Bye-Bye Bryant: Gumbel Announced His Departure from The Early Show; Highlights of Gumbel’s History of Liberal Bias
-- Back to today's CyberAlert
1) CBS has announced that Early Show co-host Bryant
Gumbel will be leaving the show still mired in third place
two-and-a-half years after he was brought in to revive it. No date has
been set for his final broadcast.
2) Gumbel’s record of liberal advocacy and of
denigrating conservatives, with links to the best examples from the
MRC’s archives.
1
In
an announcement posted at noon EST today on the Early Show Web page,
CBS stated:
"Bryant
Gumbel is leaving The Early Show after anchoring the CBS morning
broadcast for two and a half years.
"Gumbel
says it's time for him to move on and do something else. He didn't say
what he'll be doing.
"CBS
hoped Gumbel would help The Early Show get out of third place in the
ratings. Gumbel says while he's "naturally disappointed"
that the show didn't do better in the ratings, he's ‘pleased with
the quality’ of the program."
The statement also noted: "Gumbel
will work with his bosses to set a date for his final broadcast."
Gumbel, who in 1997 signed a five-year
deal with CBS for $5 million annually, remains the host of HBO’s
monthly Real Sports.
For the entire announcement:
http://www.cbsnews.com/earlyshow/entertainment/celebspot/20020404gumbel.shtml
For the AP story by David Bauder:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=529&ncid=529&e=1&u=/ap/20020404
/ap_en_tv/tv_gumbel_quits_5
For the Reuters story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=579&ncid=762&e=1&u=/nm/20020404
/en_nm/media_gumbel_dc_1
2
Naturally,
the CBS statement about Bryant Gumbel deciding to step down from the
Early Show now that his five-year deal with CBS is expiring, did not
consider the impact his liberal advocacy and denigrating of
conservatives had on his inability to attract viewers to CBS after
co-hosting the top-rated Today show on NBC for 15 years.
In his statement posted by CBS, see Item
#1 above for the link, Gumbel maintained: "While I am naturally
disappointed that the show didn't fare better in the ratings, I am
pleased with the quality of the broadcast we created."
Gumbel’s liberal slant as documented
over the years by the MRC. First, the compilations of quotes already
collected onto Web pages by the MRC’s Liz Swasey, many with
RealPlayer video clips. Second, direct links to some of his most
obnoxious outbursts or skewed interviewing during his Early Show term
since the fall of 1999:
The compilations:
> Gumbel’s Morning TV Bias, with
video clips of bias up top:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/projects/Bryantgumbel.html#Bryant
Gumbel on CBS
> Top 10 Gumbel Stumbles: Videos and
transcripts of Bryant Gumbel's most biased Today, Public Eye and other
on-air moments, 1989-1999:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/projects/Bryantgumbel.html#Top
10 Gumbel Stumbles
> Gumbel Anthology: Forty-six of the
most bias Gumbel quotes from his on-air performances and interviews,
1989-1999:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/projects/Bryantgumbel.html#Gumbel
Anthology
> Bryant Gumbel on CBS: Videos and
transcripts of Bryant Gumbel's most biased Early Show moments, Nov.
1999 to May of 2001:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/projects/Bryantgumbel.html#Bryant
Gumbel on CBS
> Direct links to some of his most
egregious examples of bias from his days co-hosting The Early Show,
many illustrated with RealPlayer video clips, starting with the most
recent:
-- March 13, 2002: Prompted by the guilty
murder verdict returned against Andrea Yates, CBS’s Bryant Gumbel
charged: "Texas justice is an oxymoron."
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020314.asp#2
-- February 20, 2002: Ashamed of American
patriotism. Bryant Gumbel agreed with the sentiment that "they
shouldn't be keeping a medal count" by nation since "this is
not about nationalistic efforts." http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020222.asp#1
-- January 30, 2002: When Jordan’s King
Abdullah refused to denounce the Bush administration for shunning
Yasser Arafat and not helping the Palestinians, Gumbel repeatedly
pressed him to do so. Plus, Gumbel
wanted to know "how big a mistake" would it be for the U.S. to move "aggressively against
Iraq?"
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020201.asp#4
-- November 30, 2001: Gumbel tried to link
President Bush to the collapse of Enron, but the guest wouldn’t buy
it. "They were George Bush's biggest campaign contributor. Does
any of this reflect on the President at all?" The guest replied:
"No." Gumbel pleaded:
"No way, none, none whatsoever?" http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011203.asp#5
-- October 4, 2001: When a British
columnist was insufficiently anti-Bush and Blair, Gumbel scolded him:
"You're soft peddling your words this morning...you've also said,
for example, that ‘playing the world's policeman is not the answer
to the catastrophe, it's what led us into this.’ That ‘America and
Great Britain must draw in its horns and stop propping up favored
states.’" http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011005.asp#3
-- September 4, 2001: Bryant Gumbel still
holds some bitterness toward Al Gore. In an interview about Janet
Reno’s run for Governor of Florida, he asked: "Do you see her
running on the many accomplishments of the Clinton administration or
actually running from Clinton, a la Al Gore?" http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010905.asp#4
-- March 23, 2001: Gumbel complained that
the dive in the stock market was due not only to President Bush
talking it down but because the markets miss Bill Clinton and Bob
Rubin.
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010323.asp#1
-- February 27, 2001: Gumbel questioned
Republican Congressman Chris Shays on why Congress would waste its
time investigating Clinton’s last minute pardons.
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010227.asp#4
-- January 19, 2001: Gumbel to Missouri
Supreme Court judge Ronnie White:
"What do you think Senator Ashcroft’s distortion of your record
and tarnishing of your good name says about his character?"
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/2001/best2001/bestofnq2001d.html#Department
of Injustice
-- December 12, 2000. Gumbel: "And we
can’t let Justice Thomas pass on this. There’s no opinion of his
in here, he doesn’t ask questions in court. Does he do anything
besides vote and rubber stamp Scalia?"
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/2001/best2001/bestofnq2001c.html#ConservativeAward
-- August 15, 2000: Interviewing Hugh
Hefner, Gumbel worried: "In a macro-political sense, do you think
the Gore preoccupation with morality is a frightening turn for the
party?"
http://www.mrc.org/Campaign2000/mrc/20000815pm.html#Flap
-- July 12, 2000: Gumbel’s "What a
f***ing idiot" blast: FNC’s Hannity & Colmes enlarged the
video and went frame by frame; Cal Thomas suggested "it reveals a
deeply-held perspective." http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20000712.asp#6
-- June 30, 2000: A CBS camera seemed to
have caught a disgusted Bryant Gumbel blurting out "What a f***ing
idiot" just after wrapping up a hostile interview with Robert
Knight of the Family Research Council about how the Boy Scouts exclude
gays.
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20000630_extra.asp#1
-- May 22, 2000: Bryant Gumbel tried to
discredit the NRA’s jump in membership and demanded the NRA’s
Wayne LaPierre respond to the Million Mom March. But, a week earlier
before that march, Gumbel pressed organizers from the left about not
going far enough.
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20000522.asp#5
-- May 3, 2000: Bryant Gumbel: "As
the former head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was widely
hailed as the man who brought an end to the Cold War....These days he
is...trying to find solutions to the world's environmental
problems."
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20000503.asp#7
-- February 21, 2000: To the idea that
historians voted Reagan the best President, Bryant Gumbel dropped his
pen, "No!"
-- November 1, 1999: Gumbel Denounces MRC
ad; Insist That on Political View "I Hold Them in Check"
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/1999/cyb19991101.asp
That’s but a fraction of his recent
bias.