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2. While Touting Obama Talking Points, Sawyer Asks McCain About Bias
3. CBS's Early Show Obama Coverage on Monday: 2 to 1 Over McCain
4. The New York Times Disses McCain Op-ed After Running Obama's
5. ABC's Moran Touts Obama's 'Star Power,' But Hits Him on Surge
6. Conspiratorial Rather: Big Oil Will Cut Gas Price to Help McCain
Exactly half, 50 percent, "believe the media makes economic conditions appear worse than they really are," a separate Rasmussen Reports telephone survey posted on Monday determined. That poll discovered "a plurality of Americans (41%) similarly believe that the media has tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is, while 26 percent say reporters have made it look better than reality and 25 percent think they've portrayed it accurately." Meanwhile, the "Scapbook" section of the latest (July 28) edition of the Weekly Standard magazine dubbed Newsweek "Obamaweek" and illustrated the media's infatuation with Obama by displaying images of six Newsweek covers featuring Obama, five of them just this year. (See images which will be added to the posted version of this CyberAlert.) [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Monday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [1] ]
On Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN, Howard Kurtz had also used Newsweek to illustrate how much the media are in love with Obama. As recounted in the July 21 CyberAlert, "Kurtz: Pro-Obama Tilt Could Lead to 'Big Backlash Against' Media," he held up a bunch of Newsweek magazines and explained:
For that previous CyberAlert: www.mrc.org [2] The Rasmussen numbers echo a Pew poll from last month. The June 6 CyberAlert posting, "Pew: Many Recognize Media's Pro-Obama Bias, Democrats Prefer CNN," reported: "Far more Americans believe that the press coverage has favored Barack Obama than think it has favored Hillary Clinton," a just-released survey, from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, discovered in determining 37 percent recognize a bias in favor of Obama. Even 35 percent of Democrats "see a pro-Obama bias" compared to 45 percent of Republicans and 40 percnt of independents. The poll, of about 1,000 Americans taken in late May, found about the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats rely on MSNBC for campaign news, but: "Far more Republicans (24%) than Democrats (10%) get most of their campaign news from Fox [News Channel], while the opposite is true for CNN: 24% of Democrats look to CNN compared with just 13% of Republicans." For more: www.mediaresearch.org [3] Back to Rasmussen, an excerpt from "Belief Growing That Reporters are Trying to Help Obama Win," a poll summary posted on Monday, July 21: ....A plurality of Democrats -- 37% -- say most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of the campaign. Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe most reporters are trying to help Obama and 21% in Obama's party think reporters are trying to help McCain. Among Republicans, 78% believe reporters are trying to help Obama and 10% see most offering unbiased coverage. As for unaffiliated voters, 50% see a pro-Obama bias and 21% see unbiased coverage. Just 12% of those not affiliated with either major party believe the reporters are trying to help McCain. In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters. Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to trust campaign information from family and friends than from reporters. Democrats are evenly divided as to who they would trust more. A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.... END of Excerpt
See: www.rasmussenreports.com [4]
Above the images of the six Newsweek covers, the "Scrapbook" page in the July 28 Weekly Standard offered some humorous analysis: Engineers, in the aerospace industry and elsewhere, calculate something called the "mean time between failures." THE SCRAPBOOK has made an analogous calculation-what we term the Mean Time Between Newsweek Obama Covers (MTBNOC). We can reveal here the results of our preliminary investigations, which show that the MTBNOC is falling at an alarming rate. In mid-October, by our back-of-the-envelope extrapolation, every issue of Newsweek will feature His Self-Importance on the cover. Shortly thereafter, if our calculations are correct, the magazine will be forced to appear more frequently-twice a week, at first, and as a rebranded Newsdaily by early November, in order to accommodate the increasingly frequent need of editors to showcase Barack-the-Transcendent on their cover. Uncertainty is introduced into the equation at that point owing to Election Day, when the American people are allowed to weigh in with their own judgment on the merits of their prospective savior. Should the voters unaccountably fail to do their duty, some predict Newsweek may suspend publication in protest. The Scrapbook section: www.weeklystandard.com [7]
