CBS on Tuesday announced that John Dickerson will be taking over as co-host of CBS This Morning, replacing the disgraced Charlie Rose. Rose, when he wasn’t allegedly sexually harassing women, offered sycophantic liberal spin. (He once opened a Hillary Clinton interview by reciting lines from a fawning Maya Angelou poem.)
Dickerson, in contrast, might provide a little more balance than that as he’s conceded liberal bias on at least four separate occasions. The Face the Nation anchor called out liberal journalists “piling on” Donald Trump. He once mocked the press for doing “all that good work ruining its reputation.” During the 2012 campaign, Dickerson called on Mitt Romney to hold Obama accountable because “the press isn’t necessarily going to make that case for him.”
Here’s four times when Dickerson called out the press:
Throwing Cold Water on Liberal Impeachment Talk
“Absent some other event, you've got Republicans who would have to remove him from office. And while the President is quite isolated, as you point out, and that's going to have a real impact on his ability to get any legislation passed, there are a lot of people who believe he's the victim of a pile on by the media. Started by the media and now joined by some people.”
— Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson to CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell after she asked whether Donald Trump could “stay in office for the next three and a half years,” August 18, 2017.
Dickerson: Press Did "Good Work Ruining Its Reputation"
HUGH HEWITT: But that one comment, [Americans] don’t trust you anymore, is a summation of where we are in America, because I really do think Manhattan-Beltway elites have lost the country. They’ve lost it. There’s just no confidence in, I’m not going to say us, because I am neither in nor of the Beltway-Manhattan media elite. I live in California still. But what do you think of that? Is it true?
JOHN DICKERSON: Well, yes. I mean, yes, it’s true, and it’s not because of anything obviously Donald Trump did. The press did all that good work ruining its reputation on its own, and we can have a long conversation about what created that."
— Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson on The Hugh Hewitt Show, February 17, 2017.
Press Won’t Hold Obama Accountable, So Romney Must
“We’ve since learned that this administration at first thought this uprising in Libya was just a kind of — something that bubbled up from the ground. Well, now they are calling it a terrorist attack. ‘What went wrong there?’ ‘What did you get wrong in the first place?’ ‘Why weren’t you securing the embassy the way you should have been?’ These are points that a Republican could make, that Mitt Romney needs to make, because he knows the press isn’t necessarily going to make that case for him.”
— Then-CBS News political director John Dickerson on Face the Nation, September 23, 2012.
If Religious Liberal Was a Conservative, Press Would "Go Nuts"
"It bears repeating that if a conservative Republican were saying these things it would, people would be going nuts."
— Then-Time journalist John Dickerson discussing 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman's professions of faith, August 28, 2000 Hardball on MSNBC.
This doesn’t mean Dickerson is free of liberal spin. In 2016, he asked Barack Obama if honesty is "overrated." 2015, he ridiculously told Hillary Clinton, “You’ve been transparent” when it comes to e-mails. In 2013, he insisted that Obama needed to “destroy the GOP” in an article entitled “Go for the Throat!”
Here are some examples:
That Whole Honesty Thing Is Way Overrated
“FDR and Lincoln were both talented at letting both sides of an issue think that they agreed with both of them. Is honesty overrated as a presidential quality?”
— Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson to Barack Obama, July 24, 2016.
Softballs to Hillary on E-Mails: "You’ve Been Transparent"
“You talked a lot about transparency, that, when you think about trust, there’s been a lot of talk about that in your campaign and voters having questions, they have questions. Maybe related to this, trust and transparency are related, you’ve been transparent in the release of these e-mails, but what about before? Because there was a period where you held on to the whole kit and caboodle before any investigators were asking for it long after you were out of the State Department.”
— CBS’s Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson to Hillary Clinton, September 20, 2015.
Obama’s Best Route to Greatness: “Destroy the GOP”
“The President who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat....Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents.”
— Then-CBS News political director John Dickerson in a January 18, 2013 Slate.com article headlined: “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”
So which John Dickerson will show up as the new co-host of CBS This Morning? The Media Research Center and NewsBusters will be watching to find out.
