examples MRC has collected over the past 30 days:

Three noteworthy spins, charges and/or claims made on the Sunday morning interview shows.

> ABC’s This Week, with “ALL CUTS, NO TAXES?” on screen: George Stephanopoulos hit White House senior adviser David Plouffe from the left on how “this enforcement mechanism would not include revenue increases, would be just across the board spending cuts.” He fretted the deal “all but guarantee that the final product is all spending cuts and not the balanced approach the President wants.” Christiane Amanpour despaired President Obama “has moved all of the way to the language and the ideals that the Republicans espouse.”

> CBS’s Face the Nation: Bob Schieffer insisted “some people say that the Republican Party has been held hostage by the Tea Party” and he discerned “some truth” in an allegation he saw on Facebook that allowing House freshmen “‘to control this debate’” is “‘like letting the teenager in the family run the family budget.’”

On three occasions between July 22 and July 26, 2011, CBS's Bob Schieffer carried water for President Obama when he echoed the Democrat's inaccurate claim about Social Security: "Millions of Americans...may not get their next [Social Security] check if the debt ceiling crisis is not resolved." In reality, there is enough federal revenues and authorized expenditures to pay for the program [audio clips available here].

Schieffer gave a preview of the CBS Evening News nine minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour of the July 22, 2011 Early Show with his dire warning about Social Security:

SCHIEFFER: Every month, millions of Americans depend on Social Security to support their families and make ends meet. But now, they may not get their next check, if the debt ceiling crisis is not resolved.

[Video clips below the jump]

This week’s Notable Quotables, MRC’s bi-weekly newsletter documenting the most outrageous quotes in the liberal media, showcases the media’s slanted coverage of the debt ceiling debate. Over the past two weeks, network reporters touted Barack Obama as “the debt slayer,” impugned the “cut, cap and balance” option as “just wasting time,” smeared Republicans as “hostage-takers” and said they were guilty of “terrorism,” and insisted that “meaningful reform” was impossible without hiking taxes.

At one point, the tax debate lurched to outright Marxism, with one “news” anchor wondering: “Why do you think the top 2 percent of America has a chokehold on the other 98 percent?”

Here are highlights from this week’s edition; full text and several videos are posted at www.MRC.org:

Adopting the spin of President Barack Obama -- who on Friday insisted “one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is: Can they say yes to anything?” – on Sunday’s Face the Nation CBS’s Bob Schieffer demanded of Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl: “Is there a problem for Republicans that might emerge as just the party of no? The party that can't say yes to anything?”