Gaffes

Closing out an interview with Sen. John Hoeven (R) of North Dakota on today's Andrea Mitchell Reports, substitute host Chris Matthews thanked the former governor and said he "loved visiting your state this summer" and that he loves Mt. Rushmore, having "sat there for two hours and just looked up at it" during his trip to South Dakota over the summer.

Hoeven corrected Matthews, saying he was from North Dakota. Matthews retorted that he "liked South Dakota better anyway." [video follows page break]

While NBC correspondent Peter Alexander noted on Tuesday's Today how "Republicans are jumping on the president's choice of words" in telling a woman her husband's long-term unemployment was "interesting" to him, neither ABC's Good Morning America nor CBS's This Morning bothered to highlight Obama's aloof flub.

The NBC report played the sound bite of the president's remark: "It is interesting to me – and I meant what I said, if you send me your husband's resume I'd be interested in finding out exactly what's happening right there – because the word we're getting is, is that somebody in that kind of high-tech field, that kind of engineer, should be able to find something right away."

On Thursday's Hardball, Chris Matthews preposterously insisted that Barack Obama added "only 13 people" to the federal workforce in 2009 and that the total number of individuals working for the U.S. government (as of 2010) was 4,443. 

[UPDATE, 8:55 PM EST: Two hours later, in the otherwise identical 7 PM EST re-play, MSNBC inserted a new graphic and a new audio overlay in which Matthews corrected his incompetence without noting any change from his first broadcast: Video below features both versions. In the 5 PM EST hour, Matthews claimed “the federal workforce totaled forty-four hundred and thirty people in 2009 when Obama took office. In 2010, a year later, the number increased to forty-four forty-three people – a difference of only thirteen people.” In the re-do, Matthews realized “the federal workforce totaled four million, four hundred and thirty thousand in 2009...”]

So enthused about promoting the far-left protests, ABC anchor Diane Sawyer on Monday night's World News championed “the Occupy Wall Street movement” by ludicrously claiming that “as of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries -- every continent but Antarctica.”

Protests against the wealthy in “thousands of countries,” including Cuba, China and every country in Africa? Per the U.S. State Department, however, there are only 195 nation states in the world, so Sawyer imagined five times as many protests as could possibly have occurred. (Video below)

Here’s a reason to check out CBS in the next 24 hours. Via Fox Nation, we learned CBS Boston reported President Obama gaffed in his press conference Thursday. He used the story of a teacher in the Boston area, Robert Baroz of Wellesley,  to push his jobs bill Thursday: "Why wouldn’t we want to pass a bill that puts somebody like Robert back in the classroom teaching our kids?” But Baroz already has a job in the classroom. Oops. 

At the beginning of his White House news conference, Mister Obama told a story of how he recently met Baroz, and how's received "three pink slips" as he works as a provisional teacher:

New York Times columnist David Brooks, considered by his Times colleagues as a Republican that Obama can do business with, has the persona of a sophisticate who may well admire the cut of the president’s jib (whatever that means).

But Brooks (or his copy editor) fell victim to the dreaded "damp squid" in his Friday column "The Big Society." The correct phrase is "damp squib," a Britishism for an event that fails to meet expectations.

The Big Society started in part as a political gadget, as a way to distinguish the current Conservatives from the more individualistic ethos of the Thatcher years. It has turned out to be something of a damp squid politically. Most voters have no idea what the phrase "Big Society" means. But, substantively, the legislative package has been a success. The British government is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

There is something about CNN and the people writing chyrons for the alleged "most trusted name in news" with the "best political team on television." Last week, these geniuses clarified the White House's position on President Barack Obama's religion.

However on CNN Aug. 28 coverage of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, which CNN reporters and anchors seemingly held their collective noses up and reported on throughout the event, the chyron on the screen was something likened to one of those parlor games where you circle the numerous errors involved. (h/t Inside Cable News)

First off, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's name was misspelled. Second, she was identified as a former presidential candidate, when she was actually the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008. And finally, it's labeling Beck as Palin. Just not a good day for CNN.

