Krauthammer on Press/Obama: 'The Hot Sex is Over, They're In the Cigarette Stage'

NPR's Nina Totenberg scolded the more adversarial approach some in the White House press corps took to President Obama during Tuesday's press conference, but on Inside Washington this weekend columnist Charles Krauthammer rejected the notion the media's honeymoon is “over,” as he cracked:  

The hot sex is over, they're in the cigarette stage right now. You get a question or two that's slightly obstreperous, but the adulatory coverage is still all wall-to-wall.

That's a comedic improvement over what he offered Tuesday night on FNC when he suggested “it looked as if the stupor that the press has been in for the last six months is lifting slightly,” before he quipped: “I say that as a psychiatrist who has a lot of experience in watching these things.”

An aggressive press posture toward more conservative Presidents never bothered Totenberg, but with Obama she complained: “I thought that the press reminded me of something my mother used to say to me. She said: 'Don't be fresh.'” As a result, she contended, “we end up looking quarrelsome, and he [Obama] ends up looking masterful.” As if she's upset by Obama looking masterful. Of course, he only looked masterful to those still on the honeymoon with him.  

From this weekend's edition of Inside Washington, a show produced by DC's ABC affiliate and aired on it and its all-news local cable channel, NewsChannel 8, but first aired Friday evening on the local PBS station, WETA-DT. In fact, since ad breaks make the commercial version shorter, this segment, which ended the program, will not run on NewsChannel8 or WJLA-TV, channel 7.1.  

Fill-in host Mark Shields asked if a “more adversarial” White House press corps proves the “honeymoon is over?” Two of the answers:

Nina Totenberg:

I don't know if the honeymoon's over, but I thought that the press reminded me of something my mother used to say to me. She said: “Don't be fresh.” And every time that we as the press with the President sort of try to flex our muscles and we think we've finally done our bit -- I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, I'm just saying that when people watch it, we end up looking quarrelsome, and he ends up looking masterful, I thought. I didn't think he seemed testy. I thought he actually showed some humor.

Charles Krauthammer:

On the honeymoon, I tell you: The hot sex is over, they're in the cigarette stage right now. You get a question or two that's slightly obstreperous, but the adulatory coverage is still all wall-to-wall.

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center

No Party Tag for Conyers' Wife; Just 20 Secs on 'Cap and Trade' Amidst 95% Jackson

Noteworthy from Friday night's broadcast network evening newscasts which, a day after his death, spent 95 percent of their air time on Michael Jackson -- all but 1:03 of ABC's approximate 22 minutes was devoted to Jackson, all but 34 seconds of CBS and all but 1:22 of NBC, for 2:59, less than three minutes in total for all news beyond Jackson:

? Only ABC's World News reported how Monica Conyers, a Detroit city councilwoman married to powerful U.S. House Democrat John Conyers, pled guilty to accepting bribes. But anchor Charles Gibson, who on Wednesday night made sure to identify Mark Sanford as “a rising star in the Republican Party,” failed to name the party affiliation for either Monica Conyers or John Conyers, and neither did any on-screen graphic. Speaking of Detroit, last year, when Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with felonies, Gibson (as well as the CBS and NBC anchors) didn't consider Kilpatrick's party worth mentioning.

? ABC also uniquely found a little time, a mere 20 seconds, to mention House action on President Obama's “cap and trade” bill. As noted by the MRC's Business and Media Institute, for months the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have barely covered the bill “that would cost each family $1,241 a year.” CBS and NBC kept up the near-blackout again Friday night. Gibson outlined how “the bill would impose limits pollution from power plants and factories and force a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” but also noted: “Critics charge it will drive up energy costs for consumers.”

Gibson's June 26 item on the energy bill:

A few notes on the other news of the day. On Capitol Hill, one of President Obama's top priorities, sweeping legislation to combat climate change, is advancing in the House of Representatives. The bill would impose limits pollution from power plants and factories and force a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Critics charge it will drive up energy costs for consumers.

Gibson on Monica Conyers:

A Detroit city councilwoman, who's married to one of the most powerful members of Congress, pleaded guilty to accepting cash bribes today. Monica Conyers admitted taking the money in exchange for supporting a sludge contract with a Houston company. Her husband is John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Prosecutors say he was in no way involved.

