Bad weather may have forced Vice President Joe Biden to skip his plans to make mischief at this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, but Democrats don’t have to worry: the liberal “news” media have been “counter-programming” GOP conventions for decades.
It doesn’t matter whether the nominee is a conservative like Ronald Reagan, or a moderate like John McCain — network reporters always seem to scold the delegates and platform as too conservative, hostile to women, anathema to blacks, and an all-around turn-off to voters. [Below the jump: Video montage of the media's anti-GOP bias, 1988-2008]
Latest from Rich Noyes
August 27, 2012, 9:02 AM EDT
August 20, 2012, 10:12 AM EDT
The Media Research Center is out with its latest edition of Notable Quotables, our bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. There's no subtlety in the latest batch of quotes, as liberal journalists greeted newly-minted GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan by screeching about how he will supposedly “slash” the federal budget, slamming him as a “zombie-eyed granny starver” who would “rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans.” Meanwhile, MSNBC ramped up the hysteria about a potential repeal of ObamaCare, insisting that if Mitt Romney is elected, “a lot of people will die.”
Some of the choicest quotes and videos are after the jump; read the entire issue at MRC.org, or sign up for automatic e-mail delivery every two weeks.
August 13, 2012, 10:36 AM EDT
Almost as soon as word leaked that Mitt Romney had chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, liberal reporters stepped forward to help define the Wisconsin congressman as too conservative, a heartless budget-slasher who might repel as many votes as he might attract to the GOP ticket. Chris Matthews, for example, on Saturday derided Ryan as someone whose plan “really screws the people who desperately need Medicare and programs like that.”
The script is always a little different, but the trend is always the same. The Media Research Center has monitored campaign coverage for 25 years, including the media’s reaction to four Republican vice presidential selections: Dan Quayle (1988); Jack Kemp (1996); Dick Cheney (2000); and Sarah Palin (2008). While most of the candidates usually received initially positive introductory coverage, in each case journalists quickly pivoted to emphasizing the attack lines pushed by the Democratic campaigns.
August 11, 2012, 11:26 AM EDT
Previewing the choice of Paul Ryan as the GOP vice presidential candidate, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning shows all used Democratic framing to describe the House GOP budget plan that Ryan championed as a plan to, as CBS’s Bob Schieffer put it, “cut more than $5 trillion over the next ten years.” ABC’s Bianna Golodryga passed along the demagogic rhetoric of liberals: “Democrats, meantime, contest that it will destroy Medicare and Social Security.”
But Ryan’s plan would actually increase federal spending over the next ten years, from about $3.6 trillion this year to just under $4.9 trillion in 2022. The $5 trillion in “cuts” are merely reductions from the much-higher spending anticipated by President Obama’s budget. (See tables starting on page 88.)
August 11, 2012, 9:57 AM EDT
Breaking the news this morning that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, ABC’s Good Morning America in a single hour employed no fewer than seven “conservative” labels to label Ryan and his supporters. But four years ago as Barack Obama tapped Joe Biden, there wasn’t a single “liberal” label to be found on GMA’s coverage that Saturday morning.
Ryan, ABC’s team accurately pointed out, is as fill-in co-host David Muir put it, “a favorite among conservatives;” a candidate who “rallies the conservative base,” as George Stephanopoulos later opined. According to the American Conservative Union, Ryan has a solid 91.69 conservative rating (100% being a perfect conservative score).
July 11, 2012, 11:04 AM EDT
Any other President with Barack Obama’s record — high unemployment, record deficits, and scandals such as Fast and Furious and the leaking of our nation’s intelligence secrets — would face withering scrutiny from the press. But since Obama was elected, journalists have continued the adoring coverage that marked the 2008 campaign.
With the election now less than four months away, the MRC this week produced special edition of Notable Quotables documenting the media’s continuing love affair with Barack Obama. The entire issue is posted at MRC.org; here are fifteen quotes (six with video), exposing once again how utterly partisan the media have been over the past three and a half years:
July 4, 2012, 9:38 AM EDT
For most Americans, the Fourth of July is an occasion to remember how remarkable America is, and to celebrate the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in establishing a nation where freedom is the order of the day. But over the years, the Media Research Center has caught journalists using Independence Day as an occasion for scorn and condemnation. Here are a few examples, drawn from MRC's Notable Quotables newsletter:
Hope You Had A Happy Fourth of July, Too
"Oh say, we've seen too much. The Star-Spangled Banner pushes like a cough through America's mouth and the twilight's last gleaming is just that, a sickly flash above our heads as we ride unsuspecting in the bellies of sleek trains, plop to our knees in churches, embracing truths that disgust us."
