I've said for years that some of the worst reporting by the media deals with issues of finance and the economy.
"Real Time" watchers were given a perfect example of this Friday evening when a college professor that contributes to MSNBC as well as Nation magazine actually said, "I’ll put my Obama deficit next to your Reagan deficit any day of the week" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Appearing on the May 06 edition of Hannity, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell indicted the media's coverage of Osama bin Laden's death, including comments made by "idiot" Joy Behar, co-host of The View.
The NewsBusters publisher derided journalists who have ignored George W. Bush's role in killing the terrorist: "But my God where were they when George Bush won us the war in Iraq? Why wouldn't they praise in him? And why can't they give him the most minimal praise? It is because of this man's techniques that they condemned all these years, because of those techniques that that man is dead today."
According to Behar, instead of inhanced interrogations on terrorists, it's possible "a six million dollar book deal would have worked just as well."
MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Thursday expressed a great deal of skepticism concerning Thursday's revelation that a significant number of ballots had not been included in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election held two days prior.
While he pointed fingers at the Waukesha County Clerk as being a Republican operative, he completely ignored the fact that a the very press conference he aired a clip from, the Vice Chair of that county's Democratic Party spoke and confirmed the results (videos follow with partial transcripts and commentary):
It was revealed Wednesday evening that the Obama administration sent clandestine CIA operatives to Libya weeks ago to assist rebels in their civil war against Moammar Gaddafi.
Not only did MSNBC's Ed Schultz express his support for this action as well as arming these rebels, he also got into a heated argument with a Nation magazine reporter that compared this operation to the "disastrous dirty wars of the 1980s" bringing up images of Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal (video follows with transcript and commentary):
When conservatives gather behind closed doors, the left plans protests and counter events. When the left plans a closed-door meeting, it gets almost no attention at all.
Politico reported briefly on Feb. 16, that Democratic operatives will gather in early March for a private strategy conference. That has gotten little attention or criticism, yet when conservatives gather at the semiannual Koch conference the left mounts elaborate protests.
“Participants include Obama campaign pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad, the 2010 executive directors of the DSCC, DCCC, and DGA, Organizing for America deputy director Jeremy Bird, SEIU political director Jon Youngdahl, and current DSCC executive director Guy Cecil,” Politico’s Ben Smith said.
When the latest “semiannual confab of conservative activists” hosted by Charles and David Koch took place, people on the left from environmentalists to unions held a counter-meeting called “Uncloaking the Kochs.” The Los Angeles Times covered the protests and even linked to streaming video of the lefties’ event, but didn’t quote a single conservative in that story.
For the past year, the left has cried foul at the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, which overturned laws prohibiting corporations and unions from broadcast election-related communications within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary. More than a year after the court handed down its decision, misinformation still pervades liberal condemnations of the ruling.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the far-left magazine The Nation, pushed a near-comical distortion of the truth in a recent column in the Washington Post. She brazenly declared former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold a "victim of Citizens United spending," and linked to an interview with Feingold at The Nation.
Just one problem: in that interview, Feingold explicitly denied that campaign spending played any role in his defeat. Does vanden Heuvel even read the items she offers as evidence - or her own magazine?
Appearing as a guest on Monday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman - also a political analyst with MSNBC - spoke favorably of the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, asserting that "this historic vote will be remembered as a very important one in the social history of the United States," and, as he admitted that independent Senator Joseph Lieberman "takes a lot of guff on this network," gave the former Democrat-turned independent Senator "credit where credit is due" for supporting the measure.
Fineman went on to predict that, because the Republican House next year will seek to undermine various pieces of legislation passed by Democrats - which he referred to as "historic" - that President Obama will be running against a "‘tear down’ Congress." Fineman:
The dynamic of the next two years is going to be to re-litigate and reargue all the legislation that Obama and the Democrats for the most part passed in the first two years. That means efforts to defund, to delegitimize, to get rid of, you know, all the historic legislation that was passed these first two years, and spending is going to be the way to do it. ... So it's not that Obama's going to be running against the "do nothing Congress." The President is going to be running against the sort of "tear down Congress"because that's going to be the mode of the next two years.
Fineman also notably used the term "progressive" - the preferred term of liberals - instead of the word "liberal" as he referred to the left wing of the Democratic party, and contended that Republicans "went pedal to the metal on the fear strategy on immigration" as he explained why the Dream Act failed to pass the Senate.
Are they not properly vetting their liberals over at MSNBC?
As NewsBuster Lachlan Markay reported on Friday:
MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely … after news broke that he had given the maximum allowable contribution to three Democrats without disclosing it to his employers.
With Olbermann out, MSNBC needed a fill-in, so in steps Chris Hayes, editor of the liberal magazine, The Nation. MSNBC pegged Hayes to fill in for the suspended Countdown host on Friday. His gig was short-lived however.
Several hours after the announcement, Hayes had been dropped. (h/t Weasel Zippers)
Why?
For a series of donations to Democratic campaigns in recent years.
We won't try to weave too much political-cultural significance into the spat that erupted on Morning Joe today. Just sit back and enjoy the spectacle as Joe Scarborough struggled to get in a word edgewise with Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation.
Scarborough was seeking to cite statistics showing that by a ratio of about 40:20, more Americans identify as conservatives than as liberals. That, he argued, makes it hard for Dems like Obama to govern from the left, and suggests that lefties like vanden Heuvel should cut the prez some slack.
Somehow, a certain Frank Sinatra song comes to mind. Or not. View video here.