Saturday’s Good Morning America on ABC devoted a full report to former Vice President Dan Quayle’s son Ben’s run for Congress in Arizona, focusing primarily on perceived gaffes by both him and his father. As anchor John Berman set up the report, he gave the impression that he views the former Vice President primarily as a joke: "It's time to dust off the jokes and hold on to your potatoes. Who can forget the vice presidency of Dan Quayle? His mortal feud with TV's Murphy Brown. His battles with the dictionary. Well, now, one of his children wants to follow in his footsteps and is making some headlines of his own, not all intentional."

During the piece which recounted a number of activities and statements by Ben Quayle that have come under criticism, or have come across to some as gaffes, correspondent T.J. Winick played a clip of the time that Dan Quayle infamously told a school boy that the word "potato" should have an "e" added to the end during a spelling lesson at a school. Winick did not inform viewers that it was the teacher who led Quayle astray as she had misspelled the word on the word list she had given to the then-Vice President to check the children’s spelling.

Winick also described what he called a "shocking ad" in which Ben Quayle labeled President Obama "the worst President in history," and promised to go to Washington and "knock the hell out of the place." The ABC correspondent also informed viewers that Quayle had been criticized for using a photograph of himself with his nieces in campaign literature because he has no children of his own.

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post.

As we approach our 5th anniversary at NewsBusters, our celebration would not be complete without a recap of our best posts. It was a tough call, but we came up with the top 25, broken down evenly into five categories of five each.

We call it our Five-for-Five.

Each Friday through August 13 we'll publish a Five-for-Five list.We've saved the very best for last: On Monday, August 16, we'll publish the Top Five Outrageous Outbursts.

But we start today with a much lighter note. The first category for Five-for-Five is The Top Five Media Flubs Caught by NewsBusters. (Also check out a short video-cast with NewsBusters bloggers talking about how they caught the flubs.)

In no particular order we remember...:

• ...how CNN's Kyra Phillips was the original Gossip Girl ["Oops! CNN Airs Anchor's Girl Talk Over Bush Speech" August 29, 2006]

In a June 30 interview with "Talk to Al Jazeera," NASA administrator Charles Bolden revealed that President Obama had tasked him with "find[ing] a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

The media largely ignored the story, with a few exceptions, such as Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer. 

Among the media outlets that blacked out the controversy was the Washington Post, which didn't cover the Bolden controversy until today. Even then, the paper printed on page A13 a brief 8-paragraph item by the Reuters news wire:

On Thursday, National Newspaper Publishers Association columnist Julianne Malveaux wrote that Marco Rubio, along with two Asian-American Senators, one Hispanic Senator, and two black Senate candidates are all in fact white men.

Malveaux, also the president of Bennett College, decried the travails of Kendrick Meek, the black Democrat vying for his party's nomination for US Senate in Florida. "If Meek can’t pull this one off," Malveaux wrote, "the United States Senate will become, again, a segregated body." She also used the terms "lily-white" and "all-white" to describe the racial makeup of a Meek-less Senate.

Readers must be forgiven for their confusion, given that another candidate for Senate in Florida, Marco Rubio, is not white, but Hispanic. In fact, excluding Roland Burris, Illinois's lame duck junior Senator, the Senate has three non-white members: Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka of Hawaii are both of Asian descent, and Robert Menendez is of Hispanic descent.

There are also black Senate candidates beyond Meek: Alvin Greene in South Carolina, and the less-known but infinitely more qualified Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond.

How to explain Malveaux's bizarre contention? Your guess is as good as ours.

In part two of her interview with TVNewser editor Kevin Allocca on MediaBistro.com's Media Beat, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer discussed a incident last year in which she mistakenly introduced Reverend Jess Jackson as Al Sharpton: "...those things make me crazy.... I really hate that something like that can paint your whole career."

Brewer specifically called out blogs for reporting the gaffe: "...when I was younger in my career, if I had made a mistake like that, there were no blogs to keep it perpetuity." Allocca replied: "Are you looking at me? I do have a blog that keeps things in perpetuity." Brewer responded: "Whether you do or not, there will be someone else to pick up that slack, so I won't hold it against you in particular." The TVNewser blog did indeed report the incident on October 21, 2009, as did NewsBusters.
                        
Brewer explained: "...the best thing I can do at the point is just to apologize and the Reverend has been very gracious and accepted my apology." She then added how the gaffe "turned into a great opportunity to develop a relationship with someone that I admire," referring to a subsequent meeting with Jackson.