A surprised Sawyer continued: "You're laughing. Do you think the press coverage is unfair?" McCain wryly responded: "That's up to the American people to decide, Diane. It is what it is." A few seconds earlier, Sawyer appeared to preemptively answer her query on media bias. The ABC journalist prompted: "You have criticized Senator Obama in the past for not going to Iraq and getting a fresh assessment. He is in Iraq as we speak this morning. Does this take care of it?" The subtext of the question sounded very much like "He went to Iraq. Will you leave him alone now?" Never mind the fact that McCain has been to the area eight times and Obama only two. [This item, by the MRC's Scott Whitlock, was posted Monday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [8] ] Sawyer repeatedly borrowed statements from Obama talking points. And at one point, a second question resulted in a laugh from McCain: "You know, his camp has said that in fact he was out ahead of you on Afghanistan [McCain snorts], where the real problem is today." She then observed that "Senator Obama says that he was warning of this all along" and played a clip of the Democrat calling the situation in Afghanistan "precarious and urgent." This resulted in an exchange in which Sawyer attempted to goad the GOP candidate into using Obama's words: "Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent?" McCain concurred that the country faces significant challenges, but didn't use the exact phrasing. Sawyer tried again: "Not precarious and urgent?" The host also speculated, "Does [Obama] deserve the credit for saying that there should be more troops in Afghanistan?" So, perhaps Sawyer's question about media bias was rhetorical? A transcript of the July 21 segment, which aired at 7:05am:
DIANE SAWYER: And we turn now to the race for '08, Barack Obama's opponent, Republican presidential candidate John McCain. He joined us just a few minutes ago from South Portland, Maine. Senator McCain, good to have you with us this morning. Good morning.
[This item, by Kyle Drennen, was posted Monday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [9] ]
Later, when interviewing McCain, Harry Smith also brought up Maliki's comments: "But one of the other things that -- one of the other things that he [Obama] has said is that maybe the troops should be out within the next 18 months, an idea that Prime Minister Al Maliki basically agrees with. Maybe the surge, in fact, did work. Is it time for American troops to start coming home?" That statement was in response to McCain pointing out to Smith that: "We are winning the war. And Senator Obama was wrong. He railed against it. He voted against the surge. And he said it would fail. He was wrong there." Here are the full transcripts of both the Obama and McCain segments during the Monday, July 21 show:
7:00AM TEASER:
7:02AM
7:08AM SEGMENT:
The New York Times isn't about to give John McCain a break, setting stringent standards before it will take a pro-surge op-ed from him, even though it printed Obama's pro-withdrawal op-ed last week. When Hillary dropped out under a wave of hostile coverage, she left John McCain the only person standing between Barack Obama and a history-making presidency. With Obama rocking waves of positive coverage overseas, the media tide is out for the Republican nominee, and the Times surely isn't going to give McCain any breaks now. The same New York Times that endorsed McCain (albeit in hold-your-nose fashion) during the Republican primaries now refuses to run an op-ed by him that: laid out recent successes in Iraq; said Obama was wrong in opposing the surge; and accused the Democrat of having "learned nothing from recent history." Times' op-ed editor David Shipley, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, e-mailed McCain's staff: "I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written." [This item, by Clay Waters, was posted Monday afternoon on the MRC's TimesWatch site: www.timeswatch.org [10] ] Yet the McCain op-ed was in response to one from Obama, "My Plan for Iraq," that had appeared in the Times on July 14. Did the Times at least invite the McCain camp to submit an op-ed in defense of the war and the surge (to accompany Obama's call for withdrawal) before Obama's op-ed appeared? Shipley said he wanted something more forward-looking that paralleled more closely with Obama's piece, which mentioned McCain only twice while sketching out a vision of withdrawing troops from Iraq. The piece McCain submitted to the Times attacked Obama on his past statements on the surge and also went after points from Obama's NYT op-ed. Shipley laid out some pretty stringent demands on McCain: "It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory -- with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator's Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan." The last McCain op-ed to appear in the Times came in March 2003 -- ironically, a pro-war piece written on the eve of the Iraq War titled "The Right War for the Right Reasons." The last op-ed from Obama to appear in the Times (before last week) came in June 2005. "Grounding a Pandemic," co-written with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, warned of the threat of an "avian flu pandemic." For Obama, bird flu evidently tops Saddam Hussein as a plausible imminent threat.
