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The 2,896th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
12:20pm EDT, Wednesday May 27, 2009 (Vol. Fourteen; No. 102)
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2. Quick to Tag Alito & Roberts 'Ultra' & 'Hardline' 'Conservatives'
3. ABC Minimizes 'Liberal' Label for Sotomayor, But with Alito...
4. CNN's Toobin: Sotomayor 'Moderate Liberal, Like Ginsburg & Breyer'
5. Matthews: Skip 'Crazies' Like Rush, Obama 'Wowed Us' w/ Sotomayor
6. New MRC Web Site, So New Online Location for CyberAlerts
Amazingly, after showing no reluctance in 2005 to describe John Roberts and Sam Alito as "conservative" or worse, the Tuesday network evening newscasts, particularly ABC and NBC, applied more "conservative" tags to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's critics than "liberal" labels to her, as the coverage suggested calling her a liberal was a hasty judgment from accusatory partisans. In total, ABC's World News and the NBC Nightly News combined for a piddling two uses of the "liberal" term while issuing a "conservative" tag eight times. (CBS viewers heard "liberal" four times and "conservative" just once.) Setting up a look at Sotomayer's record, ABC anchor Charles Gibson fretted about how conservatives had "already" assessed her: "Even before the President announced his decision, conservatives were reviewing Judge Sotomayor's judicial record and were already saying she would be an activist on the court." Jan Crawford Greenburg then framed any notion of Sotomayer as liberal as based on accusations from conservatives: "...which conservatives have called code for," "...conservatives today seized on this comment" and "already, conservatives have jumped on the decision." Over on NBC, Pete Williams presumed a conflict between her rise from poverty and being liberal: "Despite her remarkable personal odyssey, Judge Sotomayor is already being called a liberal activist by some conservative groups." (That sentence included NBC's only liberal label utterance during four segments.) [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Tuesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] "Conservatives view Sotomayor as a liberal with an agenda," CBS's Wyatt Andrews relayed before he cautioned the nominee "is generally seen as liberal, but experts say is not always predictable." The CBS Evening News, however, came closest to an unattributed description of Sotomayer as a liberal when anchor Katie Couric, who also trumpeted her "amazing life story," asked Jeff Greenfield: "Will she really change the make-up of the court, or have an impact on some hot-button issues because many people are saying that Justice Souter is just being replaced by another liberal?" But earlier in the newscast, CBS reporter Priya David failed to make a connection between a socialist and Sotomayer's views. As the quote from Sotomayer's college yearbook was enlarged, David concluded her review of the judge's life story: "Her past also offers a hint of what's ahead. From her Princeton University yearbook, Sotomayor's chosen quotation: 'I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won.'" David didn't name the author of the quote, but the image shows: "Norman Thomas." That would be the same Norman Thomas who was the Socialist Party presidential nominee from 1928 through 1948 (and also the grandfather of Newsweek's Evan Thomas): www.answers.com Neither ABC or NBC mentioned or showed the yearbook page and/or quote. Beliefnet, the MRC's Rich Noyes noticed, pointed out that the White House distributed yearbook page image to the news media: blog.beliefnet.com In relating conservative criticism of Sotomayer, all three newscasts at some point did report her "the court of appeals is where policy is made" boast, the controversy over the New Haven reverse discrimination case and her proposition that it's a good thing her ethnicity shapes her decisions and leads to better decisions than would be made by a white male. Earlier Tuesday NewsBusters post, "Flashback: Nets Were Quick to Tag Alito and Roberts as 'Ultra' and 'Hardline' 'Conservatives,'" is #2 below. Labeling rundowns for the Tuesday, May 26 newscasts: # ABC's World News: (one "liberal," five "conservative"): Jake Tapper: "He has called this empathy in the past, which conservatives have called code for liberals creating laws from the bench." Charles Gibson: "Even before the President announced his decision, conservatives were reviewing Judge Sotomayor's judicial record and were already saying she would be an activist on the court."
