Decrying Miller's "Ugly" "Raw Meat" Speech -- 09/02/2004 - Media Research Center

For Immediate Release: Katie Wright (703) 683-5004 - Thursday, September 2, 2004

Republican Convention, Day 3: ABC's Stephanopoulos Hears Echoes of 1992 Houston Convention

Decrying Miller's "Ugly"
"Raw Meat" Speech

To document the heights (or depths) of liberal media bias during the week of the Republican convention in New York City, the Media Research Center staff is preparing twice-daily CyberAlerts. The following items are a sampling of the latest findings of notable convention media coverage, with full details available at www.mrc.org:

• Another Houston? Network reporters went after Georgia's Democratic Senator Zell Miller in a way they did not go after Al Sharpton after Sharpton's inflammatory attack on President Bush at the Democratic convention. ABC's George Stephanopoulos cited anti-Miller e-mails: "As he was talking, I was getting e-mails saying, you know, 'This reminds me of Houston, 1992, Pat Buchanan.' Now, Zell Miller is no Pat Buchanan, but it was a very, very hot speech, not likely to convince, as I said before, many of the unconvinced."

• Mad, Mad Zell. On CNN's NewsNight after the convention proceedings ended, Bill Schneider complained about Miller's anger: "This is a very angry convention, it's a very belligerent convention. I mean, I've covered 16 conventions. Now, Jeff said in the past you had speeches like this. I've never heard such an angry speech."

Worst of the Day: Mad at Zell • Nice Democrats, Mean Republicans. Also on CNN's NewsNight, Time magazine writer Joe Klein claimed that the Democratic convention speakers were "benign and positive," but he railed that Republicans were "being over the top angry." Klein called Miller's speech the ugliest thing he's ever heard.

• Segregation and Raw Meat. Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews twice mentioned that Zell Miller "had come up politically in the old segregationist South and he was loyal to many of those old issues" in the past. After Miller spoke, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell opined that his speech "was a red meat speech, in fact a raw meat speech, which in fact misstates a lot of Kerry's record." A few minutes later, Matthews got into a shouting match with Miller, who at one point wished he could duel the MSNBC anchor.

• No Love for Cheney. Five weeks ago, CBS's reporters passed on glowing assessments of John Edwards' speech. "John Edwards has put the face on the Democratic Party, youthful and hopeful," CBS's Byron Pitts enthused. But after Dick Cheney's speech last night, the network only had time to point out how a protester had gotten into Madison Square Garden to charge, as anchor Dan Rather relayed, that "Cheney and Halliburton made a killing in Iraq."

• Still Bashing Reagan. After a GOP film about Ronald Reagan, PBS's Jim Lehrer trotted out the old liberal canard about how Reagan's "tax cuts resulted in a huge deficit." Of course, public TV took its share of tax dollars during the 1980s, and still does.

• More Skewed News. For details on all these stories, plus more about how the networks are showing their bias as they cover the GOP convention, go to www.mrc.org.

- Tim Graham, Brent Baker, and Rich Noyes