— Boston Globe arts critic and "poet" Patricia Smith in The Nation's "Patriotism" issue, July 15/22, 1991.
June 28, 2012, 9:09 PM EDT
Chief Justice John Roberts may have angered conservatives with his decisive vote in favor of ObamaCare today, but he was, in CBS anchor Scott Pelley’s words, the “man of the hour” on all three network evening newscasts Thursday night.
ABC’s Terry Moran complimented Roberts’ lurch to the left, saying it “did give heart to many Court watchers,” who were worried the Court “was at risk of becoming just another hyper-partisan place... By joining the liberals, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to have stopped that.”
June 20, 2012, 2:35 PM EDT
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule any day now on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s presidency thus far. How the media cover such a decision remains to be seen, but between 2004 and 2008 the Court issued multiple rulings tossing out key elements of George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, the policy centerpiece of that administration.
The MRC studied how the broadcast networks covered those decisions overruling Bush’s policy on detaining terror suspects, looking at the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage from the day each ruling was handed down — June 28, 2004, June 29, 2006 and June 12, 2008. On those nights, the networks aired a total of 15 stories about the Supreme Court rulings, totaling nearly 35 minutes of airtime. The results provide a template for how the networks might cover a decision voiding some or all of President Obama’s health care law — assuming network journalists approach their job without regard to partisanship, that is.
June 12, 2012, 5:38 PM EDT
If Attorney General Eric Holder’s goal was to minimize broadcast network news coverage when he chose late Friday evening to announce a criminal investigation into how damaging national security secrets were released to the New York Times, the media have certainly played along.
Holder announced the investigation after the East Coast feeds of Friday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. While each of the networks included some discussion on their Saturday and Sunday broadcasts, including ABC’s This Week and CBS’s Face the Nation (NBC’s Meet the Press was pre-empted by tennis), by Monday the networks had already lost interest.
May 21, 2012, 5:13 PM EDT
Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, now with ABC, gave Sunday's commencement address at her alma mater, the University of Virginia. When it came to her time at CBS News, Couric cast herself as a "mistreated" "trailblazer," who got "burned" by critics.
Couric suggested her critics were motivated by sexism: "In those first few months at CBS, TV critics wrote about my clothes, my hair, my make-up, even the way I held my hands. Some said I lacked ‘gravitas,’ which I’ve since decided is Latin for ‘testicles.'"
It was a remarkably self-pitying performance for someone who made $15 million a year reading the introductions to news reports. "My story may have played out in the public eye, but it's by no means unique," Couric told the graduates. " Every one of you will at some point be confronted by naysayers and learn that life isn't always fair. You'll feel cheated, you'll be mistreated. You'll wonder, 'when will I be loved?'"
May 1, 2012, 1:14 PM EDT
Three years ago, then-CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric fawned over Barack Obama: “You’re so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken?” On ABC’s World News, Diane Sawyer often softens her interviews with the President by tossing in questions about college basketball, asking, at the start of the U.S. military operation against Libya last year, “How much do you think Kentucky will win by?”
But of the three evening news anchors, by far the most admiring of Obama is NBC’s Brian Williams who has — no big surprise — been rewarded with exclusive access to the White House Situation Room for what promises to be a prime time Obama campaign infomercial (on Wednesday’s Rock Center) on how the brave President monitored the mission as Navy SEALs raided Osama bin Laden’s compound and killed the terrorist mastermind exactly one year ago. (Round-up of Williams' most fawning Obama moments, with video, below the jump).
April 23, 2012, 11:43 AM EDT
Six months ago, Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) came out with a report claiming that the GOP candidates received more positive press coverage than President Obama. This morning, the group came out with another installment from the same ongoing study. Their press release claims: "The President’s media coverage in 2012 has been consistently negative while his Republican challenger has experienced a more mixed narrative."