The March 25, 2008 CyberAlert post, “ABC, CBS and NBC All Fail to ID Indicted Mayor as a Democrat,” recounted:

Two weeks since the ABC and NBC evening shows took multiple days before getting around to informing viewers that disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer belonged to the Democratic Party -- after every ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news program last year immediately highlighted the party of Republican Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig -- Monday's broadcast network evening newscasts all failed to note, verbally or on-screen, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's party.

ABC anchor Charles Gibson announced on World News: “Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged today with felonies that could cost him his job and 15 years in prison.” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams relayed how “Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick...was indicted on perjury and other charges in the wake of a sex scandal there.” (NBC also refused to tag Kilpatrick in a full story aired Friday night.) Over on Monday's CBS Evening News, fill-in anchor Harry Smith introduced a full story: “In Detroit, a sex scandal led to criminal charges today against the Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, a married father of three.”

The brief update from Gibson on the Monday, March 24 World News on ABC: “Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged today with felonies that could cost him his job and 15 years in prison. Kilpatrick is charged, along with his female former chief of staff. Explicit text messages contradict their sworn testimony that they did not have an affair. Kilpatrick, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and misconduct, says he expects to be cleared.”...

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center

Morning Shows Devote Almost an Hour to Hyping Sanford Story

The three network morning shows on Thursday devoted a staggering 18 segments to the revelation that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was having an affair with a woman from Argentina, adding up to over 54 minutes of coverage. NBC's Today show spent the most time on the subject, highlighting the infidelity with six segments and 25 minutes of air time.

Co-host Matt Lauer even talked to disgraced former Governor Jim McGreevey to get his thoughts on the matter. (However, while NBC made sure to label Sanford a Republican, the Today anchors failed to do so for the ex-New Jersey governor who resigned under a cloud of scandal.)

ABC's Good Morning America touted the sex scandal for 17 minutes and 26 seconds, featuring seven stories on Sanford. (It should also be pointed out that GMA came within seven minutes of Today's total, despite the fact that the NBC program is four hours, double the time of ABC's show.) During one such segment, journalist Sam Donaldson insisted that it's hard to forgive Republicans who get involved in sex scandals: "They thump the Bible. They condemn everyone else, and when they- human- they don’t have much credit in the bank for forgiveness."

CBS's Early Show had the least amount of coverage, offering only five segments over 11 minutes and 44 seconds. As the MRC's Kyle Drennen noted in his June 25 posting, all three morning shows repeatedly identified Sanford as a Republican. However, during the first week's coverage of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and his prostitute scandal, he was labeled a Democrat only 20 percent of the time.

—Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour Boasts: 'Nobody Knows My Biases'

CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewed her occasional colleague (and CNN correspondent) Christiane Amanpour for the website The Women on the Web, and the oddest part came when Amanpour insisted "nobody knows my biases...I just try very hard to report the facts and to tell the stories as best as I can." In fact, Amanpour’s biased liberal journalism has landed her in our year-end Best of Notable Quotables issue four times. These professions of impartiality came as Stahl asked whether her Iranian background affected her reporting:

STAHL: That brings me back to Iran, because I wonder – this is always asked of me as a reporter – what are your biases? What are your opinions? How hard is it for you to cover anything in Iran, given your own family background?

AMANPOUR: I understand people asking that question, but I always reject it. I really … I ask people just to look at my body of work. And nobody knows my biases. Do they think I’m against? Do they think I’m for? They don’t know my biases. They don’t know where I come from in this. I just try very hard to report the facts and to tell the stories as best as I can. I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact, and from there delve deeper into a society.

Here are the four year-end quotes displaying how her biases can be easily located:

2008: "The black people in France are very proud and very hopeful for their future. They also live, many of them, in poor situations. And you know, you’ve had your own riots here and protests and disturbances in the Banlieue — in the city. At one point, when we were covering those riots, when you were Interior Minister, you called the rioters ‘scum.’ And I’m wondering whether you feel, today, when you stand next to someone you clearly admire so much, and who has broken so many barriers, that you regret that term or that you wish you hadn’t said it?" — Amanpour to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a July 25, 2008 conference with Barack Obama shown live on CNN.

2003: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did....The entire body politic...did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels."– Amanpour on CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown, September 10, 2003.

2000: "Like these young dancers, Carlos [Acosta] benefited from Cuba’s communist system because it not only recognizes physical talent, it nurtures it, whether it’s baseball, boxing, or ballet." -- CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Christiane Amanpour on a star of London’s Royal Ballet, May 21, 2000.

