C-SPAN Transcript (Clip Only)
Washington Journal
Sept. 29, 2012
8:38:20 AM EDT
ROBB HARLESTON: Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, and is here to talk to us about allegations of media bias in campaign coverage. Welcome to the program.
TIM GRAHAM: Thank You
HARLESTON: Earlier this month, the Media Research Council -- Center, sorry -- sent an open letter to the biased news media. They wrote this election year, so much of the broadcast networks and their counterparts in the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and out of control leftist agenda. To put it bluntly, you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to predetermine the outcome. In the quarter century, since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called news media to decide the outcome of an election. What kind of evidence do you have that the media is in cahoots with the Democrats and the folks on a left to rig this election?
GRAHAM: Well we've certainly seen in the last couple of weeks since the convention, just a dramatic bias against Mitt Romney on behalf of the President of the United States. I think if we just look at what's happened since September 11, when we had an attack on our consulate in Benghazi. On that particular day, we have the attack on our embassy in Cairo. Mitt Romney puts out a statement saying he did not like the tweets our government was sending out that sounded all apoloetic to the Muslim rioters. And our news media jumped on that right away, saying that Mitt Romney was exploiting this for political gain. The whole controversy was about Mitt Romney and I think it was kind of funny that they would suggest that Mitt Romney was politicizing this. Well no, what happened was that he has a press conference the next morning, we all hear off-camera that they're plotting. Everyone ask him about this, everyone ask him if he's going to apologize for being so rude to this president. When you have that sort of coordination, where they are sort of saying let's all ask the same question, we are not getting journalism. We're not serving the public. We are all serving to make sure that Mitt Romney is punished for questioning the President of the United States. And so the problem we have over the last couple weeks just on this particular issue is that our news media is covering Barack Obama going on the Letterman show, but they're not covering Barack Obama's administration lying to the public about what happened at this consulate in Benghazi. That's the story that's been coming out, that's the scandal that's emerging. And yet, the coverage we really get of the president celebrates him and that basically treats Mitt Romney as if he were the incumbent president.
HARLESTON: Who was this letter addressed to and what has the response been so far?
GRAHAM: Well, we sent this letter to the network news. It is an open letter but it is a message to the conservative grassroots. Obviously, we have not heard from the network news executives. We would certainly welcome that, and we have heard from conservative grassroots on this letter and it reflects the view of the conservative grassroots in this election season that we had a truly non-partisan news media that didn't have a candidate they favored in this race, they would have been doing this story from the beginning. Why are our embassies so vulnerable in this season? In the last couple weeks, we've also had the story of the secret tape that Mother Jones put out about Mitt Romney at a fundraiser. Our network news executives said we going to give that 88 minutes of news time on our morning and evening newscasts. This is not a story that deserves 88 minutes of news time. But the Obama administration says thinks this is as good as a campaign ad for them so the morning and evening shows have given it 88 minutes. We have had all kinds of serious things that have happened in the last two weeks. The Inspector General came out with this report on the administration's handling of Fast and Furious. They gave seven minutes to that, same morning and evening newscasts. So that's where I would simply say we have a news media that doesn't hold the Obama Administration accountable, it is trying to destroy the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. That is not what ‘objective’ news media does.
8:42:40 AM EDT [ 4 min 20 secs ]