Jan Crawford Greenburg: "Conservatives today seized on this comment Sotomayor made four years ago when she was a federal appeals court judge." Greenburg, re New Haven: "Already, conservatives have jumped on the decision." Greenburg: "Conservatives point a to a speech she gave in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley law school, when she suggested her ethnicity shapes her decisions."
Wyatt Andrews: "While Senate Republicans were restrained in their reactions today, conservatives view Sotomayor as a liberal with an agenda -- an agenda captured in the judge's own words when describing the courts of appeal." Andrews: "Sotomayor is known to favor abortion rights and in her 700 opinions is generally seen as liberal, but experts say is not always predictable." Couric: "Will she really change the make-up of the court, or have an impact on some hot-button issues because many people are saying that Justice Souter is just being replaced by another liberal?" Jeff Greenfield: "We simply really don't know whether Sotomayor's kind of liberalism on the bench is the same as David Souter's or she'll have very different views."
Pete Williams: "Despite her remarkable personal odyssey, Judge Sotomayor is already being called a liberal activist by some conservative groups." Pete Williams: "But some conservatives criticize her for saying in a 2001 speech, quote, 'a wise Latino woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.'" David Gregory: "The idea here that this is, in the minds of so many conservatives, a real activist." 
Network anchors and reporters didn't hesitate to apply strong ideological labels (not just quoting others) to President Bush's two Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Will they be as willing to tag President Obama's nominee, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, as "staunch," and "hardline" and "ultra" liberal, or at least as "very liberal"? In July of 2005, on the night Bush announced Roberts, ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Ted Koppel both described him as not just conservative, but as "very conservative." NBC's Brian Williams called Roberts "a kind of 'bedrock conservative,' not what is called a 'movement conservative.'" See: www.mediaresearch.org The next night, CBS Evening News anchor John Roberts (now with CNN) wanted to know of his namesake: "Has President Bush attempted to move the court further to the right with this pick?" On NBC, Chip Reid (now at CBS) highlighted how one liberal activist "says he worries that Roberts might be a stealth candidate, moderate on the outside but as conservative as Justices Scalia and Thomas on the inside." See: www.mediaresearch.org And there was no doubt in NPR reporter Nina Totenberg's mind that Judge John Roberts is "very conservative," it's just a matter of how "very." On NPR's All Things Considered she prefaced "conservative" with three verys, describing him as "a very, very, very conservative man." But in a taped soundbite on the next day's Good Morning America on ABC, she cut back to two modifiers, dubbing him merely "a very, very conservative man." See: www.mediaresearch.org A little more than three months later with Alito, several reporters repeatedly applied a conservative tag or added adjectives to suggest he's out of the mainstream. On ABC's October 31 Good Morning America, Jessica Yellen (now with CNN) issued five labels in under 50 seconds, describing Alito as someone who will please Bush's "conservative base," has "established conservative credentials," is "a law and order conservative," who is "in the mold of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia" and whose "writing is so similar to the conservative justice's, he's sometimes nicknamed 'Scalito.'" Just before Bush's announcement, Charles Gibson called Alito "very conservative" and "the most conservative member" of the otherwise "liberal appellate court." Gibson soon repeated himself: "The President has picked somebody very conservative." Over on CBS's Early Show, Gloria Borger dubbed Alito "quite conservative," the same label applied a few minutes earlier on CNN's Daybreak by Carol Costello before Jeffrey Toobin applied the "very conservative" tag. NBC's Katie Couric asserted that Alito "could be a controversial choice" because he's "a favorite on the right and he would replace moderate justice Sandra Day O'Connor." See: www.mediaresearch.org The ABC and CBS evening newscasts distorted his role and position on the husband-notification abortion case and pegged him as a "staunch" or "hardline" conservative, but NBC managed to correctly describe his role in the abortion case and depicted him as "dependably conservative, though with an independent streak." On ideological labeling, ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas asserted on the October 31, 2005 World News: "Conservatives are thrilled, liberals incensed." She went on to relay that "he is said to be brilliant and a staunch conservative." CBS anchor Bob Schieffer saw Democrats not liberals when he touted how Bush has "made the