Aaron Blake

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts: We'll Gladly Take Our Cameras and Mikes to Meet Ted Cruz's Crazy Dad
By Bryan Ballas | April 9, 2015 | 6:57 AM EDT

Much like playground bullies, it does not take long for the liberal media to poke fun at the family members of candidates they don’t like  – Republican candidates. The father-bashing began in earnest on Tuesday afternoon shortly after Rand Paul’s campaign announcement when MSNBC’s Live With Thomas Roberts decided to headline a segment of the fathers of Republican candidates with the phrase  “GOP Contenders with Father Issues?”
Having set a tone nowhere close to objectivity, Roberts jabbed Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, asking how Ted Cruz will “break his father's shadow or potential hindrance of saying something and really getting caught with having to explain it away.”

Roberts added, “I think reporters will -- if he doesn't show up on the campaign trail, they’re happy to go find Rafael Cruz, and take the cameras and microphones to him.”

WashPost Reporter: We're Innocent! Blame Conservative Media for Negative Hillary Terms
By Tim Graham | March 27, 2015 | 12:03 PM EDT

Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake picked up on the Hillary Clinton "Super Volunteers" badgering New York Times reporter Amy Chozick about the 13 words you can't use to describe Hillary because it's coded sexism.

But Blake took a fascinating turn: he defended the "mainstream media" against the idea they attacked Hillary. These negative adjectives are used by the "conservative media" or "people who don't like Hillary Clinton." This means liberal journalists don't fit that category. 

ABC Skips, WashPost Downplays Majority of the Public Defines Obama Presidency a 'Failure'
By Tim Graham | September 15, 2014 | 8:17 AM EDT

When a Washington Post-ABC News poll ends up finding the "Best News for Republicans," the Post tries to find other findings to highlight in their headlines.

"Majority of Americans find Obama presidency a failure" wasn't going to be bolded on the front page. They went with "Support widens for air strikes" instead. ABC News, their polling partner, never found it.

Most Newspapers Skip Reid's Asian Gaffe; WashPost Pleads He's 'Almost Built Up a Gaffe Immunity'
By Tim Graham | August 25, 2014 | 8:00 PM EDT

Scott Whitlock noted earlier today that CBS and NBC skipped over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bad jokes about Asians (you’re not really the smartest, I can’t keep my Wongs straight). Additional Nexis transcript searches for “Harry Reid” and “Asian” show no mention on NPR, the PBS NewsHour, and even CNN and MSNBC (at least the transcripts they send to Nexis).

But what about newspapers? Surely, the “every “ reported this? No. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today skipped over it, too. The Washington Post covered it, but Post political reporter Aaron Blake strangely argued that Reid is so gaffe-prone he’s “almost built up a gaffe immunity”:

Column: The Coming Hispanic Conservative Awakening
By Mario Díaz | May 8, 2014 | 5:25 PM EDT

"George W. Bush is a racist."  Those where the first words I heard about modern American politics when I came here to study back in 2000.  How did my friends know?  Well, he was the Republican candidate.  I wouldn’t want to be associated with someone like that, so I became a Democrat. 

That scenario is not uncommon.  That is how a large number of Hispanics get their feet wet in American politics.  Conservatives are against other races, other countries and the poor, aren’t they?  That general view of distrust for those racist southern conservatives is reinforced constantly in the media.  Not that they are all racists, but everyone knows about that elusive “racist element” discussed all day on MSNBC and every day in the pages of the New York Times.  The same narrative is showcased on Univision and in Hispanic newspapers all over the country. 

Polls Show ObamaCare Not Getting More Popular, Despite Their Happy Enrollment Talk
By Randy Hall | May 6, 2014 | 10:27 PM EDT

During the past two months, most of what we've heard about the Affordable Care Act was the administration's announcement on March 31 that the target total of more than 7 million people had signed up for ObamaCare, and by May 1, that figure had grown to 8 million enrollees.

However, four polls were released during the past week that resulted in the same message: ObamaCare isn't getting any more popular -- and probably won't in the future, according to an article published in Tuesday's edition of the Washington Post by reporters Scott Clement and Aaron Blake.

