The lead story in Saturday's New York Times heaped praise upon the passage of a package of spending increases: “Avoiding Rancor, Congress Passes A Fiscal Package -- $1.8 Trillion Measure – Spending Rise and New Tax Breaks Suggest End of Austerity." This big-spending budget earned Ryan some strange new respect, with reporter David Herszenhorn praising his “deftness in pacifying rebellious conservatives.” A copy editor gave Ryan a pat on the back in a text box: “A successful effort by Republicans to show that they can govern effectively.”
Sudden Respect
NYT's New Respect for GOP's Ryan for 'Deftness in Pacifying Rebellious Conservatives'...and for Big Spending Hike
By Clay Waters | December 19, 2015 | 8:02 PM EST 
By Mark Finkelstein | December 16, 2015 | 8:42 AM EST
When tagging items at NewsBusters, one of our Media Bias sub-categories is "Sudden Respect." The notion is that to win the affection of the MSM, all a Republican or conservative needs to do is turn against members or positions of his party. A great illustration of the phenomenon comes from today's Morning Joe. During last night's undercard debate, Lindsey Graham repeatedly ripped fellow Republicans for their rhetoric on Muslims, at one point even apologizing to Muslims for Donald Trump's comments.
And that of course caused what Rush might call a GrahamGasm by the Morning Joe crew. Mike Barnicle called Graham "fantastic," Nicolle Wallace said "I adore Lindsey Graham." Most amazing was Mika Brzezinski, who beyond praising him as "incredible" actually declared, sounding like she was choking up, "I feel a connection with Lindsey Graham," causing Joe Scarborough to claim [we presume facetiously] that Mika said "where has he been all my life?" Not to be outdone, Joe called on President Obama to award Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Barnicle summed up the panel's sentiment by saying "thank God for Lindsey Graham."
By Curtis Houck | December 16, 2015 | 12:08 AM EST
Offering his initial thoughts on Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate on the 11:00 p.m. Eastern edition of CNN’s AC360, CNN political commentator and Hillary Clinton super PAC head Paul Begala complained that Republicans possess “dominant emotion” of “fear” that they’ve somehow used to instill fear in Americans following recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.
By Mark Finkelstein | December 10, 2015 | 6:01 AM EST
What does it take to get a member of the MSM to praise a Fox News host? Simple: trash Donald Trump. On yesterday's With All Due Respect, co-host John Heilemann declared "I have always like Shep Smith, and I like him more today than I've ever liked him before."
So what had Shep done to enhance Heilemann's fondness for him? On his show on Tuesday, during a dialogue with Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey, Smith tore Donald Trump, and his plan for Muslims, to shreds. Smith called the plan unlawful, unconstitutional, fear-mongering, racist and "crazy." He claimed Trump "lied" about Muslims cheering 9/11, and described the Donald as a "carnival huckster" who "represents the worst, darkest part of all that is America." Reading between the lines, you might suspect Shep doesn't like Trump very much.
NYT's Strange New Dis-Respect: 'Hating Woodrow Wilson' Suddenly OK When Liberal Campus Protestors Demand it
By Clay Waters | November 24, 2015 | 10:37 AM EST It's suddenly acceptable in the New York Times to call liberal hero Woodrow Wilson a racist, now that a black campus pressure group is making demands that Princeton University strike the name of Wilson, former president of the university, from the name of its public policy school. Yet for years, prominent conservatives have reminded liberals of the blatant racism and discrimination practiced by the Democrat (an ID the Times failed to note), and the New York Times ignored those embarrassing facts when coming from the right.
By Brad Wilmouth | November 23, 2015 | 12:36 AM EST
Appearing as a panel member on Sunday's Face the Nation on CBS, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus had sudden respect for former President George W. Bush as she declared that she was "nostalgic for the good old days" when President Bush had "soothing, calming responsible words about Muslims" in contrast with the "very ugly week for Republicans" since the Paris attacks.
By Tim Graham | November 21, 2015 | 7:41 AM EST
The Public Broadcasting Service isn’t really a representative of the Public, as everyone should know. It’s the defender of liberal elite opinion, no matter what the polls say. This week, the polls are stacking up against President Obama on his ISIS policy and his Syrian-refugee policy. But the PBS NewsHour stands with Obama and in horror at the current Republican Party.
Both liberal Mark Shields and fake-conservative David Brooks agreed Friday night that today’s GOP presidential candidate are horrendous, especially compared to how George W. Bush now looks like Abe Lincoln now on Islam.
By Clay Waters | October 16, 2015 | 10:13 AM EDT
New York Times reporter David "hard-line" Herszenhorn is making hostile labeling of conservatives a bad habit, especially in his post-Boehner reporting. The shock resignation of the Speaker of the House gave Times reporters an excuse to target the "far-right" conservatives who had supposedly hounded John Boehner out of office, and granting the speaker never a popular figure in Times-land, some retrospective honor. Thursday's story on the reluctant Speaker-elect Paul Ryan included three "hard-line" adjectives and one "hard-right," from a newspaper that rarely if ever refers to American Democrats as "hard-left," and worked in strong adjectives like "harsh," "absurdist" and "cruel," all the while marveling at Republicans who found Ryan insufficiently committed to conservatism.
By Curtis Houck | September 26, 2015 | 10:15 PM EDT
On Saturday morning, the major broadcast networks were at it again in bashing the “far-right” and “unruly hardliners” in the House Republican caucus for causing Speaker John Boehner’s impending resignation announced Friday that CBS added could hurt the party’s chances in 2016 if the “infighting” continues.
By Clay Waters | September 26, 2015 | 7:29 PM EDT
A heavily politicized preliminary version of Friday's front-page New York Times story on Pope Francis's visit to New York City was another example of the sudden respect a religious figure garners from the liberal newspaper -- at least when he happens to agree on the Times' pet issue of immigration. Reporters Marc Santora and Sharon Otterman noted that the Pope's "words cut against the current political climate in which the debate about immigration often has a harsh and unforgiving tone."
By Curtis Houck | September 26, 2015 | 11:45 AM EDT
Speaking with fill-in host Alex Wagner on the Friday edition of MSNBC’s All In, Hardball host Chris Matthews and Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky continued the liberal media’s narrative of sudden respect for the soon-to-be resigning House Speaker John Boehner, lamenting that the “revolutionary” wing of the Republican Party had carried out a “mutiny” against “a rock-ribbed conservative.”
By Curtis Houck | September 25, 2015 | 3:31 PM EDT
Mere moments into House Speaker John Boehner’s press conference on Friday discussing his resignation on October 30, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were quick to chastise conservative House members on Boehner’s “far right flank” that compose the “no compromise crowd” and “some grassroots conservatives who happened to be elected members of the House.”