The rest of Moran's story, however, focused on "what has become an open disagreement between military commanders here and Obama, over his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month timetable." But while Moran raised the subject twice, Obama got plenty of time to recite his views with the two answers consuming a lengthy 50 or so seconds each and a third, about whether given the success of the surge he'd support it now, he got 25 seconds of air time -- meaning Obama three answers took up more than half of Moran's story. Anchor Charles Gibson, who will get a one-on-one with Obama for Wednesday's World News, on Monday introduced Moran by advising: "The trip has renewed focus on the cornerstone of Obama's foreign policy, the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq by 2010. That stand got support, at least initially, from the Iraqi prime minister over the weekend, then came under renewed attack today from Senator John McCain." Moran reported late in his piece: "The surge of U.S. troops, combined with ordinary Iraqis' rejection of both al-Qaeda and Shiite extremists, has transformed the country. Attacks are down by more than 80 percent nationwide. U.S. combat casualties have plummeted -- five this month so far, compared with 78 last July. And Baghdad has a pulse again." Viewers then saw Moran inquire of Obama: "If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?" Obama responded "no" before elaborating. [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Monday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [11] ] More of Moran's interview aired on Monday's Nightline and Tuesday's Good Morning America. Following CBS News reporter Lara Logan's sit-down with Obama on Sunday, Moran got the Democratic presidential candidate in Baghdad on Monday as part of Obama's week-long Magical Media Tour. Katie Couric will land him Tuesday in Jordan, Charlie Gibson in Israel on Wednesday and Brian Williams in Germany on Thursday before Tom Brokaw has him from London on Sunday's Meet the Press. TVNewser, which is maintaining a TV interview list, quipped: "Get those requests in. Obama's got Friday and Saturday open." See: www.mediabistro.com [12] The July 21 CyberAlert had two earlier posts on Obama's Magical Media Tour: - "Day 1 of Obama's Magical Media Tour: All Air from Outside the Paint!" Go to: www.mediaresearch.org [13] - "Day 2 of Obama's Magical Media Tour: He Speaks of How Bush Makes World Bleak." See: www.mediaresearch.org [14] On Monday Moran wasn't as gentle with Obama as he had been back in March. In an exclusive interview just after Obama's race speech, Moran tossed softballs and cued up Obama to expound on his views about race. He never challenged Obama on his awareness of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's hate speech. Instead, he hailed Obama for how in the "remarkable speech" he "tried to talk about race honestly." The Tuesday, March 19 CyberAlert posting reported:
Moran trumpeted: "Obama tried the almost impossible in America: He tried to talk about race honestly, about injustice, about white resentment, about black anger." Moran also fretted over how "Obama has to worry about" his views on other issues getting "drowned out," as if that should be the concern of a journalist, as Moran hoped for "another way to think and communicate" about race: What Obama has to worry about now is that everything he is trying to say that isn't about race -- his views on Iraq, the economy, health care, education -- all that will get drowned out in our old, predictable ways of thinking about race. The big question now for Obama -- and for the rest of us, really -- is there another way, another way to think and communicate across the color line? See: www.mediaresearch.org [15] The MRC's Scott Whitlock caught how Moran prefaced an interview excerpt aired the next morning on Good Morning America by bubbling: "Well, as you know, one of the hardest things to do in American politics, in American society, is to talk honestly about race. And it's clear that's what Barack Obama was trying to do in that remarkable speech." Check: www.mediaresearch.org [16] Moran got an early start in oozing over Obama, earning the "Media Hero Award" in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting," posted with video, for a quote in a story previously detailed in the Wednesday, November 8, 2006 MRC CyberAlert, "ABC's Nightline Gushes: Obama, An 'American Political Phenomenon,'" which recounted: On Monday night's edition of Nightline, just hours before the polls opened for Tuesday's midterm election, ABC's Terry Moran prematurely promoted a potential 2008 Democratic presidential contender. Moran went along with Illinois Senator Barack Obama as he campaigned for Democrats across the country. Moran's piece was full of praise for the "American political phenomenon," whom, according to Moran, millions see as "the savior of the Democratic Party."
