This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Pantsuit Patrol Award,” for boosting Hillary Clinton. Winning this category was Mark Halperin, a veteran of ABC News and Time magazine, who gushed over Hillary: “The two words she needs are ‘fun’ and ‘new.’ And part of why yesterday was so successful is she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before. Fun and new.”
Cokie Roberts
By Curtis Houck | December 20, 2015 | 2:36 PM EST
Hours after praising socialist Senator Bernie Sanders prior to ABC’s Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night, ABC News political analyst Cokie Roberts completely reversed course on Sunday’s This Week and brushed off Sanders as unelectable and having shot at the nomination even if he wins both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in February 2016.
By Curtis Houck | December 19, 2015 | 9:00 PM EST
Showing that they’ve learned next to nothing from the George Stephanopoulos/Clinton Foundation scandal, ABC allowed its chief anchor in Stephanopoulos to anchor its pre-game coverage of Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate. Not surprisingly, the former Clinton White House official teamed with DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile to gush over how Hillary Clinton has “found her footing during the fall” and has been “battle tested” following e-mail server and Clinton Foundation scandals that rocked her candidacy earlier in the year.
By Melissa Mullins | December 15, 2015 | 5:01 PM EST
On Sunday's This Week, they concluded the show with a feminist tribute. ABC’s Cokie Roberts sat down with feminist legend Gloria Steinem for what should’ve been an interview on her first book in over 20 years, My Life on the Road. Instead, it was a celebration of her life. George Stephanopoulos gushed that Steinem “sat down with our own pathbreaker, Cokie Roberts, for a look back at 50 years of change in feminism and journalism.”
Roberts began by suggesting today’s young women don’t appreciate the Old Guard enough:” “Gloria Steinem, loved and hated by millions, grew up in a world modern Americans wouldn't recognize. Women were legally denied jobs and credit and shut out of prominent positions. But instead of accepting that world, she led a movement to change it.”
By Mark Finkelstein | October 13, 2015 | 9:21 AM EDT
Rush Limbaugh likes to facetiously refer to Hillary Clinton as "the smartest woman in the world." Today's Morning Joe brought us three people who might actually believe it.
Previewing tonight's Dem debate, Mike Barnicle led off the love-in, fantasizing about people coming away from the debate saying "wow, there is a prepared, thorough, knowledgeable candidate. All the Benghazi stuff goes out the window." Next was Joe Scarborough, who said the debate gives Hillary the chance to show voters "she may be the smartest person on the stage and in politics right now." And finally, the incomparable Cokie Roberts, who gushed that any time Hillary is with "actual people" [as opposed to droids?] she "always wows them" adding that Hillary "knows everything about every issue."
By Curtis Houck | September 25, 2015 | 3:31 PM EDT
Mere moments into House Speaker John Boehner’s press conference on Friday discussing his resignation on October 30, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were quick to chastise conservative House members on Boehner’s “far right flank” that compose the “no compromise crowd” and “some grassroots conservatives who happened to be elected members of the House.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | September 20, 2015 | 12:11 PM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s Matthew Dowd provided a dose of reality as to why Hillary Clinton continues to see her poll numbers decline and chalked it up to “the theory of Hillary is always much better than the actual reality of Hillary running for president.” Dowd pointed out that Hillary’s declining popularity was not a new phenomenon for the Democratic frontrunner
By Jeffrey Meyer | August 30, 2015 | 11:40 AM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, Cokie Roberts gushed over Univision’s Jorge Ramos as an “absolute icon in the Hispanic community.” After ABC’s Martha Raddatz interviewed Ramos about his confrontation with Donald Trump, Roberts swooned over the liberal journalist as someone who is a “very, very big deal, and you know, he's also sort of someone they swoon over.” Panelist Newt Gingrich rejected identifying Ramos as an actual journalist and labeled him Trump’s “opponent” who “[e]very night on Univision, he opposes the Republican Party. Every night.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | August 2, 2015 | 11:23 AM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, political commentator Cokie Roberts continued to praise Hillary Clinton for playing the grandmother card throughout her presidential campaign. During a discussion about Joe Biden’s potential White House bid, Roberts cheered Clinton for going after the GOP on “climate change for instance when she says everybody says I'm not a scientist. She says I'm not a scientist either, I'm just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain. That's brilliant.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 12, 2015 | 11:45 AM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, Cokie Roberts argued that Hillary Clinton will actively use her role has grandmother to sell herself to voters heading into the 2016 election. Roberts relayed how “she said, what voters care about is who will be there when they need them,” contending that “somewhat plays into the grandmother theme. Because, you know, your grandmother is there when you need her. And I think that’s a way of dealing with this age issue.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 18, 2015 | 3:19 PM EDT
During a panel discussion Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, NPR's Cokie Roberts rushed to defend Hillary Clinton for continuing to not answer questions from the press in the month since she announced her presidential campaign.
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 19, 2015 | 2:06 PM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, several members of the show’s political panel took some cheap shots at the GOP and CNN contributor LZ Granderson argued that the 2016 GOP presidenttal contenders look like an “intolerant field.” The anti-GOP discussion started with political commentator Cokie Roberts proclaiming that the GOP may have 19 potential presidential candidates, but they “don’t appeal to diverse America.”