By NB Staff | May 9, 2011 | 5:00 AM EDT

Sorry, Chris Matthews, maybe next year. 

You'd think the MSNBC "Hardball" host would be a shoo-in for the Media Research Center's annual "Obamagasm Award," but the 2011 prize went to Evan Thomas of Newsweek for declaring the president "stand[s] above the country, above — above the world. He’s sort of God." 

The "Obamagasm award" was just one of a handful of DisHonors mockingly awarded journalists and Hollywood lefties Saturday night at the 2011 Media Research Center Gala and DisHonors Awards. 

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, columnist and author Ann Coulter, radio host Neal Boortz, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Red State blogger Erick Erickson were among the conservative heavyweights participating in the festivities.

[For a lengthy excerpt of the Gala that includes Neal Boortz announcing the Obamagasm Award nominees, click play on the first embedded video below the page break]

By Brad Wilmouth | January 1, 2011 | 7:06 PM EST

  On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, liberal FNC analyst Alan Colmes asserted that the Tea Party was a "bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs." As a debate ensued pitting Colmes against the other three panel members, he later defiantly asked, "How many blacks did they elect?" leading Jim Pinkerton of the New America Foundation to fire back: "The Tea Partiers elected two - Allen West and Tim Scott, Florida and South Carolina."

Host Jon Scott began the segment by assuming that the liberal Colmes would not have any complaints about the mainstream media’s coverage of the elections. After Colmes voiced his approval of the media, Scott sarcastically posed: "For instance, the Tea Party. Tea Party always got favorable coverage, right? Or fair coverage?"

Colmes then unleashed on the Tea Party: "Oh, they got, look, the Tea Party was a bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs at these at, these events on lawn chairs who had nothing better to do on weekends than sit on lawn chairs with signs suggesting Obama was a Muslim who wasn’t born in this country."

By Brent Baker | December 18, 2010 | 8:48 PM EST

FNC’s Fox Newswatch on Saturday highlighted a winner in the MRC’s online balloting, in which many NewsBusters readers took part (Friday NB post announcing who you picked for Quote of the Year), for the annual awards for the year’s worst reporting. Host Jon Scott announced:

The results are in. The Media Research Center conducted an online poll asking the public to vote on the worst biased reporting. First up, the winner of the Poison Teapot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble, goes to PBS's Tavis Smiley for this:

By Mark Finkelstein | July 11, 2010 | 7:49 AM EDT
CNN fired an editor for expressing "a lot [of] respect" for a Hezbollah leader the US had designated a terrorist.  So how has ABC dealt with someone with similar views?  By hiring her and awarding her the prestigious plum of host of This Week.

So what's the difference between Octavia Nasr and Christiane Amanpour?  Not much, says Cal Thomas, when it comes to their views.  It's just that Amanpour is too smart and sophisticated to stick her views on a Tweet.

Thomas shared his insight on this weekend's editon of Fox News Watch.
By Kyle Drennen | April 26, 2010 | 11:26 AM EDT
Jon Scott, FNC On Saturday's Fox News Watch, while discussing media coverage of environmental issues on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, host Jon Scott cited a special report from the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute: "The Media Research Center posted a special report this week claiming networks generally hide the decline in credibility of claims of climate change."

Scott went on to add that: "48% of Americans, according to a March 2010 Gallup poll, think the threat of global warming is greatly exaggerated." Show panelist and Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers admitted: "It probably is exaggerated by some people....I know some very smart environmentalists who think that Al Gore has exaggerated it too much and has made it to a point where it's losing credibility." However, she quickly added: "it's still a very serious threat and so, just because it's exaggerated, doesn't mean it's not a serious threat."

Earlier in the discussion, Powers argued that environmentalists warning of global warming is similar to calls to stop using toxic lead paint: "people who believe in global warming, like myself, you know, are called 'doom and gloom people.' Well, guess what they used to be called when they were talking about lead paint and they were talking about the water being polluted, 'doom and gloom people.'"
By Brent Baker | March 25, 2010 | 2:04 PM EDT
In the Thursday edition of their every other week “Common Ground” discussion for USA Today, Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel took up the liberal charge the Fox News Channel is out of bounds. Neither found any credence or efficacy in the efforts to discredit the channel. “The White House had been essentially stiff-arming Fox reporters in a very Nixonian way until someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue wised up,” the liberal Beckel noted in the March 25 back-and-forth titled “Crazy Like a Fox?” He observed:
In fact, the president sat down with Bret Baier last week to discuss the health care legislation, and though the interview was seen as testy, no one can say Baier did anything except ask tough questions on behalf of his viewers. By any definition, that's journalism. And the president reached millions he might not have otherwise. That's a problem?
The conservative Thomas pointed out: “The left criticizes Fox for being biased, but the other cable and broadcast networks are loaded with liberal reporters and commentators who have a history of political activism.” He named names:
By Brad Wilmouth | December 12, 2009 | 3:17 PM EST