As I wrote here at NewsBusters back in October, PEJ's methodology is seriously flawed: "First, they didn’t study what most people would consider 'the media.' Second, their definition of 'positive' and 'negative' press doesn’t match what media experts consider 'favorable' or 'unfavorable' coverage. And, third, the researchers didn’t really even look at the stories — they let a computer... churn through the words and determine whether an assertion was pro- or anti-Obama."
April 22, 2012, 7:35 PM EDT
The Media Research Center has just concluded an update of our “Media Bias 101” Web package, with more than 40 articles detailing scholarly research of the past 30 years showing the mostly liberal attitudes of American journalists and opinion polls showing the public’s growing recognition of the media’s liberal bias.
The package also includes dozens of quotes from reporters denying this bias, plus a few notable instances of media figures admitting their tilt.
Key stats and links to major studies after the jump
March 19, 2012, 10:06 AM EDT
Just posted at www.MRC.org, the latest edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables, our bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. This week’s issue was heavy with opportunistic quotes from liberal journalists attacking conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh (and slamming Republicans for failing to attack Rush with the same vigor as exhibited on the left) — even though some of the same people criticizing Limbaugh for his unfortunate remark have celebrated liberals who have said far worse. (I think that’s called hypocrisy.)
Here are some of the worst quotes we uncovered this week; for the full rundown (including eight video clips), you can visit www.MRC.org or just download the printer-friendly PDF version of this week’s issue. (You can also subscribe to our e-mail list and get NQ delivered to your inbox every other Monday.)
March 6, 2012, 2:57 PM EST
Both MSNBC and CNN have devolved into a feeding frenzy over Rush Limbaugh’s crack last week about a Georgetown law student, with hosts on both networks scolding Limbaugh for his words and fantasizing the conservative radio powerhouse will get knocked off the airwaves.
But an MRC review finds those networks had no negative reaction to far more vulgar and sexist language used by HBO host Bill Maher. Instead, both networks have hosted Maher repeatedly (12 times in the past year) in softball formats where the journalists ritually flatter the vulgarian: “Your show is brilliant,” “I love your show,” “You’re the funniest, smartest guy around.”
February 28, 2012, 5:06 PM EST
It’s been nearly three weeks since President Obama faced a political backlash over his plan to force religious institutions to bow to government bureaucrats when it came to supplying birth control coverage to their employees. Since then, the liberal media — led by the broadcast networks — have helped re-script the story to suit the President’s political needs. Instead of a story about the overreach of big government and violation of religious freedom, the networks are now spinning the birth control story as one about out-of-control conservatives, to the point of ignoring broad and continuing opposition — including a lawsuit by seven state attorneys general — to the President’s power grab.
The MRC reviewed coverage from the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts starting with Obama’s February 10 declaration of a unilateral “compromise” meant to end the controversy. Our analysis shows how the networks re-framed the story from one that was damaging to Obama into one that reporters thought would hurt his opponents:
January 27, 2012, 11:18 AM EST
On Friday’s Good Morning America, ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper blurted out an uncomfortable reality for Democrats, telling co-host George Stephanopoulos that President Obama “can’t run on so many of his major legislative accomplishments” because “they’re not popular.”
That’s why, Tapper explained, the President is attempting to shift the debate from his record to “fairness,” a goal in which he has the cooperation of a compliant media: “These are the issues he wants to talk about, because it’s going to be difficult for him to talk about his record when it comes to his big achievements.”
The camera only showed Tapper as he outlined the “conundrum” facing Obama, so there’s no way of telling exactly how ex-Democratic operative Stephanopoulos reacted. [Audio link here; video after the jump]
January 24, 2012, 8:55 AM EST
Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, and his sixth speech to a joint session of Congress since taking office in 2009. But there’s no need to spend a lot of time wondering about what the media will say after The Great One speaks, since — like a gaggle of corporate yes-men — journalists have gushed over every one of these major addresses.
“It was a big and bold speech,” ABC’s Terry Moran applauded on Nightline shortly after Obama’s budget address in February 2009, his first before Congress. “It was his debut and he wowed us,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews enthused the next day on Hardball.