Lesley Stahl

Three weeks after CBS’s 60 Minutes delivered a friendly sit-down with President Barack Obama in which Steve Kroft gently chided him for being too willing to compromise with Republicans, the show didn’t even attempt a matching approach to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Instead, Lesley Stahl relayed a portrait painted by liberals (“He’s working on humanizing his image, and presenting himself as more reasonable”) as she blamed him for “gridlock” and offered a caricature of Cantor as an “inflexible” ideologue putting Tea Party politics ahead of passing Obama’s beneficial policies. 

Stahl abandoned any pretense of journalistic objectivity, repeatedly pressing Cantor to “compromise” – to agree with Obama on the rationality of raising taxes more, touting how even Ronald Reagan had recognized the need to hike taxes.

CBS sided with supporters of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests on Monday's Early Show, bringing on former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to boost the left-leaning demonstrations, with no Republican and/or conservative critics appearing as guests during the program. Feingold slammed Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as "un-American" for his critique of the protests.

Near the end of her interview of the Wisconsin politician, anchor Erica Hill raised Cain's attack on the continuing anti-corporate rallies: "Republican candidate Herman Cain, weighing in over the weekend. He said that, basically, it's un-American to protest capitalism. Businesses have to make money, and if they can do a better job making money oversea- it's an unfortunate reality for many Americans- but they're concerned about their bottom line. Can there be some sort of common ground here?"

It was literally a show stopper.  

At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl this evening, GE CEO Jeff Immelt asked her: "I don't know why you don't" root for GE, and by extension for American business, the way company employees do?  Did Immelt leave Stahl speechless? Rather than providing an answer, 60 Minutes could only cut to its tick-tick-tick stopwatch.  View video after the jump.

When CBS's "60 Minutes" did a puff piece about Al Sharpton in May, Lesley Stahl revealed the Reverend refuses to say anything bad about President Obama.

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," former MSNBC contributor Cenk Uygur claimed he might have been replaced by Sharpton in the 6PM time slot because of the Reverend's undying devotion to the current White House resident (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CBS's Lesley Stahl played up how Al Sharpton apparently "has gone through something of a metamorphosis" as she spotlighted the "street-protest agitator...now trusted White House adviser" on Sunday's 60 Minutes. Despite pressing Sharpton for his refusal to apologize for the Tawana Brawley hoax, Stahl gushed, "Take a look at Reverend Al...stately in his tailored suits, commanding a national stage."

The journalist front-loaded her superlatives about the liberal flamethrower during her 12-and-a-half minute report in the bottom half of the 8 pm Eastern hour, emphasizing how Sharpton has supposedly become a new man. She also set the tone of the entire segment of choosing to use non-ideological labels to describe her subject, only hinting at his left-of-center politics:

In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for CBS's Sunday Morning, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made his latest attack against Sarah Palin, ranting: "I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness. And demonize education and intellect. And I'm giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now." [Audio available here]

Stahl made no effort to challenge Sorkin's vicious personal attacks, simply remarking: "He seems to be having a second career these days, going after Sarah Palin. In an essay for The Huffington Post, he called her a 'witless bully.'" Given the media's concern with civility and harsh political rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shooting, one wonders why Stahl did not condemn such language.

Video added below

Even as the public grew increasingly disenchanted with Washington's full-throated liberal policies in 2010, the media elite's partisanship remained on full display. The Media Research Center's Best Notable Quotables of 2010 captured the highlights, as journalists continued to blame America's misfortunes on George W. Bush, even as they also insisted that Barack Obama deserved more credit for his amazing accomplishments.

In the MRC's "They Don't Miss Him Yet Award for Still Bashing Bush," Time's Joe Klein took the prize for insisting that the April 2010 Gulf oil spill was really Bush's fault: "This is more Bush’s second Katrina than Obama’s first,” Klein lamely insisted on The Chris Matthews Show. Klein made his crack on May 30, nearly 500 days after Bush left the Oval Office.

Time's Joe Klein, ABC's Christiane Amanpour, and CBS's Lesley Stahl were just three journalists to see an outrageously biased quote of theirs land in the Best of Notable Quotables 2010.

A panel of 46 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers chose the winners, and our news analysts introduce them and a few others in this highlight lowlight reel put together by Media Research Center video producer Bob Parks:

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) founder Brent Bozell appeared on WOR radio with Steve Malzberg Monday to discuss the MRC's Best Notable Quotables of 2010. 

Press release available here, audio of full radio segment follows with commentary:

Introducing her interview with presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner on Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl proclaimed: "...which John Boehner will show up as speaker, the deal-maker he's been in the past or the more hardline conservative of late who's aligned himself with the tea party that helped bring him and his party back into power?"

