Media Reality Check -- 06/18/2001 -- Newsweek Boss Concedes News Media Liberals Just "Launder Our Views Through, Quote, 'Objective Critics'"

For Immediate Release: Katie Wright (703) 683-5004 - Monday, June 18, 2001

MAG HIGHLIGHTS BUSH CRITICS AS EDITOR ADMITS BIAS

Newsweek Boss Concedes News Media Liberals Just "Launder Our Views Through, Quote, 'Objective Critics'"

Have you noticed all of those Europeans grumbling about President George W. Bush's environmental policies on television and in the newspapers recently? Thanks to a fit of candor from Newsweek's Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, we now know that all of the special press access given to shaggy-haired enviro-wackos is just the media's not-so-subtle way of spanking Bush for pursuing policies they don't like.

Thomas explained how reporters sneak bias into news stories: "We launder our views through, quote, 'objective critics.' And certainly the press is pretty green, the press is pretty pro-environment and I don't think there's any question that they, as a body, feel that Bush is wrong on the environment," he confessed on CNN's Reliable Sources on Saturday evening. "I'm excluding the conservative press - the Weekly Standard and so forth - but generally the press is pretty green and they're going to use the Europeans to take the Bushies to task."

Sure enough, the latest Newsweek gave lots of room to meanie-greenies who talked trash about Bush's environmental policies. Here's the first paragraph of Christopher Dickey's article, published in the magazine's June 25 international edition and available to U.S. readers on MSNBC's web site: "Bianca Jagger, the celebrity activist, isn't exactly a fan of George W. But she loved the U.S. president's first European tour, looking on with pleasure from among thousands of shouting, marching protesters. They jeered him, reviled him, even mooned him. They trashed him as the 'Toxic Texan,' hoisted banners proclaiming 'Bush go home,' and burned American flags. More than a hundred were arrested and dozens injured as rioters threw stones and broke shop windows in some of the uglier violence to cloud a European summit. How would she sum up the man, from a European perspective? 'The contemporary antichrist,' she says." -- Rich Noyes

L. Brent Bozell III, Publisher; Brent Baker, Rich Noyes, Editors; Jessica Anderson, Brian Boyd, Geoffrey Dickens, Patrick Gregory, Ken Shepherd, Brad Wilmouth, Media Analysts; Kristina Sewell, Research Associate; Liz Swasey, Director of Communications. For the latest liberal media bias, read the CyberAlert at www.mrc.org.