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The 2,776th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
8:15am EST, Friday November 21, 2008 (Vol. Thirteen; No. 221)
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2. FNC Tags Waxman as 'Strong Liberal,' But ABC Avoids Any Label
3. MSNBC Turns Palin's Pardoning of Turkey Into Means to Deride Her
4. Ted Turner on Tavis: Touting Abortions and Detente, Trashing FNC
5. Philly PBS Outlet Hires Editor Who Wanted to Cancel 4th of July
6. ABC's Probing 'Hot Seat': Does Chris Cuomo Wear Underwear?
ELLEN DEGENERES: Amazing! And you must be thrilled? I mean what, what a moment. [This item, by the MRC's Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Thursday afternoon, with video, on the MRC's blog, Newsbusters.org: newsbusters.org ] A little later in his interview segment, Matthews also took a different kind of shot, the verbal kind, against the outgoing administration:
MATTHEWS: And I'm watching Hillary and I'm watching McCain I think, I think Hillary is gonna be Secretary of State. I think it's gonna happen. The following exchanges occurred on the November 20 episode of Ellen:
ELLEN DEGENERES: You, you called it, exactly- ...
MATTHEWS: And I'm watching Hillary and I'm watching McCain I think, I think Hillary is gonna be Secretary of State. I think it's gonna happen. 
ABC News wasn't so reticent about labeling former Republican Congressman Dan Burton who, after the GOP's 1995 takeover of the House assumed the chairmanship of the same committee Waxman now leads (Government Reform). In a story on the April 10, 1994 edition of the long-defunct prime time ABC News magazine show Day One, reporter John McKenzie marginalized Burton as "an ultraconservative Republican from suburban Indianapolis" who "is a favorite of the far right." Waxman, who represents Beverly Hills, Malibu and much of coastal Los Angeles County, is certainly a favorite of the far-left. [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Thursday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Neither Thursday's CBS Evening News, nor NBC Nightly News, mentioned the ouster of the senior Dingell by the more junior Waxman. # Charles Gibson on ABC's World News of November 20: "There was a major changing of the guard on Capitol Hill today. Congressman John Dingell of Michigan, who has served in the House of Representatives longer than any current member, has been ousted as the Chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. He'll be replaced by Henry Waxman of California, a strong advocate of environmental issues." # Brit Hume on FNC's Special Report: "California's Henry Waxman will take over the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman defeated John Dingell of Michigan who had held the post for 28 years. Waxman is a strong liberal and environmental advocate and was the choice of Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
GOV. PALIN PICKS WORST POSSIBLE BACKDROP FOR TV NEWS INTERVIEW TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA GOV. SARAH PALIN KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER GOV. PALIN NOT REALIZING INCONGRUITY OF HER WORDS VERSUS HER BACKDROP TURKEY-KILLING FOWLS PALIN NEWS CONFERENCE [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Thursday night, with video, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]
The video aired after MSNBC ran a story on Palin's pre-Thanksgiving pardoning of a turkey at a Wasila poultry farm. Shuster, quite serious, set up the segment with this warning: Afterward, Shuster asserted: "And you thought her media outings as a vice presidential candidate were as bad as it gets." To watch the video in a larger frame -- those interested in the supposed gore, or reading the chyrons, play it on the MRC's Eyeblast site: www.eyeblast.tv To watch the video sans MSNBC's blurring, view the original video as aired and posted by KTUU-TV channel 2, the NBC affiliate in Anchorage, which didn't find any of it inappropriate. It's simply titled: "Palin interviewed at turkey pardoning." The direct link is too long to put here, but it is embedded in the NewsBusters version of this item.