On NBC's Today on Friday, White House correspondent Chuck Todd preemptively dismissed any criticism of President Obama referring to "Twitters" during a joint press conference with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Thursday: "It turns out he didn't misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks."

During Todd's report, a clip was played of Obama noting how in a visit to California's Silicon Valley, Medvedev went to "visit the headquarter of Twitters." Obama simply placed an 's' after the wrong word. Rather than let the minor gaffe stand, at the conclusion of the report, Todd made to sure to explain the typographical error to viewers: "You did not mishear. The President did say the word 'Twitters,' plural." Despite Obama's inability to correct the remarks off the cuff, Todd solely blamed a White House staffer for the mistake: "A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one."   
                        
Todd quickly changed the subject to a similar gaffe made by President Bush: "...it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those 'internets.'" The media was certainly never quick to come to Bush's defense after a verbal misstep.  

Seems the only thing gushing more than the BP oil spill these days is the disaster brewing in Paul McCartney's mouth.  In an exclusive interview with The Sun, McCartney takes a major swipe at global warming realists, er, deniers, by stating (emphasis mine):

"Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming - like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust."

Well that's putting things in perspective.  I'm not sure global warming has been proven to have caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.  Missed that report.  Regardless, it remains unclear how the theory of global warming is in any way similar to the reality of the Holocaust.

McCartney goes on to defend President Obama from any and all criticism concerning the Gulf disaster, culminating with the revelation that he "really love(s) him."

President Obama provided some conservative belly laughs telling an audience of high school graduates in Kalamazoo, Michigan: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes."

This from a president who has blamed the last administration (and the Republican Party in general) for various economic and regulatory failures under his watch.

This should have been an easy target for New York Times White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, but she whiffed, even signing on to Obama's "buck-stops-here philosophy" in Tuesday's "Obama Gives Students a Principle to Guide Them."

President Obama has been telling the nation that he takes responsibility for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On Monday, he imparted his buck-stops-here philosophy to an audience of high school graduates, telling them: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes. Take responsibility where you fall short as well."

Shortly after noon today, during a story about actress Lindsay Lohan's latest legal woes, some footage of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) made it into the B-roll loop.

A case of some "Mean Girls" in the editing room, or just an innocent mix-up? I think it's the latter [h/t Tim Graham and Yahoo's Holly Bailey]:

Hosting a debate segment this morning between  Republican strategist Alex Conant and Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee that examined the political dimensions of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, MSNBC's Tamron Hall played soundbites from two politicians with rather divergent views on offshore drilling.

The first was liberal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) opposing expanding offshore drilling to California, the second was conservative Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who gave a rather dopey comment where he downplayed the devastation of the oil spill by comparing its appearance to "chocolate milk."

After playing those clips back-to-back, Hall asked for Conant's reaction, mistakenly referring to Taylor as a Republican.

We at NewsBusters quickly tweeted Hall about her error and she promptly issued an on-air correction, albeit mistakenly tagging Taylor as a "Michigan Democrat" [MP3 audio available here]:

UPDATE: WaPo's ombudsman claims this photo was a hoax.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't make me say the R-word. (h/t Gawker via Mary Katharine Ham)

An April Fools prank designed to trick bloggers into running with a contrived story ended up snaring the Gray Lady.

New York attorney Eric Terkewitz told his blog's readers on April 1 that he had been hired as the White House's "official law blogger." Unlike the political bloggers at which the stunt was aimed, the New York Times apparently did not check the claim, and posted the story to its website.

The incident serves as a reminder that, as journos like to say, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out."

Just another sign that the media just don't get religion. Here's the ABCNews.com headline for an April 4 story on President Obama's attendance of Easter Sunday service at Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast D.C.:

Of course, the term Easter Mass would connote a Catholic liturgical celebration, but the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is a thoroughly Protestant denomination, as its articles of faith Web page makes clear.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your amusement, film critic and liberal apologist Roger Ebert, in what I hope is an early April Fool's joke:

"Since the invention of the teleprompter, no President has needed one less than Barack Obama."

Has Ebert never heard of the infamous "corpseman" incident?

(This post has been updated below.)

