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1. Couric & Williams Paint Obama as 'Culture of Washington' Victim All of the broadcast and cable network anchors challenged President Barack Obama in some questions during their Tuesday afternoon Oval Office interview sessions, but CBS's Katie Couric and NBC's Brian Williams also painted Obama as a victim of Washington's culture which forced HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle's withdrawal. "You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics as usual culture here," Couric noted as she empathized: "Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?" Williams noted "you lost two nominees, two appointments today," so, as if Obama were an uninvolved casualty of unfairness: "Did that make you angry, I imagine?" Echoing Couric, Williams fretted: "How do you prevent the lesson from being that, no matter how lofty the goals of the new guy coming in, Washington wins, in the end?" Maybe it was just following the law and paying a penalty for avoiding taxes which won in the end. 2. Mitchell: Public Will Blame the GOP for Bringing Down Daschle During MSNBC's live coverage on Tuesday of the sudden resignation of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle, reporter Andrea Mitchell suggested to Republican Senator Jim DeMint that the American public will see this as the GOP having "brought him [Daschle] down." The Democratic nominee resigned over a growing controversy which revealed that the former Senate majority leader owed $140,000 in back taxes. (He has since paid them.) Mitchell sympathetically described talking to the ex-Senator: "I just got off the phone with Tom Daschle. And it was an emotional conversation. He was clearly, it sounded as though he were tearful, overwrought." Later, while speaking to DeMint, Mitchell bristled at the South Carolina Senator's contention that Democrats were also skeptical of Daschle's nomination. The journalist chided: "Well, Senator DeMint, you can say that the Democrats were uncomfortable as well, but they were all supporting him publicly." She then lectured: "So, this does read to the public as though the Republicans went after this man, someone that the President very much wanted, and brought him down." 3. CNN's Blitzer and Vanity Fair's Orth Fawn Over Obama and His Team Anchor Wolf Blitzer and Vanity Fair correspondent Maureen Orth raved about the core members of the Obama administration and their pictures taken by photographer Annie Liebovitz during a segment on CNN's Situation Room on Monday. Their conversation sounded as if the two were suddenly back in high school browsing a new yearbook. Blitzer gushed over the photos of President Obama and his wife Michelle and that of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, while Orth extolled how "they [the new administration] want a green America. They really do." 4. Stop the Presses! ABC Explores Not Passing Giant 'Stimulus' It hardly balances all of the airtime given to liberal proponents of President Obama's plans for massive government spending as "stimulus," but an actual network news program actually presented a single story outlining the conservative free-market approach to today's economic problems. On Saturday's Good Morning America, ABC correspondent John Hendren examined what he termed "a growing movement among economists, who say the best way out of this recession is to do nothing. Nothing at all." Hendren gave three soundbites to Cato economist Dan Mitchell, who pointed out that "government spending doesn't work very well," how "bad government policies got us into this mess," and that while letting the free market run its course might be painful, "we can make that transition much quicker and have a faster and stronger recovery."
of Washington' Victim All of the broadcast and cable network anchors challenged President Barack Obama in some questions during their Tuesday afternoon Oval Office interview sessions, but CBS's Katie Couric and NBC's Brian Williams also painted Obama as a victim of Washington's culture which forced HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle's withdrawal. "You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics as usual culture here," Couric noted as she empathized: "Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?" Williams noted "you lost two nominees, two appointments today," so, as if Obama were an uninvolved casualty of unfairness: "Did that make you angry, I imagine?" Echoing Couric, Williams fretted: "How do you prevent the lesson from being that, no matter how lofty the goals of the new guy coming in, Washington wins, in the end?" Maybe it was just following the law and paying a penalty for avoiding taxes which won in the end. Expressing disappointment with how Obama allowed the Daschle withdrawal to hurt one of Obama's left-wing policy goals, CNN's Anderson Cooper, in an excerpt run during the 6 PM EST hour of The Situation Room, rued: "Explain what happened today. Tom Daschle. You've let one of the most important domestic issues, which is health care, get caught up in what looks, to many Americans, like politics as usual." During a piece on Daschle's withdrawal which preceded the Cooper/Obama interview excerpt, CNN displayed on screen: "STUNNING SETBACK TO HEALTH REFORM" [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Tuesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] (In contrast, to Couric and Williams, ABC's Charles Gibson held Obama accountable for the nominees who failed to pay all the taxes they owed: "But there's more of a problem than just Daschle, and you're the one, in your inaugural speech, who talked about an era of responsibility. You've now got three major appointees who, it turns out, haven't