[This item, by the MRC's Tim Graham, was posted Thursday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Many people have probably forgotten how dramatically Turner has supported the cause of population control and abortion. He hasn't changed his mind:
SMILEY: To your point now about overpopulation or the world's population, what do we do about that, if anything? When Smiley asked about how he wanted CNN to do the news straight, Turner claimed he wanted both sides presented on the news, and complained the news had been completely biased toward the Israelis. He also felt misled about the communists and the Cold War: I had grown up thinking that Communists were bad because that's what I'd been told. But when I met Castro and then I went to Russia and started really getting to know the Russians because I was interested in seeing if we could help bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion and came up with the Goodwill Games and everything, I learned that the Russians, if you're nice to them -- if you treat people with dignity, respect, and friendliness, they'll almost always reciprocate the same way. If you go over and tell them you don't like their country, you don't like the food, you don't like their music, you don't like their culture and you don't like their women -- you just don't like the place -- well, they won't like you at all, either. But if you go over and say, "Man, I'm having the best time over here. This Russian food is delicious. And everybody looks so great and everybody's being so friendly to us, we're having a great time here," they give you a hug. The Russians hug each other. Men over here, we're kind of afraid to hug each other, although it's getting more common. I brought it back. If I was hugging the Russians, I figured I'd want to hug my American friends, too. Smiley even recalled that Turner interviewed Fidel Castro for CNN. Smiley asked Turner about whether CNN was trying to match Fox News Channel on the left, and Turner acknowledged that the network wants hosts with an attitude now: "Fox News definitely leans to the right, and if I remember correctly, at the beginning when we were getting ready to go to war with Iraq, they endorsed the war with Iraq, they promoted the war with Iraq, and I certainly don't think that's good, that a news network was trying to stir up a war. And once the war started going badly, they sure backed off of it and everybody pretty well forgot that, but I didn't forget it." MRC report on Turner with Castro in 1990: www.mrc.org
Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm, who wrote about Satullo's hiring on Thursday, mentioned how William J. Marrazzo, WHYY's president and CEO, complimented the liberal columnist as an "an outstanding journalist with a track record in civic engagement who understands this community like the back of his hand." See: www.philly.com
This same "outstanding journalist," in his November 9 column in the Inquirer, referred to the ideology of Sarah Palin supporters as "a rump conservatism that is small-town, resentful, anti-intellectual, and lily white" and praised "smarter analysts" such as David Frum, Kathleen Parker, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks, all of whom criticized the Alaska governor and/or supported Obama: www.philly.com Satullo's earlier column from July, titled "A not-so-glorious Fourth: U.S. atrocities are unworthy of our heritage," Satullo attempted to shame the American people for supposed complicity, since "...[i]n our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little." The whole piece was one long liberal tirade, sprinkled throughout with the usual talking points from the left: ...This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned. We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago. The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them. Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion. Today, our nation does such things in the name of our safety. Petrified, unwilling to take the risks that love of liberty demands, we close our eyes. We have done such things, on orders from the Oval Office. We have done them, without general outrage or shame. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. "Rendition" of prisoners to foreign torture chambers.... But what will history think of us, of how we responded to our great challenge? Sept. 11 was a hideous evil, a grievous wound. Yet, truth told, it has not summoned our better angels as often as our worst. We have betrayed the July 4 creed. We trample the vows we make, hand to heart.... We can't claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power.... ...The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven't made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they've spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears. So put out no flags. Sing no patriotic hymns. We deserve no Fourth this year. Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation's birthday next rolls around. END of Excerpt For the column: www.philly.com One wonders if we'll see such "soaring" rhetoric from WHYY from now on.