Stahl noted how Boehner and President Obama "may have exchanged more words via television than in person. And most of them have been, shall we say, unfriendly." She lamented how Boehner "was the one who urged Republicans in the House to vote as a block....Against all of Mr. Obama's initiatives – health care, the stimulus, and on and on." She added that "he escalated the attacks during the campaign" and later dubbed him "Mr. Hell No."

On Thursday's "Morning Joe," "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl deplored the GOP stiff-arm to Democratic lame-duck legislation, complaining that it wiped out the conciliatory tone of the Republicans' meeting with President Obama. She referred to the GOP strategy as "the maneuvering that I think is such a turnoff."

"If you're up here after the White House meeting saying 'Yes, they can be civil to each other,' and it's just a tone. We know it's a tone. And then it's dashed," she mourned. "After the meeting with the President, everybody – I think, I think – in the country said this is great, this is what we want, we want that tone," she gushed of the GOP leadership's meeting with Obama.

Stahl then lamented the GOP's ensuing opposition to Democratic legislation until extending the Bush tax cuts is made a top priority.
 

Barely 36 hours before Washington State voters go to the polls, CBS News aired a 14-minute unregulated in-kind campaign expenditure on behalf of “Yes on 1098" and its chief cheerleader, Bill Gates Sr, sandwiched by Lesley Stahl hailing rogue Reagan adviser David Stockman as “brave” for advocating the end to the Bush tax rates and imposition of a 15 percent national income surtax. Stahl trumpeted:

One Republican brave enough to go public is David Stockman, President Reagan's budget director. He says all the Bush tax cuts should be eliminated -- even those on the middle class. And he says his own Republican Party has gone too far with its anti-tax religion.

She segued to how “many of the states are in the same boat, facing huge deficits with few prospects for cutting, which is why Washington State is joining the movement across the country to tax the rich,” championing how “Bill Gates Sr., has poured his own money into backing Initiative 1098. The tax would bring in $3 billion a year, to be spent mainly on education, which has suffered cutbacks as the state reels under a massive deficit.”

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and CBS's Lesley Stahl were two of the targets in the latest "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's "Hannity" program.

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the October 22 edition of the program  to look at how the media have been denigrating the Tea Party movement.

[Video of the segment available after the page break]

With less than two weeks before Election Day, the media elite continue to disparage the GOP’s Tea Party candidates while saluting the greatness of the über-unpopular Democratic Congress and its leader, Nancy Pelosi.

On This Week, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour — apparently oblivious to the decades of liberal mockery hurled at Ronald Reagan and William Buckley — cited those leaders as exemplifying “a long and venerable tradition” of “intellectual conservatism.” Her goal was to insult today’s conservatives: “People are looking at the Tea Party and saying this is not conservatism as we knew it, but it’s extreme.” Conservative George F. Will educated Amanpour: “Which is exactly what they said about Bill Buckley...”

On Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl fretted over the possible expansion of Israeli settlements near an important archeological site in Jerusalem: "So archeology is being used as a political tool....indoctrination, almost." She claimed that "organizations that move Jewish settlers into Arab areas have infiltrated" the surrounding Arab neighborhood.

Stahl described the dig site: "...more and more Israeli settlers have moved east into the Arab-populated areas. One place where it's gotten especially complicated and volatile is the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. The complication in Silwan involves an Israeli archeological dig called the City of David." She worried about the religious implications: "It's controversial that the City of David uses discoveries to try to confirm what's in the Bible, particularly from the time of David, the king who made Jerusalem his capital....There's an implicit message that because David conquered the city for the Jews back then, Jerusalem belongs to the Jews today."
n in Silwan involves an Israeli archeological dig called the City of David." She worried about the religious implications: "It's controversial that the City of David uses discoveries to try to confirm what's in the Bible, particularly from the time of David, the king who made Jerusalem his capital....There's an implicit message that because David conquered the city for the Jews back then, Jerusalem belongs to the Jews today."

CBS reporter Lesley Stahl was very confused on Monday's "Morning Joe". She just couldn't figure out why there are so many women involved with the Tea Party.

Stahl received a basic civics lesson from two unlikely personalities: columnist Mike Barnicle, and Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of "The Death of Conservatism".

Tanenhaus noted that economic issues are of particular importance to women, and therefore that women are going to be more active when their economic livelihood is threatened. Barnicle suggested that since women generally handle household finances, the illogic of deficit spending is especially clear to them (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Caroline May).

President Obama has accomplished so much during his tenure with so little gratitude from the American people, lamented the Monday panel for MSNBC's "Morning Joe." What is to blame? Poor marketing by the White House, the panelists answered.

"Where is the celebration over what has been done and accomplished in the face of all this anger and vitriol in Washington?" complained co-host Mika Brzezinski. "No credit. No credit at all for what he's accomplished," lamented "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl.

