Appearing on Monday's NBC Today, Newt Gingrich took co-host Ann Curry to task for grilling him on allegations against Herman Cain: "...when the news media goes and finds an anonymous report about an anonymous incident...and you decide that matters more than every other issue in the campaign, that may put your judgment in doubt, as you, being the institutional news media." [Audio available here]
Curry began the segment by wondering: "...to have a Republican nominee for president, with unanswered questions about sexual harassment, what would it do to your party's chances of defeating Barack Obama?" Gingrich shot back: "What does it mean to the elite news media that nobody in the country ever walks up to us and raises questions you all raise?" [View video after the jump]
Herman Cain
A former White House aide that accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her back in 1993 says she's infuriated by the media firestorm caused by anonymous harassment allegations leveled at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.
Speaking with radio's Steve Malzberg Friday, Kathleen Willey said, "Why are we even entertaining, you know, any of this from a person with no name and no face and a spokesperson who isn’t really clear on anything either" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
The left often accuses the right of dog-whistle politics, but likening actual conservatives to actual dogs? Two Kossacks went there this past week. That plus the ongoing Herman Cain sexual-harassment tale and the new statue of Ronald Reagan at National Airport are among the grist for this edition of DKWIR.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
CNN's Howard Kurtz considers himself to be a media analyst, yet on Sunday's Reliable Sources, he spent 22 minutes discussing Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain without once mentioning how the press handled Bill Clinton's actual sex scandals.
The program began:
There have been a lot of ridiculous comments made in the past week since Politico published its hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, but one of the most absurd yet came from Newsweek's Eleanor Clift this weekend.
Appearing on PBS's McLaughlin Group, Clift actually said, "This is the press doing what the press should be doing, and they should have done due diligence on this candidate earlier on...He got a free ride for a good long while." (video follows with transcript and commentary):
While Bob Schieffer spent a goodly amount of time on Sunday's Face the Nation discussing the allegations made against Herman Cain this week as well as Rick Perry's strange speech in New Hampshire, Liz Cheney was the voice of reason asking why he was wasting so much time on these irrelevant issues.
"With all due respect, you know, the American people are out there afraid. They're afraid that the economy is going off a cliff...I think that that's what we ought to be talking about" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On the PBS NewsHour Friday, there was the typical agreement between "conservative" David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields on the sour state of the economy, and that despite that, Brooks said President Obama's "hanging in there reasonably well," and Shields agreed he's "defied gravity."
Brooks slammed Herman Cain's response to the incredibly vague Politico story: that he "didn't do kindergarten-level preparation for this story is just incredibly damning." Shields agreed, adding a slam on conservatives hating candidates with any experience: "Herman Cain's candidacy is a reflection, if not a direct product, of the feverish anti-government flavor, fervor of Republicans, because they really have so little regard, Republican primary voters, for government."
Appearing as a guest on Saturday's Today show on NBC, MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe - formerly of Newsweek - labeled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's supporters as "ultraconservative" as he admitted to the media's unpopularity not only with the general population, but with conservatives in particular.
After co-host Lester Holt noted that Cain's poll numbers have held steady despite accusations of sexual harassment, Wolffe explained:
On Friday night's All Things Considered, the Week in Politics segment could have been titled "Another Horrible Week for Republicans." Helping out enthusiastically was New York Times columnist David Brooks, who is billed as the conservative half of the political analyst team with ultraliberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. But the two end up agreeing so much you can't tell which one is the liberal.
When anchor Robert Siegel asked if this week marked the "beginning of the end of the Cain phenomenon," Brooks sneered that Cain was a "TV show that lasted a little while," and Dionne naturally agreed. Then Brooks turned to Romney and insisted he drops the emotional temperature of the room to chilling lows -- and of course, Dionne agreed.
Alan Colmes on Saturday blamed Herman Cain for the media firestorm that occurred after Politico released its now infamous hit piece on the Republican presidential candidate.
As the panel on Fox News Watch discussed a Media Research Center study concerning the coverage of this incident versus how the press handled three sex scandals involving former President Clinton, Colmes actually said, "The reason the numbers are so different is because Herman Cain unlike Bill Clinton was out front on all of the media outlets talking about this" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
If you needed any more evidence of the political leaning of CNN, consider that much like Politico, it has in the last six days done at least 94 reports on the sexual harassment allegations involving Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.
Substantially more shocking, according to LexisNexis, the supposedly most trusted name in news only did 77 total stories on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, convicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, and America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
PBS's Mark Shields on Friday took some childish swipes at Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.
During an Inside Washington discussion about who might be next to challenge Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination, Shields said, "Don't count out the chubby fellow from Georgia, Newt, the rehabilitated Newt Gingrich, carrying along a bogus IQ and some other baggage" (video follows with transcript and commentary):