CBS's Steve Kroft made a statement Monday that totally epitomizes liberal media bias in the modern era.
Speaking to CNN's Piers Morgan about his interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the previous evening's 60 Minutes, Kroft said the President likes doing his show because "he knows that we're not going to play gotcha with him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Steve Kroft at CBS News is apparently feeling the heat over his powder-puff interview of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It has fallen to television writer David Bauder at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press (HT Dylan Byers at the Politico) to try and help put out the fire.
You see, according to Kroft (my paraphrase), "This whole interview thing was a surprise, and we were only allowed 30 minutes, and besides, there are so many other opportunities to ask tough questions in other venues. So why should I waste precious fawning time asking tough questions mere journalists ask when I can let the lovely pair go all gooey?" Exceprts from Bauder's butt-covering effort follow the jump (bolds are mine):
Brit Hume on Monday made some strong comments about Barack Obama's recent attacks on Fox News as well as the gooey interview CBS's 60 Minutes did with the President and Hillary Clinton the previous evening.
Of the latter, he said the theme was “Just How Great Is the Relationship Between You Two?” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
As NewsBusters has been reporting all day, CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday gave a gushing and fawning interview to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that should be an embarrassment to the network.
On Fox News's America's Newsroom Monday, left-leaning contributor Kirsten Powers said of this fiasco, "It really was something you would expect from like the state-run media...60 Minutes was transparently being used as a campaign advertisement" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft "ought to hand in his journalism card" if there actually were such a thing, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham concluded in an interview with substitute host Eric Bolling on the January 28 edition of Your World w/Neil Cavuto. Graham was referring to the January 27 puff piece that the newsmagazine aired in which Kroft failed to ask any tough questions of the president and his departing secretary of state.
"Look, this is Steve Kroft's history," Graham told Bolling. "This is the reason why we wrote a report called 'Syrupy Minutes.' With the Democrats, this is what they do." And yet, "This is the same show that broke Abu Ghraib on Bush's head. This is the same show that tried to destroy Bush with fake National Guard records." [MP3 audio here; video embedded below page break]
So who has cuter dimples? Swoon Journalist Steve Kroft or Mario Lopez?
It's a reasonable question to ask because the Extra host's interviews of celebs like Angelina and Brad couldn't have been any more of a puff piece than Kroft's starry-eyed interview of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday's 60 Minutes. A half hour of softballs were gently served up by Kroft who acted as if he were overjoyed to just bask in the glow of his interviewees who ate up almost all the time praising each other. Oh, there was the obligatory question that Kroft was almost required to ask about Benghazi but it was delivered in such a manner as to be easily deflected by Hillary before the interview returned to full empty calorie cotton candy mode.
On Monday afternoon, Human Events writer John Hayward stumbled upon Fox News' Bret Baier's discovery of bias by omission from CBS News. It seems out that a key portion -- regarding Benghazi -- of a 60 Minutes interview was cut out to protect the president and his re-election campaign.
The original interview conducted by CBS’ Steve Kroft on September 12, 2012, left out an exchange where Kroft asked the president if this was a terrorist attack. He refused to say – outright – that the Benghazi attack was the work of terrorists. Now, with Election Day less than twenty-four hours away, CBS has graciously released the unexpurgated version of the interview.
On Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS's Steve Kroft tried to paper over Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's role in fostering deadlock in the Senate. Kroft spotlighted Reid's "responsibility" for setting the body's agenda, but quickly added that the Nevada senator has "just as much of a responsibility as Senator McConnell - to make the system work and to do some things."
The correspondent also turned to Steven Smith, who hinted that the Republican minority in the Senate was to blame for the "deadlock" in Congress, despite Reid's Democratic majority not passing a budget in over 3 years: "If you're in the minority...you know that if you can slow down everything, the majority will have less time to get to its entire agenda....when the minority blocks a piece of legislation, who does the public blame? Is it the minority for its obstructionism, or is it the majority that just wasn't willing to compromise enough?" He failed to mention that Smith is a former fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution.
Sunday's 60 Minutes couldn't be bothered to air Steve Kroft pursuing President Obama about "nasty and negative campaign ads under your name, or under the name of your various PACs." Obama begrudging admitted, "Do we see, sometimes, us going overboard in our campaign, or the mistakes that are made, or...areas where there's no doubt that somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? You know, that happens in politics." The news program relegated the exchange to CBSNews.com.
Despite the fact the clip didn't make it on the air, correspondent Jan Crawford mentioned it on Monday's CBS This Morning: "And even last night...the President, on that 60 Minutes interview, acknowledged that some of his attacks - some of his ads - have gone, as he put it, 'overboard', and he said there is no dispute that someone could have an issue with the way the campaign has been presenting some things."
"We got about 10 minutes on the three evening newscasts" last night about "how Romney must have made a mistake" with his statement on the deadly Benghazi consulate attack instead of devoting any significant attention to the question of "What is wrong with the state of our security at our embassies in the Middle East?" NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham complained to Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on his September 13 Your World program.
The liberal media are a "pathetic pack of politicizers" who have "done nothing" but "politicize this issue," Graham added. Indeed, when President Obama was interviewed by 60 Minutes, "he gets asked, 'did Romney screw this up?'" the Media Research Center director of media analysis noted. The president probably gets "tougher questions from his daughters at the supper table than he's getting from Steve Kroft at CBS," Graham quipped. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]
On August 5, Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post announced he was playing with a “somewhat controversial idea” that Mitt Romney should be the favorite to win the presidential election. Debatable, maybe. But controversial? Well, yes. It violates the pro-Obama mandate of our national press corps.
The usual political measures look terrible for Obama, he noted. “The unemployment rate has been over 8 percent for 42 straight months, a streak unparalleled in American history.” Obama must win despite the crippled economy – the most important issue for the voters.
CBS's Bob Schieffer certainly wasn't in an Obama-loving mood Sunday.
Having asked the President's senior campaign adviser "Whatever happened to hope and change" early in the program, the Face the Nation host in a subsequent segment laughed out loud after playing a clip of Obama bragging about his accomplishments on 60 Minutes last year (video follows with transcript and commentary):