Fwd: MRC Alert: CBS Gives Tea Partiers Top Billing, But Sees 'Inconsistency' in the FNC-Watching, White Gun Owners

 

A daily compilation edited by Brent H. Baker, CyberAlert items are drawn from daily BiasAlert posts and distributed by the Media Research Center's News Analysis Division, the leader since 1987 in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.

 

Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
Thursday April 15, 2010 @ 09:57 AM EDT

1. CBS Gives Tea Partiers Top Billing, But Sees 'Inconsistency' in the FNC-Watching, White Gun Owners
"A CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight finds 18 percent of Americans support the movement," Katie Couric announced at the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News as the newscast provided a surprisingly neutral summary of the findings in the new survey, though reporter Dean Reynolds couldn't resist asserting "there is some inconsistency in the Tea Party viewpoints. For example, for all their anger at what they see as ever-expanding government, 62 percent of them think Medicare and Social Security are worthwhile programs, perhaps because 75 percent of them are over 45." Or, since they aren't anarchists, maybe they've just made judgments about government programs and find many others less worthwhile than ones they've been forced to pay into for their entire adult lives. Reynolds realized "they chafe at critics who characterize the movement as extremist or racist for its opposition to the President," then he recited numbers to show they are mostly male, white, conservative watchers of FNC.

2. Maher Insults Palin and Bachmann as MILFs: Morons I'd Like To Forget
Bill Maher and Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, denigrated Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as merely "attractive" women with very little smarts with the HBO host even going as far to use a vulgar euphemism to describe them as he claimed: "They're attractive especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as a party that really does well with the opposite sex. Usually they're doughy white men and I think they look on Michele Bachmann and, and Sarah Palin, as you know, M.I.L.Fs and I agree, they're Morons I'd Like to Forget."

3. MSNBC's Mike Barnicle Smears John McCain: More Afraid of J.D. Hayworth Than of North Vietnamese
During a discussion of John McCain's drift rightward on Wednesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle smeared the Arizona Senator as more scared of J.D. Hayworth than he was of his Vietnamese torturers. Barnicle mocked, "The ultimate sadness is that, here, in the 21st century, running for re-election, he shows more fear of J.D. Hayworth than he showed toward his captors in North Vietnam."

4. Meet Washington Post's Scott Wilson, Obama's Summit News Butler
Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson topped Wednesday's paper with a "news analysis" headlined "On world stage, Obama at ease as seminar leader." The word that came to mind wasn't "analysis." It was "unanimous." Everyone in Wilson's supine story praised Obama's command and personality. It's like Wilson was Obama's news butler at this summit: "'He's in charge, he's chairing the meetings, and this is where his personality plays a big part,' said Pierre Vimont, the French ambassador to the United States, who compared Obama's role during the summit to the way he led the bipartisan health-care meeting at Blair House in February. 'He does it very well,' Vimont continued. 'And he feels very comfortable doing it.'"

5. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Touts McVeigh Special, Warns U.S. Is Seeing 'Upswing' in 'Anti-government Extremism'
Liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow appeared on the Daily Show, Tuesday, to promote her new Timothy McVeigh special and to compare, "The dark side of it is that [McVeigh] really did see himself as part of an anti-government movement in the United States...And, right now, I think we are experiencing an upswing again in sort of anti-government extremism."

6. NYT's Leonhardt Dismisses How Almost Half Pay No Income Tax, Calls For Higher Rates on Those Who Do
David Leonhardt, the New York Times' voice on fiscal policy wants higher taxes on everyone, but most importantly the rich: "The answer is that tax rates almost certainly have to rise more on the affluent than on other groups." He also called higher taxes on the rich "an American tradition" and refused to see a principled argument against the current skewed tax system, arguing it was just self-interest on the part of conservative talk show hosts.

7. CNN to Advertisers: We're the Only 'Non-Partisan' Cable Network
Stuart Elliott of the New York Times's Media Decoder blog reported on Tuesday that CNN, a network known for its consistent liberal bias, is now incredibly touting itself as "the only credible, nonpartisan voice left" on cable television. Elliott noted that this spin was being pitched by the network at a Tuesday morning event for advertisers at the Time Warner Center in New York City. The New York Times writer highlighted the meeting hosted by CNN executives, and their overall strategy: "In a presentation to advertisers and agencies on Tuesday morning, executives of CNN indicated how they plan to counter the growing ratings of — and buzz about — the rival Fox News Channel: play up their channel's identity as an objective source of news." Elliott quoted Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, as using the "credible, nonpartisan voice" phrase, and tried to put the face on his network's poor ratings during the first quarter of 2010.