For more on Wednesday's "hot seat," see November 20 CyberAlert posting: www.mrc.org Apparently, the answer is they will reveal things that few want to know. Cuomo received this video question from twenty-something Tara of Pennsylvania: "So, Chris, boxers or briefs?" She then proceeded to suggestively wink. An apparently-not-too embarrassed Cuomo began, "Assuming I have anything on-" before being stopped by co-host Diane Sawyer. [This item, by the MRC's Scott Whitlock, was posted Thursday afternoon, with video, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] So, what are some of the queries that the GMA anchors could have asked Cuomo? How about discussing the fact that Cuomo's brother is the current Democratic attorney general of New York and his father, Mario Cuomo, was a past Democratic governor of the state? One might wonder if it's hard for the journalist to give Republicans a fair hearing, given his family history. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo did actually call in to the "hot seat" to talk to his brother, but the conversation was limited to Andrew offering probing hardballs, such as this: "You're a great athlete. And you're flexing your biceps...Was there ever an occasion when you actually beat your older brother in basketball? Yes or no?" The only time where this topic came even remotely close to being discussed was when Champion read an e-mail: "Jill in Texas wants to know, do you have any plans to enter into the political arena, following in your father's and brother's footsteps?" Cuomo blandly responded, "No. I am a voter and I'm very proud of my father and my brother. My brother fills the political space in the Cuomo family." Champion might have followed up by highlighting the host's slashing interview with Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo on June 8, 2007. Speaking of the immigration bill that the congressman helped kill, he attacked, "You use, frankly, a scary word like balkanization as a result of what could have come about from a bill like this. Do you think you're driving anti-immigrant sentiment?" He also challenged, "Why did you feel the need to rip a bill like this down?" See a June 11, 2007 CyberAlert posting for more: www.mrc.org Perhaps while Cuomo was in the "hot seat," he could have been asked, now that Barack Obama has been elected, whether he feels regret for fretting about American racism. On December, 20 2007, he questioned Obama, "What do you think the bigger obstacle is for you in becoming president, the Clinton campaign machine or America's inherent racists, racism?" The ABC host also challenged (then) presidential candidate John Edwards on January 2, 2008, "When you think people get into the room, do you think race or gender may play an unspoken role in the caucus voting?" See a January 3, 2008 CyberAlert posting for more on both examples: www.mrc.org Now, in a previous segment, Cuomo did talk about his children and the difficulty for them to be raised by someone well known. But that doesn't exactly fit the concept of hard hitting queries. Co-host Robin Roberts will have her turn in the "hot seat" on Friday. Hopefully, ABC will move beyond underwear and select some actual tough questions for her. A transcript of segment, which aired at 8:11am on November 20, follows:
8am tease
8:11
8:12am -- Brent Baker
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MATTHEWS: I think it's great that this country still surprises the world. And here's a great statistic. You know we were afraid that a lot of people who are white, would go into the voting booth and vote against him because he is black, and it would be lower than the polls. And this is the miraculous thing that happened. In my state of Pennsylvania, for example, this is all across the country. I talked to the guy who ran Pennsylvania the other day. He said, it was supposed to be three points, it was 11 points, he won by. So eight percent of Pennsylvanians voted for him but never told anybody he was gonna do it. So they, they, they wanted to open their hearts and try something new and give the young guy a shot, and they were embarrassed may be to say so because their neighbors were conservative, you know? It's so great that people. I mean if I were in a black family I would just love to be in a black family about 11:30pm that night, after the magic happened, and realize, hey you know some people are better than they seem. Some people are nicer, more open, you know, more liberal than they admit. 
In short items Thursday night, ABC anchor Charles Gibson and FNC anchor Brit Hume both noted how House Democrats voted to replace Congressman John Dingell of Michigan -- as Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce -- with Congressman Henry Waxman, but only Hume identified Waxman as a liberal: "Waxman is a strong liberal and environmental advocate." Gibson left out any ideological tag as he echoed Hume's environmental "advocate" language in benignly describing the Californian, who now chairs the Government Reform Committee, as "a strong advocate of environmental issues."
On tour with his new book Call Me Ted, CNN founder Ted Turner unloaded more of his typical liberal nuggets on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS Tuesday. He pounded Bush's pro-life position on the UN Population Fund: "We said we were going to pay, but the Bush administration never issued the checks. So women are dying of unsafe abortions." He still had old Cold War lessons: "I learned that the Russians, if you're nice to them -- if you treat people with dignity, respect, and friendliness, they'll almost always reciprocate the same way." He trashed Fox News for backing war in Iraq and then claimed they "backed off of it." 
Former Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page editor Chris Satullo, who in a July 1 op-ed suggested that "America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday" on Independence Day due to the "waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep" used on some enemy combatants since 9/11, has been hired to become the director of news operations for WHYY-TV channel 12, the PBS affiliate in the Philadelphia area, as well as of its NPR-affiliated radio station. 