1999: "A lot of the women that I meet from traveling overseas are very impressed by you and admire your dignity. A lot of the people you meet are people who suffered, people you saw today, and who believe that they identify with you because they have seen you suffer. And in a speech in Africa last year, you spoke about living for hope and reconciliation, living for forgiveness and reconstruction, and living for a new life – have you been able to apply that to your own circumstances? Have you been able to forgive your husband?" -- CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to Hillary Clinton in Macedonia after a tour of refugee camps, May 14, 1999.

In the Stahl interview, posted on June 23, Amanpour very quickly turned to the idea that Americans have almost nothing but aged cliches and stereotypes about Iran (like, say, their role as a leading state sponsor of terrorism?):

And I will say one thing very clearly: The lack of information about Iran, in the United States especially but also in the rest of the world, in a way makes my job … it’s sort of like an open well to plumb because anything I say, you know at least increases people’s awareness of what’s going on. And I think the one thing that I have really tried to do over the last now 19 years of covering Iran as a reporter, is try to go beyond the inevitable cliché and the stereotype, which is found strongest in the United States, because the U.S. bases its relationship and its knowledge about Iran on 30 years ago, and has very little impartial reporting to go on. And that’s what I try. But you look right now, if you just look at the television screens right now, all the so-called experts on Iran, 99 percent, are exiles based in the United States, have their own experience, their own history and their own agenda. And so that makes it very difficult for anybody to get a really clear view of what’s going on. That’s what I believe.

Only Amanpour is agenda-less. Then Stahl laments how objectivity isn’t valued any more, as if she practiced so hard at it:

STAHL: Well, let me ask you then about the state… of where objective journalism is heading.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

STAHL: I come out of the same background that you do. I always – I guess the right word is to say, sat on my own opinions because we do have our opinions, you can’t deny that. But I tried as hard as I could to overcome them and to be as impartial a reporter as possible. But I find as I look out on television, and even in my reading, that there’s less and less a market for that kind of reporting. The future seems to be with people who slant their stories. Even my own child, whom I put in that younger generation, says she hates reporting that doesn’t tell her where the correspondent is coming from. And I think she’s representative.

AMANPOUR: She may be, and she’s obviously reacting to something that’s growing like wildflower now in our business. But the thing is, I get afraid when I read something and I just don’t know – is that the fact, is that the truth, is that somebody’s political bias, or somebody’s cultural bias? And that frightens me.

Of course there’s a major role for opinion commentary and there has been since time immemorial. But I strongly think that unless we are able to present people with the objective facts of what’s going on, how are they meant to know what is going on? For instance, right now in Iran I’m telling you with confidence that nobody knows what’s going on there, really, because when you’re just getting Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, amateur videos – and no explanation, no reporting – you just don’t know what’s going on. It’s speculation, it’s guesswork, it’s patchwork.

She quickly realizes that this could be read as dismissive of the brave Internet dispatches that are leaking out, so she praises those, but repeats that every democracy needs that brave band of expert journalists to bring truth to power.

— Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.

Oliver Stone: 'Reagan Was a Dumb Son of a Bitch' Who Spawned Bush

Film producer/director Oliver Stone, a far-left promoter of conspiracies who is working on a sequel to his 1987 'Wall Street' movie, declared on Friday night's edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that “Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” and “I really think George W is dumber” and so, after producing movies on the CIA conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and a dark look at President Nixon, he won't create a movie on Ronald Reagan because “by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness.”

Stone, who earlier in the pre-taped show made up of three one-on-one interviews Maher conducted (other two were with Cameron Diaz and Billy Bob Thornton) characterized President Obama as no better than Bush (“a sneak Bush administration with different words”), also asserted: “I do think Nixon is the father of Reagan and I think Reagan's the father of Bush. There's sort of a very strong line.” Whatever that means.

From the June 26 program, after Maher asked why Stone, who did films on JFK, Nixon and Bush, had not done a movie on Reagan:

OLIVER STONE: Nixon always said Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch and, you know, I think that he was [audience applause]. And I think, I really think George W is dumber [more audience laughter and applause].

BILL MAHER: Definitely

STONE: I do think that by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness and I don't want to go back there because, you know, I'm not the Farrelly brothers. But I do think Nixon is the father of Reagan and I think Reagan's the father of Bush. There's sort of a very strong line....

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center

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