In a softball question to Senator Obama, Moran asked him about the buzz surrounding his political future: "And right now you are on a roll. You're, people,'Obamania,' they, they call it. The rock star. You get a big cheer when you get up there."... The 2006 CyberAlert: www.mrc.org [17] The Best of NQ page with the video clip: www.mrc.org [18] The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide this transcript of the lead story on the Monday, July 21 World News:
TERRY MORAN: Barack Obama came to Baghdad, and he brought his star power with him. Hundreds of U.S. troops and State Department personnel mobbed Obama at the embassy here. In brief remarks, he offered them his gratitude and support.
Matthews tried to clarify: "October surprise?" Rather promised "October or before" and then anticipated "you'll hear the argument, 'listen, we never were in a recession, it was a near recession but wasn't actually a recession.'" Of course, as things stand now, that would be the truth, but in Rather's eyes that apparently would reflect some kind of nefarious scheme to fool the public. [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Monday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [19] ] As conspiratorial as Rather, back in August of 2006 CNN's Jack Cafferty wondered "if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans get re-elected in the mid-term elections a couple of months away." The Tuesday, October 17, 2006 CyberAlert item, "CBS Takes Seriously Conspiracy About Bush Manipulating Gas Price," recounted (with video):
Over headlines from Daily Kos and Huffington Post, Mason conceded you can "call the conspiracy theory crazy," but he touted how "it's spreading through Internet blogs and over the airwaves. And a recent poll found 42 percent of people actually believe the Bush administration has deliberately manipulated the price of gas to affect the election." For more and the video clip: www.mrc.org [20] The Thursday, August 31, 2006 MRC CyberAlert posting, "CNN's Cafferty: Big Oil Lowering Gas Prices to Help Republicans?" reported:
See: www.mrc.org [21] -- Brent Baker
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More than three times as many Americans see a media tilt in favor of Democrat Barack Obama than toward Republican John McCain. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey released Monday, of 1,000 likely voters, "found that 49 percent of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44 percent a month ago," compared to a piddling 14 percent who "believe most reporters will try to help John McCain win" while "just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage." 
"You have one candidate, Barack Obama, getting more than twice as many covers, Time and Newsweek, than John McCain -- and just look at some. We pulled out some Newsweek covers here. Look: Obama. Obama. Obama. It's a small picture. Obama. Obama. At that point, there is clearly an imbalance. The sheer volume becomes an imbalance..." 
Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer on Monday quizzed John McCain on whether the media are gushing too much over Barack Obama's Middle East trip. She then proceeded to cite Obama talking points on the visit. First, Sawyer wondered: "A quick question about the press coverage, if I can. [Obama's] there with a lot of reporters and it's been widely reported-" At this point, the Arizona Senator started chuckling. 
