CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on Saturday’s Evening News compared the Iranian presidential candidates to members of the Tea Party.
In her first official re-appearance on Fox News Monday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told Fox & Friends viewers that Palmer “put the BS in CBS" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
STEVE DOOCY, CO- HOST: Meanwhile, bias alert: CBS New has compared the Iranian new president to the Tea Party during a newscast. Here ladies and gentlemen, reporter Elizabeth Palmer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELIZABETH PALMER, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, he was seen as the most reform-minded of all the candidates who ran this time. That being said, they were all very conservative. In U.S. terms, it was as if all the candidates for the presidency came from the Tea Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOOCY: Okay.
MEGYN KELLY: Thank you for that, Elizabeth.
SARAH PALIN: Okay, Elizabeth, you just put the BS in CBS. It's things like that that people hear and see and realize how out of touch the lamestream, the maintream media is. To compare, really, the Iranian revolutionaries with those who are patriots in America and just want government to live within its constitution? Really?
KELLY: This follows the same time that CBS News anchor Scott Pelley gives an interview in which he touts the relevance of CBS, diminishes cable news, claims that cable news only gets 200,000 viewers - which obviously Mr. Pelley has not seen the ratings of Fox News Channel - and suggests that he thinks the right has Fox, he thinks the left has MSNBC, and he says CBS, they need to appeal to the entire country. And that's what they do through the reporting of women like Elizabeth.
PALIN: I think CBS, I think Scott Pelley actually used the word perception. He wanted to make sure that there was a perception of that fairness instead of just dealing in truth and the who, what, where, when and why of journalism that I learned, we all learned, I think studying journalism. And there is CBS via Scott Pelley's comments there trying to make it sound like they need to placate whomever the audience would be instead of just telling the truth.
DOOCY: He also said in that interview, you know, we don't need our own cable news channel because I think the internet’s bigger. Anyway.
KELLY: Yeah, he also talked about mistakes that have been made on cable newscasts, which obviously that happens, but didn't mention some of CBS news's most infamous mistakes?
DOOCY: Yeah, whatever happened to Dan Rather?
KELLY: That's a slippery slope to go down as a reporter to start casting those stones.
PALIN: Yeah.
In fairness to Palmer, I had seen this clip via a tipster and wasn't totally offended by it given her qualification "in U.S. terms." In reality, in U.S. terms, Tea Party members are indeed very conservative.
The problem here is can Iranian politics and politicians be put in U.S. or even in any modern democracy's terms?
The politics of all the candidates in that election would be considered extreme in most countries across the globe.
As such, this comparison is easily found offensive by conservatives especially given the liberal media's universal disdain of the Tea Party.
Regardless of her intent, Palmer certainly wasn't saying this to flatter members of this conservative organization.
Not by a long shot.
(HT Right Scoop)
