On Wednesday, CBS This Morning rushed to promote remarks made by President Obama at the NAACP’s annual conference in which he criticized the current state of the criminal justice system.
Co-host Gayle King highlighted how “President Obama is calling for an overhaul of the criminal justice system. He says that it’s racist, impractical and financially wasteful. He said every child deserves an opportunity.” ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today chose not to promote Obama’s NAACP speech during their Wednesday morning broadcasts.
The CBS host then played a clip of the president’s speech in which he stressed the need for young people to feel “love from police. Love from politicians” which prompted King to note that “[t]he president is urging Congress to pass a sentencing reform bill.”
While CBS was quick to tout Obama’s attack on the criminal justice system, as CNSNews (a division of the Media Research Center) noted, much of his speech was designed to promote his liberal agenda, which the network ignored:
In a speech focusing on crime and punishment, the president spent a few paragraphs defining justice as the embodiment of his liberal agenda:
“What the marchers on Washington knew, what the marchers in Selma knew, what folks like Julian Bond knew, what the marchers in this room still know, is that justice is not only the absence of oppression, it is the presence of opportunity. Justice is giving every child a shot at a great education no matter what zip code they're born into. Justice is giving everyone willing to work hard the chance at a good job with good wages, no matter what their name is, what their skin color is, where they live.”
“And in the American tradition and in the immigrant tradition of remaking ourselves, in the Christian tradition that says none of us is without sin and all of us need redemption, justice and redemption go hand in hand.”
Taking his points one by one, Obama advocates universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year old in America, and he repeated that in his speech on Tuesday.
As for goods jobs with good wages, the president is leading the push for a higher minimum wage; and he said on Tuesday that "continuing...subtle, bigotry" may explain why the unemployment rate for blacks is much higher than that for whites.
Fifty years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, Obama and other Democrats insist that requiring people to show identification at polling places violates their “voting rights.”
See relevant transcript below.
CBS This Morning
July 15, 2015
GAYLE KING: USA Today says President Obama is calling for an overhaul of the criminal justice system. He says that it’s racist, impractical and financially wasteful. He said every child deserves an opportunity.
BARACK OBAMA: Justice is making sure every young person knows they are special and they are important and that their lives matter, not because they heard it in a hashtag but because of they love they feel every single day. Not just love from their parents, not just love from their neighborhood. But love from police. Love from politicians.
KING: The president is urging Congress to pass a sentencing reform bill.