conservatives happy, but the Democrats are upset." John Roberts proceeded to assert: "Alito's judicial philosophy so mirrors that of the Supreme Court's hardliner, Antonin Scalia, that he's been nicknamed 'Scalito.'" Roberts ominously warned: "If confirmed, Alito would wipe out the swing seat now occupied by Sandra Day O'Connor, tilting the Supreme Court in a solidly conservative direction for years to come." See: www.mediaresearch.org The following week on NBC's Today, co-host Matt Lauer applied an extreme ideological tag to Alito, telling former Senator Fred Thompson: "Let's face it, he is an ultra-conservative and his track record on the bench is that he, he, [talking over Thompson] he goes to the right on key issues." Thompson rejected the label. Lauer also fretted that if Alito is confirmed, "eight of the nine Supreme Court justices will be men, eight of the nine will be white, eight of the nine will have law degrees from either Harvard or Yale, five of the nine will be Catholic. What does that say about the, the Court's ability to reflect and, and, and rule on behalf of the diverse population of this country?" See: www.mediaresearch.org
ABC News didn't use any labels such as liberal or progressive to describe Judge Sonia Sotomayor during its Tuesday morning coverage of her nomination to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, when President Bush nominated Justice Samuel Alito to the high court in 2005, the network's correspondents repeatedly used the conservative label to describe the nominee. During the first segment of the 7 am EDT hour of Good Morning America, before Sotomayor's name emerged, This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos summarized who was on President Obama's short list for the court nomination, including Sotomayor, describing the former or current occupations they have, but no ideological descriptions. When anchor Diane Sawyer asked about "what kind of fight is the White House anticipating" from Republicans in the Senate and "how do they plan to deal with it," Stephanopoulos further explained that "Republicans and conservatives have already prepared dossiers on all three of the top candidates....I've talked to several Republicans in the Senate about this -- that the chances they're going to defeat President Obama's nominee are very, very low. The bar they're trying to set -- they're trying to have a debate over the future of the court, over the ideological direction of the court." But he never mentioned Sotomayor's judicial philosophy or political leaning. [This item, by the MRC's Matthew Balan, was posted Tuesday evening on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] An hour and a half later, as the president's nomination was leaked, Sawyer had Stephanopoulos, along with correspondents Jake Tapper, Jonathan Karl, and Jan Crawford Greenburg, on to give details about the pick. Stephanopoulos and Greenburg played up the nominee's life story, and how it would be "very difficult for Republicans to oppose Judge Sotomayor because of her background," and how "conservatives have already signaled that they will make an issue over some of her decisions on the appeals court." After Sawyer mentioned how President Obama "talked about empathy...in his selection," Tapper explained that "a lot of conservatives have criticized that. Orrin Hatch, formerly the leading Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said that ‘empathy' could be a code for a liberal activist, and, of course, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has said empathy is an excuse for liberal judges to write what's not in the law, but what they feel is in their heart." Tapper's hinting that Sotomayor might a liberal is the only time such a label was used in ABC's coverage the entire morning. After President Obama formally announced Sotomayer as his nominee at 10:15 Eastern, Tapper described how some of President Obama's political allies would combat criticisms from Republicans and/or conservatives, again using the "liberal" tag: TAPPER: I just wanted to touch on a couple things going on in the room. One is, there were a lot of Hispanic and Latino groups, and a lot of women's groups' representatives here as well, and I think, in regard to...how some people take issue with Judge Sotomayor's brusque manner -- you're going to hear a lot of liberal women's groups say that's not the kind of comment you would hear if it was the same exact story, but it was a man. Nobody has an issue with a man being arrogant or brusque, but they have an issue with a woman being brusque. That's something that you'll hear from a lot of these women's groups. Stephanopoulos and Greenburg returned as well after the president's announcement, repeating their earlier points, all the while not using any ideological labels to describe the nominee. Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton aide, emphasized how President Obama was "moved by the [nominee's] story as he was telling it up on the podium....Then you top it all off with he was practically daring the senators to vote against the justice who saved baseball. That's her experience back in '94,'95 as a judge who got involved in the baseball strike and pretty much solved it." Greenburg went further in this vein: "...We saw some of those other top contenders being pushed by his [Obama's] legal advisers, but the political team realized and calculated that she, because of this compelling life story, the first historic justice as an Hispanic, will be hardest for Republicans to oppose, and we're already seeing some of those comments this morning." Jonathan Karl did mention in the post-announcement coverage how Sotomayor, "of all the names that President Obama was widely reported to be looking at for this nomination, that this is the most controversial. So they will be gearing up for a serious fight on this, Diane, and they'll also be supported in that by outside conservative groups, who have been gearing up for this months, probably even years." But again, there was no ideological label used for the nominee, compared with the "conservative" label used for the opposition groups. Three and a half years earlier, ABC's correspondents and anchors very liberally used the conservative label to describe Justice Alito when he was nominated by President Bush. For example, Jessica Yellin, the network's White House correspondent at the time, used the "conservative" label five times in the course of fifty seconds to describe the jurist: YELLIN: Good morning. President Bush will please his CONSERVATIVE base with this pick. Samuel Alito is certain to be opposed by many Democrats, but no one will accuse him of being unqualified. Samuel Alito is a federal judge in New Jersey with established CONSERVATIVE credentials. He has well known views on constitutional issues and unquestioned intellectual heft. Alito is considered a law and order CONSERVATIVE, and many Democrats believe he would oppose abortion rights because he supported a law that required women to notify their husbands before having an abortion. In choosing Alito, the President has made good on a campaign promise to pick Supreme Court nominees in the mold of CONSERVATIVE Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito once clerked for Justice Scalia, and his writing is so similar to the CONSERVATIVE justice's, he's sometimes nicknamed 'Scalito.'" For more on ABC and other media outlets' use of the "conservative" label to describe Alito pick in 2005, see the October 31, 2005 CyberAlert item, "Alito Labeled as 'Very Conservative' and 'Quite Conservative,'" at: www.mrc.org Also check #2 above.
CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Tuesday twice labeled President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a "moderate liberal." On American Morning, minutes after the Latina judge's name emerged near the bottom half of the 8 am Eastern hour, Toobin predicted that she would "probably have very little trouble getting confirmed, and who will be a voice like David Souter for moderate liberalism." Hours later, during The Situation Room program, he predicted that Sotomayor, if confirmed, would rule as a "moderate liberal, like Ginsburg and Breyer." American Morning anchor T. J. Holmes brought on the legal analyst to discuss the Obama nominee. Toobin first outlined that Sotomayor was "a very eminent judge....She brings a certain bipartisan aura, because she was originally appointed to the federal district court by the first President Bush....[T]his looks like a very solid pick, someone who will probably have very little trouble getting confirmed, and who will be a voice like David Souter for moderate liberalism." Minutes before on the CNN program, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz referred to the nominee as "moderate and to the left." Holmes followed up on this note, and asked, "Is that about right?" [This item, by the MRC's Matthew Balan, was posted Tuesday evening on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Toobin answered: "I would say that's -- that's right. You never know for sure, because circuit court judges are bound by Supreme Court precedent....So certainly she will be to the left on the court, with the three other liberals on the court -- John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We'll see how liberal she is. I don't think anyone can know for sure. She probably doesn't even know at this point." Over nine hours later, just after the beginning of the 6 pm Eastern hour of The Situation Room, anchor Wolf Blitzer consulted with the senior legal analyst about the Sotomayor pick. Toobin repeated many of the same points he had made on American Morning:
WOLF BLITZER: Jeff, talk a little bit about the chemistry. Assuming she's going to be confirmed, what will it be like? What will she add to this court, for example, that David Souter didn't necessarily have? The question that follows from Toobin's analysis: given Ginsburg and Breyer's record on the Supreme Court, let alone his admission that there is a "real unknown" about how Sotomayor would rule if she is confirmed, how can he label any of them "moderate liberal"?
Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, couldn't contain his excitement over Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as he brought on David Axelrod to praise, to the White House advisor's face, the rollout of the Supreme Court nominee as he cheered: "It was a brilliant piece of work....it couldn't have been done any better," and then later gushed that Barack Obama: "Wowed us!" with the pick. Matthews also claimed the only opposition to Sotomayor was made up of the "crazies," and "whack jobs," like Rush Limbaugh as Matthews told Axelrod "the only critics of this nomination with any kind of violence are that R.N.C crowd: Rush, Newt and...Cheney." [This item, by the MRC's Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Tuesday evening on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] The following exchanges were aired on the May 26 edition of Hardball: CHRIS MATTHEWS TO AXELROD: You know since you fellows came to the White House I've been looking at the patterns, the, the team of rivals aspect of bringing Senator Clinton aboard as Secretary of State. The, sort of, the Reagan model of getting things done as quickly as you can because you only have so much mandate. And then I've looked at the Chicago model, which is to act as if there's only one governing party and then basically do warfare with the crazies out there, let me put it more lightly - the troublemakers. The Cheneys, the Newt Gingriches, the Rush Limbaughs. Here, I've noticed in all the criticism today -- I'm sure you've gone through it -- the only critics of this nomination with any kind of violence are that R.N.C crowd: Rush, Newt and Limbaugh, I mean and, and, and, and Cheney. It just seems like you guys are brilliant at picking fights with people that don't matter, that aren't in government, aren't in the Senate, aren't in the Congress. And you brilliantly say, "There's only one governing party, it's the Democratic Party of Barack Obama and we got these crazies out there we love to fight with." Here you are doing it again. Nobody in the Senate has taken a real shot at this nominee. The people who've made all the noise are the people on the outside, who many people think are the whack jobs! ...
MATTHEWS: Well I thought it was a brilliant piece of work today, the way you brought her out. I thought that biography of her, the way it was presented -- my own view â€" was it couldn't have been done any better. We now know so much more about this nominee than we've ever known about any nominee in the past and we know it all in one day. Thank you very much, great work today. ... MATTHEWS: Certainly the President kicked things off today with an amazing camp-, look at that, it's like a campaign announcement at a Democratic Convention. He brought her out, he wowed us! The ballyhoo boys did a good job, as I said to Axelrod a minute ago. This was well-developed. The question is will the landing be as good as the take-off. The take-off looked pretty good.
The MRC launched a new Web site on Friday, so for a few days there will be a disconnect between the links in CyberAlerts for the online posting of each CyberAlert and where you can see screen shots and videos that illustrate each CyberAlert item. As always, you can click on the links to the NewsBusters posts to access the pictures and/or video. Individual CyberAlert items are now posted online under the "Daily BiasAlerts" heading. The CyberAlert e-mails will continue, but only the e-mail will be called "CyberAlert." Sometime this week, I hope, the CyberAlert will begin to deliver a compilation of the newest BiasAlerts posts, usually all those posted during the preceding 24 hours. The HTML version of the "new" CyberAlert will feature all the content previously available only online: Pictures/screen shots, images which will link you directly to online video playback, and embedded links. Don't worry, we will continue to have a plain text version sans anything but the text. Whichever version you now receive is the one you will continue to receive. To read online any of the items in today's CyberAlert, go to the "BiasAlert" page on our new site which is populated with the latest posts: www.mrc.org Oh, and to check out the new Media Research Center Web site: www.mrc.org -- Brent Baker
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