The latest updates from the Media Research Center
1. Trumpet Obama’s Efforts to ‘Protect Consumers’ on Credit Cards
Instead of providing any suggestion President Barack Obama’s hectoring of credit card company executives, with the not-so-subtle threat of further regulation, is an improper strong-arm tactic, the network evening newscasts on Thursday night hailed Obama’s efforts to “protect consumers” — in stories each complete with a sympathetic victim of jacked-up interest rates, but barely any time, if any, for a view contrary to Obama’s. ABC’s Charles Gibson teased: “Tonight, tough talk. A stern warning from the President to credit card executives. If you don’t protect the consumers, the government will.” CBS’s Katie Couric fretted about the impact of “the credit card fees, penalties, and rising interest rates” which led the President to tell “the credit card companies: enough.” Reporter Anthony Mason began: “Clean up your act. That was President Obama’s message to credit card issuers today.” NBC anchor Brian Williams trumpeted how Obama has come to the rescue: “Today the President admonished the credit card companies and came down on the side of consumers.”
2. CBS’s Smith: Shouldn’t Bush Officials Face ‘Recrimination’?
While discussing the possible prosecution of Bush administration officials over interrogation methods used against terror suspects, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked Senator John McCain: “You fought a long battle with the [Bush] White House over this issue, said they ought to follow the Army manual, which the — the White House refused to…Why do you feel so strongly that those who helped create this policy should not face some sort of recrimination?” McCain explained his opposition to what he called a “witch hunt”: “Because I think, Harry, if you legal — if you criminalize legal advice, which is basically what they’re going to do, then it has a terribly chilling effect on any kind of advice and counsel that the president might receive…this is going to turn into a witch hunt.”
3. Chris Matthews Demands: How Do We Prosecute Bush and Cheney?
An overly eager Chris Matthews, on Wednesday night’s Hardball, actually raised the prospect of prosecuting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney over the CIA interrogation memos as he pressed Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “But how do we do it? Under what law do we go after them?” To which even the liberal Schultz initially balked, as she tried to rein in Matthews: “Well I think we need not to get ahead of ourselves Chris.” However Schultz, after Matthews’ continued to push, relented and gave the MSNBC host a response more to his liking as she warned: “There is no one that is above the law in the United States of America.”
4. ABC’s Moran Draws Comparison Between Middle East Torture and U.S.
Nightline co-host Terry Moran on Wednesday committed an act of snide and unnecessary moral equivalence, connecting video of torture occurring in the Middle East and the political debate over how to handle enemy combatants captured by the U.S. ABC correspondent Brian Ross filed a report on video of a member of the United Arab Emirates’ royal family filming himself as he brutalized a man, accused of stealing grain, with a cattle prod, hit him with a nail and then proceeded to drive over the victim with his Mercedes. As the segment ended, Moran drew a comparison, “Brian, that is a shocking investigation on so many levels, especially as our own country is engaged in a wrenching debate on torture.” Now, whatever one thinks of waterboarding, sleep depravation and putting an insect in with someone afraid of bugs, such tactics certainly don’t equal this barbaric act, described by Ross: “The tape ends with what appears to be attempted murder. The victim is left semi-conscious as Sheik Issa drives over him back and forth with his Mercedes SUV.”
5. Matt Lauer Marvels At ‘Captivating’ Photos of Obama
Introducing a segment, on Thursday’s Today show, featuring Time magazine’s photos of the President from his first 100 days, NBC’s Matt Lauer, over a shot of Obama in Oval Office, marveled that the stills were “captivating.” In an ensuing segment Lauer’s colleague, Meredith Vieira asked the easily impressed Time photographer Callie Shell how Obama was “handling” the job, to which Shell cooed: “I think he does very well,” and “He reads each night, at least 10 letters from 10 different people…and he answers them, usually the next day.”
6. CBS Early Show Hosts Excited by Obama Paper Dolls
On Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Julie Chen made an important news announcement: “Well, the latest Obama paper dolls are out and we have got them right here to check them out.” Chen went on to explain that the collectible books of paper cut outs of Barack and Michelle Obama: “…came out when — during the whole campaign…And then now this is the inaugural.” Chen later asked: “Do we think that this looks like Barack and Michelle?” Co-host Maggie Rodriguez responded: “Absolutely not. Not even a little bit.” Early Show medical correspondent Jennifer Ashton was also on set, and chimed in: “No, he [Obama] looks so much better in person.”
7. Olbermann: ‘Reagan’s Dead and He Was a Lousy President’
On Wednesday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann responded to an Ohio Republican quoting Ronald Reagan by mocking Reagan as “dead,” and calling him a “lousy President.” After reading a quote from Warren, County, Ohio commissioner Mike Kilburn proclaiming his intention not to use any of the federal stimulus money on his county, as he quoted Reagan’s famous line that “government is the problem,” Olbermann shot back: “Uh, Commissioner Kilburn, Reagan’s dead and he was a lousy President.”
8. Biden’s Approval Lower than Cheney’s in 2001, Obama Below Reagan
CNN’s Lou Dobbs on Thursday night highlighted how a new poll discovered Vice President Joe Biden is presently “less popular than Vice President Cheney was in July of 2001.” Indeed, a survey of 1,500 conducted for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to assess where President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Biden stand with the public as the administration’s 100-day mark approaches, determined: “Only about half of Americans (51%) say they have a favorable impression of Joe Biden — comparable to the 55% who felt favorably toward Al Gore in April 1993 and lower than the 58% favorability rating Dick Cheney received in July 2001.” Dobbs also pointed out how President Barack Obama, at 63 percent approval, is at “the same percentage as President Carter at this stage of his presidency. But President Reagan was even more popular than either of them: 67 percent.”