'Ya just gotta love BDSers (those with Bush Derangement Syndrome). Their hatred is so intense that it causes them to get even the most elementary of facts wrong. In this case, it's sports guy Filip Bondy of the NY Daily News, writing about this past Sunday's NFC Championship game in New Orleans:

If you needed further proof of this [New Orleans racial] divide, then it came during a pregame introduction of former President Bush. Once pilloried for his approach to the Katrina catastrophe in 2005, Bush was heartily cheered at the Superdome - which tells you all you need to know about the crowd's demographics.

Democrats generally do not have to worry about an unfriendly press. Most journalists are more than happy to toe the liberal line. But when things turn south for the Democrat, the harder questions start flowing, and occasionally it can get ugly.

We've seen our fair share of backlash against reporters from the Democratic candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, Martha Coakley. Videos keep popping up of people directly affiliated with the campaign harassing--verbally and physically--members of the press.

First it was veteran Democratic political operative Michael Meehan, who was caught on video shoving the Weekly Standard's John McCormack to the ground outside a restaurant on Capitol Hill. McCormack was trying to ask about the "no terrorists in Afghanistan" blunder Coakley uttered a couple weeks ago.

A video appeared today on RealClearPolitics showing two staffers at a Coakley campaign office screaming at a member of the press to leave the office, shouting obscenities at the woman, and calling her a Nazi (video here - h/t Ed Driscoll).

Via Ed Morrisey at HotAir.com, we find out what you get when you cross a liberal, with a blonde, and a person of Polish heritage: Mika "Bubbles" Brzezinski.

Coming back from commercial this morning at the MSNBC Clown Kingdom, the bump-in video clip was one of Sarah Palin’s interview with Glenn Beck.  Palin stated that it took all of the Founders to come up with the Constitution, but that George Washington (as the leader) would necessarily rise to the top.

Mika Brzezinski took the lead-in rather hard:

The New York Times '09 Holiday Gift Guide page has some intriguing suggestions.

There's the "Holiday Books Guide," the "Personal Tech Holiday Gift Guide," the guide for people of color...

Wait. A separate gift page for people of color? Yes. The NYT Picker blog noticed the Times has a special gift section for non-whites:

We don't like to throw around words like "racist" in the same sentence as the NYT's name, but there's no other word we can think of to describe this page in the NYT's annual Holiday Gift Guide -- called "Of Color/Stylish Gifts" and aimed exclusively at the paper's non-white readers.

Or, as the NYT describes it, "gifts created for and by people of color"....it's the first time we can remember a gift guide, anywhere, openly defining its offerings by their appeal to a specific racial group.

“Morning Joe” was a little tense this morning.

Fresh off Donny Deutsch’s defense of Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) slavery analogy, Mike Barnicle asked GOP Chairman Michael Steele about what proposals the GOP favored for health-care reform.  Along the way, however, he used an unfortunate choice of words:

MIKE BARNICLE: [...] What are you people for?

MICHAEL STEELE: You people? [starts laughing] Who are 'you people?'

Oops!

"A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number."

That's the text of a correction the Post published yesterday to amend an error made in Akeya Dickson's article, "A note of hope from voices of experience: Public enemy reaches out to homeless youth in D.C."

Here's how the corrected portion now reads:

Public Enemy has earned notoriety with more than 20 years of politically charged music about fighting the power, challenging racism and declaring that 911 was a joke.

"911 Is a Joke" was a hit rap single in 1990 and the third track on Public Enemy's 1990 album, "Fear of a Black Planet."  The song was critical of slow response times from the 9-1-1 emergency dispatch service.

Just when you thought Obama-loving was on the decline, along comes an absolutely astonishing bit of sycophancy that totally boggles the mind.

The following is an actual headline published at New York magazine's The Cut blog moments ago: 

Michelle Obama Wore Clothes to Light the Christmas Tree

Now, the implication is that this is out of the ordinary. Do first ladies normally light the White House Christmas tree in the nude?

Thankfully, the article elaborated (h/t Rusty Weiss, screen capture from The Cut below the fold):

No bias, just a Joe Biden moment.

FNC's Geraldo Rivera inadvertently called Barack Obama "President Osama bin Laden" on the October 30 "Fox & Friends" program. 

The video's embedded below the page break. Enjoy (h/t NB commenter Blonde):