Townhall's Benson Slams Media for Uncritically Swallowing Obama's '5 Million Enrolled' Spin
By Ken Shepherd | March 18, 2014 | 4:30 PM EDT

Townhall's Guy Benson today took Washington Post's Aaron Blake and Vox.com senior editor Sarah Kliff to task for uncritically furthering Obama White House spin that 5 million Americans have successfully registered for ObamaCare.

This is patently false, Benson charges, noting that, at best, the number is somewhere closer to 4 million, assuming the very generous estimate of a 20 percent "non-payment" rate on the registered policies. Benson explains (emphasis mine):

WSJ's Coverage of SB 1062 Veto Is Objective; WaPo, NYTimes Slant Story
By Ken Shepherd | February 27, 2014 | 7:45 PM EST

Of the nation's three most respected papers of record -- the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal -- only the latter portrayed accurately the religious freedom legislation -- click here for a .pdf of the bill, SB 1062 -- which Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed Wednesday evening.

Both reporter Tamara Audi and her editors treated Journal readers to a fairly balanced and objective treatment of the veto and the purpose of the underlying legislation. "Veto Kills Arizona Religious Measure," noted the headline on page A2 of the February 27 paper. By contrast, the headers for the print stories at the Washington Post and New York Times were loaded.

NAACP Official Attacks Black GOP Senator as Ventriloquist's Dummy on MLK Sunday; WashPost Coverage Underwhelms
By Ken Shepherd | January 22, 2014 | 6:44 PM EST

Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when the content of one's character, not the color of one's skin, was how Americans would evaluate each other. So when NAACP official and African-American clergyman the Rev. William Barber made statements fundamentally violative of the spirit of that dream on the Sunday preceding the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, you'd think it noteworthy for the liberal media.  Not so much. At least, not when the target is conservative Sen. Tim Scott.

On Sunday evening at a church in Columbia, South Carolina, the Palmetto State's junior Republican senator was compared to a ventriloquist's dummy by Mr. Barber, who heads up North Carolina's chapter of the civil rights organization. For his part, Washington Post reporter and Post Politics blogger Aaron Blake hacked out a brief entry just before 2 p.m. on Tuesday which simply relayed to readers the controversial remarks, but failed to do any significant follow-up to add anything of value to the story, like say trying to pin down the national NAACP leadership for comment. Blake did, however, add an update which included Sen. Scott's reaction, and it reads as follows:

WashPost Gleefully Pushes Scandal as Christie's 2016 Doom: 'Bridge Scandal Engulfing Christie'
By Tim Graham | January 9, 2014 | 9:25 AM EST

Could you imagine The Washington Post leaping all over a Jeremiah Wright scandal for Obama in 2005, before he even announced for president? Neither would anyone else imagine such a political crib-strangling. But the Post is aping the rest of the liberal national media on Thursday morning by leaping all over Gov. Chris Christie. “Bridge scandal engulfing Christie,” was the breathless headline. “INCIDENT THREATENS N.J. GOVERNOR’S IMAGE.”

The Post also trashed Christie on the op-ed page (by liberal Jonathan Capehart) and on the front page of the Style section, which began “Chris Christie. [Shakes head.] What a disappointment. He purports to play in big leagues.” The partisan Post is on fire today.

NBC's Todd: Clinton Miniseries 'A Total Nightmare' For Us
By Matt Vespa | August 8, 2013 | 11:37 AM EDT

It's not just conservatives who think it's a horrible idea for NBC to run a Hillary Clinton miniseries before the 2016 election. Network anchor Chuck Todd worries about the perception of bias, even as he insists that there's a tall wall of separation between his network's news  and entertainment divisions.

Reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake in an August 8 Post Politics entry:

WaPo Went Birther On Cruz, But They're Not Alone
By Matt Vespa | May 8, 2013 | 5:53 PM EDT

Birtherism isn't all that bad to the liberal media when a rising conservative star may be the target. Just ask the Washington Post and the New York Times, two liberal papers that devoted serious attention to the question of whether Cruz might be constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.

Post staffers Ed O’Keefe and Aaron Blake devoted an article to the matter in the May 7 paper's Style section: the question of Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency.  He was born in Canada, but had an American mother, thus making him eligible for 2016, but O'Keefe and Blake glommed on to the fact that the hypothetical objection that one must be born on American soil to be "natural born" has never been definitively adjudicated. This isn't isolated to the Washington Post.