On Fox & Friends, MRC's Bozell Exposes Media's Double Standard on War Coverage

March 25th, 2011 2:12 PM

Unlike President Bush in both Afghanistan and Libya, President Obama chose not to seek congressional approval for the mainly-U.S. bombing campaign against Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, but the big broadcast networks are barely noticing.

On Friday's Fox & Friends, Media Research Center President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell offered the evidence of the media's glaring double standard on this issue, pointing out that Obama himself had explicitly said that it would be "unconstitutional" for a President to go to war without such approval -- and yet the media are by and large failing to hold the President accountable to his own standard.

(Video and partial transcript below the jump)

Here's some of that exchange as it took place at 8:15am EDT on the FNC morning program:

BRIAN KILMEADE: President Obama seems to be getting a free pass from most media outlets for his failure to get congressional approval on military action in Libya (because we can't call it war). But in the weeks and months leading up to the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush got anything but a free pass.

That did not slip by the founder and President of the Media Research Center Brent Bozell, as, Brent, you're here to weigh in. Are you amazed at the double standard here, Brent?
 


BRENT BOZELL: Not only the double standard, but the re-write of history, because the media try to project the idea that George Bush went at this alone. In fact, he went to the Congress, like his father had in the first war, and he had a coalition of 30 nations behind him -- he had a bigger coalition than Barack Obama has right now....

Look at what Barack Obama said on the campaign trail.  He said it was flat-out "unconstitutional" for a President to go to war -- to have a "kinetic military action" -- without getting congressional approval. Joe Biden thundered, as only Joe Biden can thunder, that if George Bush ever did this without congressional approval,  that he would lead the impeachment of George Bush.

And, guess what -- the Obama-Biden administration just did that, and only ABC asked one question. Everyone's dropped it.