paid all their taxes. What kind of a message does that send about responsibility?") On the stimulus, NBC's Williams sympathized with how the bill is being "hacked to death" by those who don't appreciate how the full package is made up of many valuable parts: "Is it tougher to make the case that this enormous package is more like a million little things? Is it getting hacked to death as you watch?" All the questions posed by Williams, in the portion shown on the Tuesday, February 3 NBC Nightly News, as collated by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth: - Philadelphia Inquirer today: "Surely, President Obama can find qualified people to serve in his cabinet who aren't hustling to write overdue checks to the IRS. You lost two nominees, two appointments today. Did that make you angry, I imagine? - How do you prevent the lesson from being that, no matter how lofty the goals of the new guy coming in, Washington wins, in the end? - Mr. President, how do you make the case to American families who are losing jobs today, right now, and hurting -- and those who aren't are worried -- that you've got something for them, that a big, enormous stimulus package is either going to save their job, get them a job, or generally help their lot in life, and, meantime, they see the federal government buying up bad banks? - For all the provisions that you just chose to outline, there are others like the one Senator McConnell was mocking today, subsidy for Hollywood film makers. Is it tougher to make the case that this enormous package is more like a million little things? Is it getting hacked to death as you watch? - Among the levers your enemies on the Hill are using is, about this personnel matter. This is from Howard Fineman, Newsweek magazine, MSNBC last evening: "If they keep saying," they, the Obama White House, "that all these people deserve special treatment because they're indispensable -- ‘Geithner is indispensable' -- it begins to sound not only hypocritical, but elitist. It's like there are rules for everybody else, and then there are rules for indispensable people, and that's exactly the opposite of the grassroots message that he," meaning you, Mr. President, "came here with." All of the quotes/assessments above in this item are based on what aired on the evening newscasts, not the full interviews, which were not much longer than what aired. Links to what the networks have posted online: ABC News: Article and video of Charles Gibson with Obama: abcnews.go.com CBS News: Transcript and video of Katie Couric with Obama: www.cbsnews.com NBC News: Video of entire interview Brian Williams conducted with Obama: www.msnbc.msn.com CNN: Video clips posted of Anderson Cooper with Obama: www.cnn.com
FNC: Video of Chris Wallace's session with Obama. A substantial excerpt ran at the top of Special Report with Bret Baier: www.foxnews.com
Bringing Down Daschle During MSNBC's live coverage on Tuesday of the sudden resignation of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle, reporter Andrea Mitchell suggested to Republican Senator Jim DeMint that the American public will see this as the GOP having "brought him [Daschle] down." The Democratic nominee resigned over a growing controversy which revealed that the former Senate majority leader owed $140,000 in back taxes. (He has since paid them.) Mitchell sympathetically described talking to the ex-Senator: "I just got off the phone with Tom Daschle. And it was an emotional conversation. He was clearly, it sounded as though he were tearful, overwrought." Later, while speaking to DeMint, Mitchell bristled at the South Carolina Senator's contention that Democrats were also skeptical of Daschle's nomination. The journalist chided: "Well, Senator DeMint, you can say that the Democrats were uncomfortable as well, but they were all supporting him publicly." She then lectured: "So, this does read to the public as though the Republicans went after this man, someone that the President very much wanted, and brought him down." [This item, by the MRC's Scott Whitlock, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Earlier in the interview, Mitchell again shifted focus to congressional Republicans and lamented the passing of an "all too brief honeymoon." She addedL "I mean, is this- is there blood in the water now after this nomination has been withdrawn?" Mitchell, who recounted how "tearful" and overwrought Daschle was when she talked to him on the phone on Tuesday, sounded a similar theme on November 6, 1990. During election night coverage of that year's midterms, she described Senator Jesse Helms' reelection over his Democratic opponent as a "heart-breaking race": "This has really been a heart-breaking race....What happened here was a very strong racial message from Jesse Helms in the closing ten days of the race and it focused on something that we've found, found previously in Louisiana with the David Duke campaign." See the November 12, 1990 Notable Quotables: www.mediaresearch.org In 2004, when moderate/liberal Republican Colin Powell resigned his post in George W. Bush's State Department, Mitchell mourned, "This really is a regretful moment and a passing of a great potential leader. Colin Powell was so undercut by many of the other cabinet officials and never had the full backing to do some of the things that he really wanted to do." See the December 6, 2004 Notable Quotables: www.mediaresearch.org A partial transcript of two of Mitchell's February 3 exchanges, which began at 12:53pm EST:
NORAH O'DONNELL: We're also joined now by NBC's Andrea Mitchell, as well as our bureau chief, mark Whitaker. Let's go first to Andrea Mitchell. Because, I understand you have spoken with former Senator Tom Daschle. What did he say?
