Mara Liasson

NPR Shocker: Waning Support for President, Obamacare and Dems
By Noel Sheppard | July 29, 2009 | 10:26 AM EDT

NPR on Wednesday released results of a new poll finding declining support for President Obama and his healthcare initiative while also showing a tightening in which Party folks plan to vote for in the 2010 elections.

Also of note was the glaring difference between those believing the country is going in the wrong track versus the right track with those feeling the former exceeding the latter by a greater margin than has been seen in over a year, and the highest since the financial collapse last September. 

Though none of this is surprising given other polling data of late, it is interesting to see this coming from NPR.

The results were published in an online article as well as discussed on Wednesday's Morning Edition (audio embedded below the fold, h/t Soren Dayton):

Hume on Gates Affair: President Who's Always Apologizing For America Couldn't Apologize For Himself
By Noel Sheppard | July 27, 2009 | 10:18 AM EDT

"This president who travels the world apologizing for his country couldn't quite apologize for himself."

So said Brit Hume on the most recent installment of "Fox News Sunday" as the panel discussed Barack Obama's handling of the Henry Louis Gates affair.

Adding insult to injury, there was virtual unanimity that the President erred in this matter, and erred badly (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Juan Williams: Press Aren't Treating Obama Like a Politician
By Noel Sheppard | June 22, 2009 | 9:54 AM EDT

For the second time in less than 48 hours, NPR's Juan Williams accused the press of not doing their job in properly reporting the deeds and doings of America's new President Barack Obama.

Having accused the news media of "kowtowing to the Obama administration" during Friday's "Special Report" on FNC, Williams went even further on Sunday's "Fox News Sunday" (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

[W]hat really, you know, strikes me is the celebrity nature of the treatment, the coverage of him as a celebrity versus the policy-maker...So you know, the problem here is he's not being treated as a politician. The press is not being sufficiently adversarial, which is its role, to hold him accountable.

What follows is an embedded video of this entire extremely candid discusion of the press's abdication of journalistic integrity along with a transcript:

White House Press Briefing Live-blog [5 Feb. 2009]
By Ken Shepherd | February 5, 2009 | 2:16 PM EST

Update: The highlight thus far is the testy exchange between Gibbs and Tapper. Checking the tape again it appears he did answer Tapper's second question, albeit tersely muttering the response, before turning to Chuck Todd of NBC.

Gibbs starting press conference about 10 minutes late, at 2:10. Says was late getting started due to news about Associate Justice Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer surgery.

[N.B.: I'm watching via Fox News ]

14:10, Jennifer Loven, AP: question about stimulus size.

14:13, Loven question about potential conflict of interest for Obama's Labor Sec. designee, Rep. Solis.

14:14, female reporter notes more "combative" tone to Obama's talk on stimulus, asks if he's "given up on bipartisanship"

sorry for the gap, had Internet connection problems for a few minutes.

14:19, Ed Henry: President talked about the trillion dollar deficit, why then if that's a failure does he want to add $8 or $9 billion on top of that?

14:20, Henry: Paid for with a cigarette tax but we're not sure how many are going to buy cigarettes

14:22,Henry: Notes Labor Secretary-designate Hilda Solis's husband's reported tax liens, asks if White House knew about it.

14:24, Jake Tapper, ABC News: Can we get copy of the waivers for former lobbyists given by the OMB. It's not available by email or the Web, can we get them. 

White House Press Briefing Live-blog [Jan. 27, 2009]
By Ken Shepherd | January 27, 2009 | 3:54 PM EST

Once again I'm going to live-blog the daily press briefing. I'll be focused on the reporters' questions, not so much Gibbs's answers. I also caution this is a rough transcript and may contain errors. I hope to render as accurate a depiction as possible of the questions asked and who's asking them.

As a little twist, I'll also try Twittering some comments on my Twitter page, @KenShepherd.

The presser was scheduled for 3:45 p.m. ET, but is late getting off the ground. Gibbs entering room at 3:53 p.m. ET

Who Had the Fairer Panel: Meet the Press or Fox News Sunday?
By Mark Finkelstein | April 27, 2008 | 2:43 PM EDT

For a moment, let's step away from the commentary, per se, and focus on the commentators. Liberals love to chide Fox News for its alleged conservative bias. So why don't we see, when it comes to being fair and balanced, how this morning's Fox News Sunday panel stacked up against that of its main competitor, Meet the Press?

Here are the line-ups—you be the judge.

MEET THE PRESS

Host–Tim Russert

Panel

  • David Broder–Washington Post columnist
  • John Dickerson–Slate
  • Gwen Ifill–PBS
  • Andrea Mitchell–NBC
  • Richard Wolffe–Newsweek
Fred Barnes: CNN's Debates 'Screw Republicans...Boost Democrats'
By Brent Baker | November 30, 2007 | 3:47 AM EST
Describing the agenda of questions CNN chose to pose, during its Wednesday night Republican presidential debate with YouTube, as “completely different” from those forwarded to Democrats in July, Fred Barnes, on Thursday's Special Report on FNC, cited the contrast in questions about the military and Iraq as demonstrating how CNN picked the questioners to “screw Republicans” and “boost Democrats.” Mara Liasson of NPR echoed the sentiment, recalling that the questions put to Democrats “were about global warming and health care and education, all kind of Democratic issues” and so they “weren't challenging the basic principles of the Democratic Party,” but “there were lots of questions last night that were” meant to undermine GOP principles.

Earlier in the day, on The Weekly Standard's Web site, Barnes, Executive Editor of the magazine, hypothesized: “I don't know if the folks who put the debate together were purposely trying to make the Republican candidates look bad, but they certainly succeeded.” He asserted that the YouTube video submission questions CNN decided to air reflected “the issues, in the view of liberals and many in the media, on which Republicans look particularly unattractive.”