While it is not uncommon to see those who are climate change skeptics challenged in the media for having a pro-business financial interest in voicing their views, on Saturday's Fox News Watch, conservative columnist and regular panel member Cal Thomas made an observation that cuts in the opposite direction rarely given attention in the mainstream media -- that there are financial incentives that can also pressure scientists to voice agreement with the climate change theory that blames human activity for affecting climate patterns.

After panel member Judith Miller argued that Climategate should have inspired more public debate among scientists -- which could then have been covered by the media -- Thomas responded:

Well, one of the reasons it didn’t happen, of course, is because of the oppression of much scientific opinion. I’ve talked to scientists who say they can’t get the grants if they don’t toe the line. And many in the media don’t ask those kinds of questions, and so they feel, you know, shut out and shut up.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, December 12, Fox News Watch on FNC:

By Jeff Poor | November 28, 2009 | 11:55 PM EST

It's a night and day difference between the media's scrutiny of former President George W. Bush and the current command-in-chief, President Barack Obama. And the coverage of three Navy SEALs now facing a court martial that captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, who allegedly was the mastermind of the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004, is proof.

John Scott, host of "Fox News Watch" noted this story on the show's Nov. 28 episode and asked why there hasn't been more coverage about it.

"Pretty outrageous story came out, in my view, this week," Scott said. "These three Navy SEALs who were involved in capturing one of the most wanted bad guys in Iraq - the guy supposedly responsible for planning the execution of those four Blackwater contractors. The SEALs are now facing charges because the guy somehow wound up with a bloody lip. Is the media paying attention?"

By Matt Philbin | November 16, 2009 | 9:59 AM EST
The Culture & Media Institute’s report on network coverage of Major Nidal Hasan and the Ft. Hood murders continues to gain media attention. On Nov. 14, Fox’s “News Watch” program led off with CMI’s findings.

“The Culture & Media Institute noticed something about the news coverage,” said host John Scott said of the Ft. Hood shooting. “Until President Obama spoke on Tuesday at a memorial service for the victims of the Ft. Hood attacks, 29 percent of evening news reports mentioned that Major Nical Malik Hasan was a Muslim. 93 percent of the stories ignored any terror connection. But after the president hinted at what ABC called ‘Islamic extremist views,” all three networks mentioned terrorism.”
By Jeff Poor | October 24, 2009 | 11:25 PM EDT

There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union.

On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western Europe - they jammed them.

"I wrote a column on this, this week - if I can promote myself and my own column," Thomas said. "I likened it to what happened during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union especially tried to jam the signals of the Voice of America and Radio Europe, other entities that were trying to pump truth into the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, the so-called captive nations."

By Mark Finkelstein | December 13, 2008 | 8:10 PM EST
To the extent the MSM has been willing to report on the disadvantage under which the Big Three automakers operate compared to their non-union competitors, the focus has been on the huge wage differential.

On this evening's Fox News Watch, conservative columnist Jim Pinkerton highlighted another issue which has gone largely unreported in the liberal media: the onerous union work rules that add literally thousands of positions to the job rolls compared to those of the foreign transplants.

View video here.
By Noel Sheppard | October 26, 2008 | 6:48 PM EDT

One of the finest examples of media bias this campaign season occurred last Sunday when Democrat vice presidential candidate Joe Biden guaranteed an international crisis would befall our nation in six months if Obama is in the White House, and the American press almost completely ignored his warning.

To give you an idea of just how absurd the lack of coverage concerning this event was, the entire panel on Saturday's "Fox News Watch" agreed that this shows just how in the tank the press are for the junior senator from Illinois.

Even the left-leaning Kirsten Powers said "if there's any doubt there was a double standard in this race, it is completely laid to rest by this because there is no way that this can be ignored."

I couldn't agree more (h/t Johnny Dollar):