1:01pm
Fawn Over Obama and His Team Anchor Wolf Blitzer and Vanity Fair correspondent Maureen Orth raved about the core members of the Obama administration and their pictures taken by photographer Annie Liebovitz during a segment on CNN's Situation Room on Monday. Their conversation sounded as if the two were suddenly back in high school browsing a new yearbook. Blitzer gushed over the photos of President Obama and his wife Michelle and that of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, while Orth extolled how "they [the new administration] want a green America. They really do." Blitzer zeroed-in on Liebovitz's photography at the beginning of the segment, as he introduced Orth: "...[Y]ou've got a new cover. It's a pretty nice cover, about the new president of the United States....These pictures by Annie Liebovitz, the photographer, are really great pictures because it says a lot about the president, the first lady." The two first discussed a shot of the Obamas walking outside the presidential limo on Inauguration Day, and the CNN anchor just couldn't get enough: "[T]hey were walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. Who can forget that moment?...Look at those huge smiles....They are obviously holding hands, and very excited." Orth replied, "Yeah, total energy. That was such an energetic day all the way around." [This item, by the MRC's Matthew Balan, was posted Tuesday afternoon, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Orth noted a favorite anecdote of hers as she told Blitzer about the photo of the Obama economic team: "Larry Summers told me this was an amazing moment, once in a generation, for economic policy makers and they had to take advantage of this post-inaugural period, and then Orszag said, you know, we've really got to make government cool again." Later, the Vanity Fair correspondent acknowledged how much she really liked the new "Green Team" at the White House:
BLITZER: These are the people who want to make America green. At the end of the interview, Blitzer asked Orth, "What goes through your mind, looking ahead, over the next four years, maybe eight years?" She answered. "They came to play. They really want to change things....So we'll see what happens, if they can fulfill these promises. But they're ready to rumble." Earlier in the day on NBC's Today show, Orth also played up the "green" aspect of the new administration, and lauded their big government philosophy. For more on Orth's appearance on the Today show, see the February 3 CyberAlert item, "Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth Cheers Obama's Cabinet on Today," at: www.mrc.org The full transcript of the Bltizer/Orth segment, which concluded the 5 pm Eastern hour of Monday's Situation Room:
WOLF BLITZER: And joining us now, Maureen Orth -- she's the special correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, and you've got a new cover. It's a pretty nice cover, about the new president of the United States. Maureen, thanks very much for coming in.
Giant 'Stimulus' It hardly balances all of the airtime given to liberal proponents of President Obama's plans for massive government spending as "stimulus," but an actual network news program actually presented a single story outlining the conservative free-market approach to today's economic problems. On Saturday's Good Morning America, ABC correspondent John Hendren examined what he termed "a growing movement among economists, who say the best way out of this recession is to do nothing. Nothing at all." Hendren gave three soundbites to Cato economist Dan Mitchell, who pointed out that "government spending doesn't work very well," how "bad government policies got us into this mess," and that while letting the free market run its course might be painful, "we can make that transition much quicker and have a faster and stronger recovery." Hendren termed the free market economists "do nothings," but suggested they may be influential enough to at least block a little of the runaway spending. Hendren told co-anchor Bill Weir: "Now, the do-nothings know they're going to lose this debate. But they're hoping to hold down the size of the stimulus. As one economist told me, I can see them cutting $100 billion, and that ain't chump change. Bill?" [This item, by the MRC's Rich Noyes, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] The hook for ABC's story seems to have been the big full-page newspaper ad Cato ran the previous day in the New York Times and Washington Post. The ad begins by quoting President Obama declaring that everyone agrees with him -- "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy" -- followed by large letters proclaiming: "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true." Over the signatures of more than 250 economists, the Cato ad declared: Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan's 'lost decade' in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policy makers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth. PDF of the ad: LINK: www.cato.org Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the networks loved to champion anti-war dissenters as offering a valuable minority opinion on an important issue, but other than this one ABC story there has been virtually no acknowledgment by the networks of those like Cato's Mitchell who argue that the Democrats' big government spending plan will delay our eventual recovery from this recession, not "stimulate" the economy to renewed prosperity. MRC intern Mike Sargent noticed the segment appeared at about 7:12am ET on the January 31 Good Morning America and provided this transcript:
BILL WEIR: Turning to politics now. And in his weekly radio address, President Obama is once again urging Congress to pass his stimulus plan ASAP. The Democrats' bill didn't get a single Republican vote in the House, and now faces a skeptical Senate, some who say the best stimulus is no stimulus. ABC's John Hendren is in Washington. Good morning. -- Brent Baker
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