On Tuesday, The Atlantic featured an article that lamented decades of Republican race-baiting in presidential campaigns. The piece by [authors] allow that race-baiting “does not mean that those who employ them are racists,” but it does “show a willingness to exploit societal ills for political gain.” The authors don’t think Republicans are racists, just that Republicans have a tendency to exploit racist attitudes across America.
George H. W. Bush
By Scott Whitlock | November 5, 2015 | 12:48 PM EST
The three networks on Thursday hyped the “scathing” “political bombshell” of George H.W. Bush criticizing Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In contrast, when Barack Obama’s former Secretary of State went on the record with harsh criticism of his former boss, ABC and NBC avoided it. Speaking of the Bush family, Good Morning America’s Amy Robach trumpeted, “This is being called a political bombshell."
By Mark Finkelstein | August 24, 2015 | 5:32 PM EDT
Old enough to remember when the liberal media tried to pin the "wimp" label on George H.W. Bush, the guy who lied about his age to get into WWII and who is still jumping out of planes decades later?
John Heilemann of Bloomberg TV has taken things a vulgar step further with another member of the Bush family. On his With All Due Respect show today, Heilemann called Jeb Bush the "low-T" candidate. A laughing Josh Green, subbing for Mark Halperin, suggested that "there are pills for that but Jeb is not taking them."
By Curtis Houck | June 18, 2015 | 3:58 PM EDT
Appearing with journalist Carl Bernstein on Wednesday’s CNN Tonight to promote the upcoming episode of CNN’s The Seventies on Watergate, former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather decried the Republican Party’s “strong turn to the right” and blamed the size of party’s 2016 field on the Watergate scandal and the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
By Tom Blumer | June 17, 2015 | 11:41 PM EDT
It seems as if the establishment press has ruined virtually everything connected with journalism. The whole idea of "fact-checking" is certainly no exception.
The thoroughly misnamed Politifact pioneered this particular form of disinformation. The Associated Press, apparently determined to give that web site a run for its money, devoted a writeup to "fact-checking" (i.e., virtually ridiculing) a goal, namely 2016 presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's belief that the U.S. economy is fully capable of achieving annual growth of 4 percent — even though it's been done before nationally, and was accomplished in the Sunshine State during Bush's own tenure.
Blogger Jonathan Chait: Thanks to Reagan’s Moderation and Bush’s Unpopularity, GOP Has No ‘Usable Past’
By Tom Johnson | May 14, 2015 | 2:26 PM EDT There’s been plenty of mockery of the three actual or potential Republican presidential candidates who named Ronald Reagan as the greatest living president, but New York magazine's Chait feels their pain, sort of.
Chait observed in a Wednesday post that GOPers are in a bind when choosing the best living POTUS given that 1) for obvious reasons, they wouldn’t pick Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton; 2) George H. W. Bush “betrayed Reaganism”; and 3) George W. Bush suffered a “second-term collapse into deep unpopularity” despite “govern[ing] in a more consistently conservative fashion than Reagan had.”
AP's Crutsinger Ignores Recession Red Flag, But Has Obsessed Over Potential Recessions During GOP Administrations
By Tom Blumer | April 24, 2015 | 10:52 PM EDT Today's Census Bureau report on durable goods orders was like a poorly made cake with delicious frosting: tasty at first, but awful when fully experienced.
The frosting in today's report was that overall orders increased in March by a seasonally adjusted 4.0 percent. The trouble is that an important, widely recognized element of that report — what the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger vaguely described as "a key category that serves as a proxy for future business investment" — came in with yet another minus sign. That category's 0.5 percent decline, though noted, had far more significance than Crutsinger gave it.
By Curtis Houck | August 22, 2014 | 1:02 PM EDT
Friday’s CBS This Morning dove into the subject of President Obama vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard while events domestically and internationally rage, including the brutal murder of American journalist James Foley at the hands of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS. While they were the only network to mention this story, the report from CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett and discussion among the hosts afterward did little more than cover for the president.
At the segment's conclusion, co-host Norah O’Donnell compared Obama’s golfing minutes after making a statement about Foley’s murder to former President George W. Bush going golfing after speaking about a suicide bombing in Iraq. O’Donnell observed that: [MP3 audio here; See the video after the jump]
By Kyle Drennen | March 28, 2014 | 10:45 AM EDT
All three network evening newscasts on Thursday found time to cheer the JFK Library Foundation announcing former President George H. W. Bush would the 2014 recipient of its annual Profile in Courage award. So what specific accomplishment did the organization cite from the Republican's decades of public service? His decision to hike taxes in 1990 that cost him re-election and paved the way for Bill Clinton to become president. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
On NBC Nightly News, fill-in anchor Lester Holt proclaimed: "Bush had famously said, 'Read my lips. No new taxes.' His decision to break that promise not only took courage, as the award says, it also may have cost him re-election."
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By Randy Hall | February 11, 2014 | 10:02 PM EST
More than a week after conducting an interview with president Barack Obama, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed on Monday night he finds it “troubling” that the questions he asked had not been brought up before because “many in the media are protecting” the Democratic occupant of the White House.
“What the heck is the national press doing?” he asked in the opening segment of that night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor. He then charged the current media with being “the most docile we've ever had,” with the possible exception of those who covered John F. Kennedy during the days of “Camelot” in the early 1960s.
By Randy Hall | August 14, 2013 | 11:42 PM EDT
The focus of fiery discussion during Fox News Channel programs on Wednesday morning was the controversy over a rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia who wore a mask that resembled President Barack Obama and was banned from the event for life as a result.
The hosts of Fox & Friends stated that “presidents have been fodder for jokes before, and nothing happened to those people,” while a conservative guest on that morning's edition of America's Newsroom charged that liberals “believe you get to talk, and everyone else shuts up.”
By Rich Noyes | September 2, 2012 | 8:11 AM EDT
Every day for the next few weeks, NewsBusters will be showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information.) With each TV quote, we’ve added the matching video from our archive, some of which hasn’t been seen in nearly a quarter-century.
To start: the worst quotes of 1988, MRC’s first full year in business. Among the highlights: Dan Rather ambushes the first George Bush and Ted Turner’s TBS super-station aired a propagandistic tribute to the U.S.S.R. [Quotes and video below the jump.]