Like something from the novel Frankenstein, Stahl cast Obama's rescue of the economy as a doctor saving the life of a horrible burn victim. "He saves the guy's life – this is our economy...but the guy wakes up and he's got scars all over his face, and that's all he sees, that's all anybody sees," she described.

"And how – what's the doctor supposed to say? And that's what [Obama] is fighting, he's fighting an economy that just won't give him anything."

So after so much has been accomplished, why are the Democrats not campaigning on the Obama agenda?
 

Jimmy Carter is out with his 26th book, so that means he is on his 26th round of slavish liberal-media interviews hailing him as a genius and a peacemaker. No wonder we’re so tired of him.

While the Bushes have remained dignified and largely silent as ex-presidents, Carter and Bill Clinton just cannot resist venomously attacking Republican presidents and conservative politicians, perhaps because whenever they do this, TV anchors bow and scrape before them and hail their “achievements” and compassion and generosity of spirit toward mankind.

CBS broke into summer re-runs of 60 Minutes to let Lesley Stahl promote Jimmy Carter’s new book, White House Diary, which he maintained delivers “absolute unadulterated frankness” and which she described as an “often harsh critique” of his presidential term. She, however, was far from harsh toward him.

Noting an “image of ‘a failed President’ haunts the Carters,” Stahl trumpeted: “Carter argues that despite the image of failure, he actually had a long list of successes, starting with bringing all the hostages home alive,” as if that wasn’t because of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. Stahl proceeded to tout as a success his installation of “solar panels on the roof of the White House.”

Absolving Carter of responsibility, Stahl contended he “was cursed by a dismal economy, poor relations with Congress, and a nightmarish standoff over 52 Americans held hostage by Iran.” Yet, “when all is said and done, and many will be surprised to hear this,” Stahl insisted, “Jimmy Carter got more of his programs passed than Reagan and Nixon, Ford, Bush 1, Clinton or Bush 2.” She empathized with his treatment from an unappreciative public: “And yet, as I say, there's the sense that you were a failed President.”

Saturday’s The Early Show on CBS showed a preview clip of correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewing former President Jimmy Carter for 60 Minutes in which Carter blamed former Senator Ted Kennedy for derailing his universal health care plan in the 1970s. Stahl referred to former Senator Kennedy as "Teddy" as she asked Carter if he held Kennedy responsible. Stahl: "And you blame Teddy for the failure?"

A clip of the interview can be found on the CBS News Web site.

Below is a transcript of the segment, introduced by Whit Johnson, from the Saturday, September 18, The Early Show on CBS:

Mika Brzezinski is no poker face, regularly letting her feelings show as she reacts to the stories of the day.  But when it comes to emoting, the Morning Joe co-host outdid herself today, reacting to the criticism the panel leveled at Jimmy Carter for his ungracious bashing of the late Ted Kennedy.  

In a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, a clip from which Morning Joe aired, an embittered Carter flatly says the failure to get national health care during his administration was Ted Kennedy's "fault."  Carter accused Kennedy of "deliberately blocking" Carter's proposed legislation, in order to deny him a major legislative achievement.

Mika, daughter of Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, has a history of defending Carter on the show.  Check the video as Mika grimaces in discomfort, and interjects various rebuttals, as her fellow panelists unload on the 39th president.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl sounded positively giddy at the possibility of Democrats exploiting the Rand Paul round of TV interviews. She pushed David Gregory to agree with her that the Democrats can gain a "huge potential advantage" for suggesting the Republicans are extreme on everything.

STAHL: David, don’t you think, though, that the Republicans [she must mean Democrats] can use this? You say they, that the Republicans would like it to go back to the economy and debt. But can’t they use this sort of extreme image and say that the views on the economy and what the prescription is, for the debt, is even more extreme? Because they want to tamper with Social Security and Medicare, and doesn’t this open up a huge potential advantage for the Democrats?

GREGORY: Oh, for the Democrats, certainly, yeah. I mean–

STAHL: But on the economy, specifically. That they can move it over to that and say "Everything they do is extreme."

GREGORY: Yeah. No, I think that’s right. I think it can undermine Republicans as a credible alternative.

It’s more than a little tiresome to contemplate that every current liberal Supreme Court justice was touted by the national media as a moderate or even a conservative when they were originally announced, from John Paul Stevens to Sonia Sotomayor. Dan Rather even claimed the last retiree, David Souter, was dangerously “anti-women’s rights” when he was nominated in 1990. So it was less than shocking that the latest liberal nominee, Elena Kagan, drew the same phony “moderate” baloney.

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer greeted the nomination with goo: “She is expected to play a role as somewhat of a conciliator, the bridge across the conservative and liberal wings of the Court. In fact, she loves opera, which Justice Scalia loves.” What more evidence of her judicial philosophy do we need?

60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl on Monday appeared on Morning Joe and touted Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick as a "mediator" who was chosen "in his image." The CBS correspondent enthused that a conciliator is "what [Obama] was." [Audio available here.]