At the top of Monday's CBS Early Show a full six minutes of coverage was devoted to Barack Obama's world tour, while only three minutes was given to a John McCain interview. During the interview with McCain, co-host Harry Smith wondered: "You know, when you have the network anchors chasing your opponent across the Middle East it's a little hard to make news. What is your strategy to get folks to pay attention to your message over the next couple of days?" Co-host Maggie Rodriguez asked a similar question to Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Friday: "Can John McCain even compete next week?" The coverage Monday of Obama consisted of co-host Julie Chen talking to New York Times Baghdad correspondent Richard Oppel, followed by a clip of CBS correspondent Lara Logan's interview with Obama in Afghanistan. Oppel highlighted recent news of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki supporting Obama's troop withdrawal plan: "...he was quoted accurately. He did express a clear affinity for Obama's 16 month proposal." 
ABC's Terry Moran, who back in 2006 was already enthralled with Barack Obama ("You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon"), on Monday night from Iraq refrained from such infatuation as ABC's World News, nonetheless, gave Obama a lengthy platform to espouse his Iraq policy. Moran began his lead story by trumpeting how "Barack Obama came to Baghdad, and he brought his star power with him. Hundreds of U.S. troops and State Department personnel mobbed Obama at the embassy here." 
Monday's (March 18) Nightline featured an "exclusive" interview with Obama in which ABC's Terry Moran tossed softballs and cued up Obama to expound on his views about race. He never challenged Obama on his awareness of Wright's hate speech. 
Moran gushed on the November 6 show: "You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat's not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful and many others, like no one else on the scene today...And the question you can sense on everyone's mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?" 
CHARLES GIBSON: Good evening. This is a special edition of World News with a single sponsor and more time for news. And we begin with Barack Obama, who is in Iraq now. The trip has renewed focus on the cornerstone of Obama's foreign policy, the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq by 2010. That stand got support, at least initially, from the Iraqi prime minister over the weekend, then came under renewed attack today from Senator John McCain. ABC's Terry Moran is in Baghdad and sat down with Obama today. Terry, good evening. 
BARACK OBAMA: We just want to say thank you. 
OBAMA: Well, then if I don't get it right, then you can ask it again. Is to get boxed in into what I consider two false choices, which is either I have a rigid time line of such and such a date, come hell or high water, we've gotten our combat troops out, and I am blind to anything that happens in the intervening six months or 16 months. Or, alternatively, I am completely deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground says, which is what George Bush says he's doing, in which case I'm not doing my job as Commander-in-Chief. 
The tree doesn't grow far from the apple. A little under two years after Katie Couric, Dan Rather's successor as anchor of the CBS Evening News, suggested just before the 2006 election that President Bush was manipulating gas prices to benefit Republican candidates, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show over the weekend a conspiratorial Rather predicted "the people who can affect the price of oil would prefer a Republican" presidential victory, so "watch the price of oil." Rather didn't identify these people, but presumably he meant Big Oil executives who he thinks can raise or lower prices at their whim. In the "Tell me something I don't know" segment, Rather told Matthews: 
Although a Monday CBS Evening News story included a soundbite from an expert dismissing the idea as "preposterous," the newscast treated a far-left conspiracy theory -- about how the Bush administration is somehow manipulating the pump price for gas to help in the election -- as credible and worthy enough to deserve a broadcast network story. Citing how the price of a gallon of gas has fallen to the lowest all year, anchor Katie Couric wondered: "Is this an election year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?" Over a shot of a "GOP: Grand Oil Party" bumper sticker laying on a dashboard, reporter Anthony Mason asserted: "Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don't think so." The man in the car insisted "I think it's basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let's vote Republican." 
Wednesday's USA Today reported that gasoline prices could be closer to $2 a gallon by Thanksgiving. The paper cited the end of the summer driving season and decreased demand as causes for this predicted decline. Not surprisingly, CNN's Jack Cafferty saw something more sinister at work. Before his daily "Cafferty File" segment during the 4pm EDT hour of The Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon, substitute anchor John King and news reader Zain Verjee discussed this report and cheered on lower gas prices as good news. Cafferty then spouted off the old liberal conspiracy theory connecting Republicans and Big Oil: "You know, if you were a real cynic, you could also wonder if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans get re-elected in the mid-term elections a couple of months away."