Continuing the media spin that Elena Kagan might not be a liberal, Stahl proclaimed the judge's moderation: "And that he went for that instead of a brilliant ideological liberal to sort of balance Scalia."

In a seemingly contradictory moment, Stahl extolled, "I love that she's a woman and it's not a big deal." But, she then lobbied for a quota system for females on the court: "And we need to have six. We're halfway there."

Update 9:35 AM: Larry O'Donnell "stunned" Stahl doesn't realize ObamaCare raises taxes.  See O'Donnell video after the jump.

______________________________

What kind of correspondents do they have at 60 Minutes?  The kind who can't tell that the biggest tax increase in history is a tax increase at all.  The kind who complain that even if it is a tax increase, Americans should be willing to pay it because ObamaCare is "really important."

Exhibit A: Lesley Stahl.  On Morning Joe today, Stahl--her 40 years or so as a reporter notwithstanding--said she "can't tell" if ObamaCare raises taxes and that her "head is hurting" from trying to figure it out.  But so what if it does?  Stahl had a sudden bout of nostalgia for the good old days when people didn't mind paying "a little more" for "something really important in return."

View video here.

CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewed her occasional colleague (and CNN correspondent) Christiane Amanpour for the website The Women on the Web, and the oddest part came when Amanpour insisted "nobody knows my biases...I just try very hard to report the facts and to tell the stories as best as I can." In fact, Amanpour’s biased liberal journalism has landed her in our year-end Best of Notable Quotables issue four times. These professions of impartiality came as Stahl asked whether her Iranian background affected her reporting:

STAHL: That brings me back to Iran, because I wonder – this is always asked of me as a reporter – what are your biases? What are your opinions? How hard is it for you to cover anything in Iran, given your own family background?

During a fawning interview on Sunday’s 60 Minutes on CBS, anchor Lesley Stahl repeated White House talking points portraying Vice President Joe Biden’s constant verbal gaffes as a positive attribute: "After trying to muzzle the man, often ridiculed for his loose lips, the White House now calls his, shall we say, exuberance, an asset. They call it ‘truth-telling.’ And see his talent for connecting as a real advantage. Let Joe be Joe. With his ‘at a boying,’ hand-gripping, ‘hot’ personality, versus Obama's cool cat...Call him ‘schmoozer-in-chief.’"

Stahl went on to highlight some of roles that Biden has taken on as vice president: "With so much on his plate, the President has made his number two the stimulus cop. The assignment, to see that the $787 billion in stimulus money is spent wisely...He's on the phone several hours a week with mayors and governors, making sure they follow the rules...The Vice President gets especially high marks as a team player. For those who predicted he and the Secretary of State would be rivals, they both say 'uh-uh.' And in fact, they meet for a policy breakfast every Tuesday."

As further evidence of Biden being "schmoozer-in-chief," Stahl later declared: "He's physically ‘embracive’ with everybody, total strangers. He hugs, he slaps, he punches, grabs, holds, noses in, and bumps foreheads. Children are a special magnet: he and his wife Jill worked them like a rope line of voters on a campaign. And he cannot resist speechifying, even when his audience is made up of six year olds."

Long-time CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewed radical MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for the website Wow-o-wow.com and Maddow demonstrated her ultraliberalism by denying Chris Matthews was a liberal (just a "Democrat"), and insisting "If Chris Matthews had an Air America radio show, he’d get torn apart by our listeners...I wouldn’t put Chris and my politics in the same canoe. " While Stahl insisted that MSNBC is trying to be the "un-Fox network," Maddow claimed it’s not really liberal, it’s just trying to "find hit shows."

RACHEL: I do think that Fox is different than other networks. I mean, I think that it is a bit of a political experiment.

LESLEY: But everybody thinks MSNBC is moving in that direction. That that’s exactly what the shift is — where you are — that people there are trying to make you into the un-Fox network, the liberal place to go.

RACHEL: Well, if you think about the way that Fox was founded, though – Fox was founded by Roger Ailes. It was created from his perspective as a political operative. His background was as a Republican activist of the highest order. There’s no equivalent on MSNBC. I think MSNBC is trying to find hit shows.

The Washington Post’s TV Week (your weekly TV listings) promoted the liberal CBS 60 Minutes team on its cover on Sunday with a team photo and the headline "Like Clockwork: Time-Honored 60 Minutes Enjoys Ratings Boost." Freelancer Marc D. Allan finds Indiana University professor Julia Fox to explain that the show’s improved ratings:

"Everyone jokes about how old the personalities are on 60 Minutes," she said, "but the fact is, they've been in the business for many, many years, and they're very credible."

There’s no mention in the article that the credibility of 60 Minutes took an enormous hit from Dan Rather and Mary Mapes using phony documents to try and torpedo George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. There’s only room for congratulations: