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By Mike Ciandella
The committed Obama PR flacks at the broadcast news networks are experts at using biased terminology. When President Obama and the Democrats changed the health care system it was consistently presented as “reform,” but reporters rarely used the word when President Trump and the Republicans try to pass health care legislation.
From March 6 (the first introduction of this health care legislation in the House of Representatives) until June 27 when the vote was originally scheduled to be held, the evening news shows of ABC, CBS and NBC only referred to the GOP health care plan as “reform” 30 times. In a contrast that is nothing short of ridiculous, in the equivalent time frame in 2009 (ending with the Senate passing that bill) these same networks referred to Obamacare as “reform” 344 times – more than 11 times as much. Long before it was announced that the Senate vote on the latest version of the GOP health care plan was postponed until after Independence Day, the networks began laying the groundwork for their coverage of that vote.
CBS Evening News had the most skewed coverage, with only 6 uses of that term for the GOP plan (the least of any network) and 132 uses for Obamacare (the most of any network): 22 times as much.
The health care reporting was optimistic back during the Obama years. “Health care reform is aimed at helping the millions of Americans with no insurance,” Brian Williams said on NBC Nightly News on October 23, 2009. On September 21, 2009, CBS Evening News correspondent Chip Reid called Obamacare “another issue of life and death.”
In contrast, network journalists never missed an opportunity to slam the GOP health care bill in 2017. On June 22, NBC Nightly News blamed the failures in ObamaCare on Trump’s rhetoric “fueling market turmoil.” When ObamaCare passed the House of Representatives in 2009, the networks lauded it as “historic” and a “milestone.” But when the GOP bill passed the House in early May of 2017, it was a “big risk” and “extreme.”
This fits with the network trend of systematically ignoring ObamaCare’s failures. In 2016, ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News failed to spend even a single second of coverage on ObamaCare’s failures the entire year, as premiums rose and insurance companies pulled out, until Bill Clinton’s gaffe on October 3 when he called the Affordable Care Act “this crazy system.”
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By Kevin Baker
“You can’t fudge the numbers of the Medicaid cuts,” Joe Scarborough warned in an ominous tone on Wednesday’s Morning Joe. Decrying the “lying” Republicans, he then hypocritically exclaimed, “You slash $750 billion...after you’ve already slashed another $300 or $400 billion in an underlying budget, over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, that destroys health care in Trump America.” Following suit in an unsurprisingly toadyish manner, Mike Barnicle, then proceeded to laughably state that,“math is the reality here.”
The line of attack by the liberal media that supposed "cuts" to Medicaid in the Republican health care bill will destroy health care is ludicrous. In reality, there are no "cuts" to anything. The proposal would actually increase Medicaid spending, but at a slower rate over time than under ObamaCare. Furthermore, there is nothing in the legislation preventing our esteemed elected officials from revising such spending as time goes on, so the idea that Medicaid itself will undergo any sort of profound change is unlikely at best. In addition, the MSNBC host ignored the massive expansion of Medicaid that occurred under President Obama's signature law.
MIKE HALPERIN: McConnell could give more money in the short term to the moderates, long-term reform to the more conservative members of the conference and then tell the house take it or leave it. No conference just take it or leave it.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wrong! And let me tell you why it's wrong and not only because I want to sound like John Mclaughlin there, but also the one thing you can't fudge are the numbers of the Medicaid cuts. You can't fudge them. You can lie if you're Donald Trump, you can lie about whatever you want to lie about. If you're Republicans, and you feel like lying about saying nobody's going t o lose their health care coverage, you can do that, too. But you slash $750 billion, Mike Barnacle, from Medicaid, after you’ve already slashed another $300 or $400 billion in an underlying budget, over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, that destroys health care in rural America, in Trump America. We've said it again, let me say it again, not just for the poor. For the middle class and the upper middle class, their parents in nursing home, their children in NICU units, you name it, it devastates health care for half of America.
MIKE BARNICLE: Yesterday we had Angus King on, we just had Chris Murphy from Connecticut on, math is the reality here, that's why it's a 'no' vote in Maine. 8 of 16 counties, the hospitals, the regional hospitals, rural hospitals are the biggest employer. Chris Murphy talking about nursing homes in Connecticut, that’s state after state with these Medicare cuts you’re gonna have to choose between five days of school or four days of school. You’ve got a child a special needs child you’re gonna have to worry what you're going to do with that child because of Medicaid cuts. You’re gonna have to worry about, hey, do I get the Castro pullout couch for grandpa because he’s coming home from the nursing home with Medicaid cuts.
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, he’d love that.
BARNICLE: And that’s state after state after state.
Duplicitous math and reasoning serve as prime examples of everything that is currently wrong with the state of the media in America today. When a news person accuses an elected official of lying and supports it by telling his own lies, he not only undermines himself, but also any possible merit that his arguments may have possessed on their own.
Today’s Morning Joe was brought to you by Booking.com, Liberty Mutual, and La Quinta Inn & Suites.
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By Alex Xenos
 CNN has become a self-serving propaganda mill for journalists the past few months, reaching a new level of shamelessness. Wednesday’s New Dayran the headline, “TRUMP WHITE HOUSE INTENSIFIES WAR WITH MEDIA,” with reporter Clarissa Ward (filling in for co-host Alisyn Camerota) worrying that by labeling the media as fake and such, that the White House is putting the lives of journalists in danger:
Chris, at what point does this become dangerous and I'm not just talking about dangerous as in tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about dangerous in that a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out sort of declaration of war on the media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris I can only imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?
The media’s new hero (Vox actually called his actions "heroic"), Brian Karem, who yelled at Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during Tuesday's White House briefing, claimed: “We are past that point...We've had, we've had threats.” Karem claimed journalists are just doing their job. That job, of course, is to support the agenda of the left.
Unsurprisingly, co-host Chris Cuomo applauded Karem: “You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people who want to speak truth to power on the show...”
Nobody is claiming that the on the scene, “war zone” reporting is fake news. Yesterday and today, Karem has been whining that journalists put their lives on the line to report the news and don’t deserve to be treated as fake news. Yeah, war correspondents and such put their lives at risk, not Washington Reporters, Brian. The truth is that the media is actually reporting inaccurate information and Newsbusters exposes this sad reality every single day.
Every public figure gets threats, Brian. I am old enough to remember way back, like a few weeks ago, when GOP congressmen were targeted and shot at (not just threatened) by a leftist nut job. The narrative is rich considering it is the media that is pushing false or misleading stories and at times hateful narratives. Yet I don’t recall the media being worried when journalists were prosecuted by the Obama administration. As Andrew McCarthy points out in National Review:
The administration’s targeting of journalists, including (a) attorney general Eric Holder’s approval of the seizure of personal and business phone records of Associated Press reporters en masse (i.e., not a particularized search targeting a specific journalist suspected of wrongdoing); and (b) Holder’s approval of a warrant targeting the e-mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen in a leak investigation — based on an application in which the government represented to a federal court that the journalist could be guilty of a felony violation of the Espionage Act in connection with a leak of classified information (in addition to purportedly being a “flight risk”).
Nor did the media cry when that administration sought to ostracize Fox News, claiming it was illegitimate.
Hennion & Walsh and the Laser Spine Institute ran ads following the segment.
See the more complete transcript of the June 28 conversation below:
8:10 AM ET
CLARISSA WARD: Chris, at what point does this become dangerous and I'm not just talking about dangerous --
CHRIS CILLIZZA: Oh, we're past that point.
WARD: -- As in tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about dangerous in that a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out sort of declaration of war on the media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris I can only imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?
CILLIZZA: I mean I don't want to say we're past that point.
BRIAN KAREM: We are past that point.
CILLIZZA: I think it is already dangerous what the Trump administration is doing, which is defiance points--
KAREM: We've had, we've had threats
CILLIZZA: they are trying to take an honest mistake or not even a mistake, and turn it into the norm as opposed -- the rule opposed to the exception, which is a very dangerous thing because that's wilfully misleading, frankly...
(...)
CUOMO: You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people who want to speak truth to power on the show...
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
 CNN’s eccentric Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta had been all over CNN and social media this week throwing a temper-tantrum over how the White House press briefings were being conducted. But during an appearance on The Situation Room, Wednesday evening, Acosta went full liberal activist as he decried the Trump administration and tried to smear a conservative panelist. “ What we're witnessing right now is just this erosion of our freedoms in terms of covering the president of the United States,” he claimed while standing in front of the White House.
Acosta then proceeded to whine about how few press conferences President Trump had had press since taking office. “This issue of turning off the cameras in the briefing rooms,” he said, switching the topic to his favorite subject. “Wolf, I could hold up my phone tomorrow and live stream that press briefing with Sean Spicer or Sarah Sanders, whoever comes in there, and that is just where technology is right now.”
“So to think that we're going backwards and not having things on camera to me is just preposterous,” he chided. But Acosta was infamous for his on camera battels with both Press Secretary Sean Spicer and President Trump.
The CNN reporter doesn’t seem to have a problem with cameras not being allowed in the Supreme Court, the only branch of government without them. It may actually surprise CNN’s wannabe Braveheart that the highest court in the land doesn’t allow cameras to curb people like him. The premise was that a lack of cameras stems the potential theatrics that lawyers and justices would put on to get noticed.
Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, noted how out of control the on camera press briefings had gotten before they were limited. “I don’t think it’s helping politics in America to have these daily briefings. I actually think they’ve been a bit of a side show,” he said as he called Acosta out on his hyperbole:
And I think a lot of us look at them and say what are the American people learning? What really is the press learning? Jim, I can understand you want as much access as you can get, but your freedoms are not being denied when a White House determines the method by which they want to brief the press. That is their first amendment right.
“But you have to accept the fact that in poll after poll after poll the American people believe that major news organizations are biased to the left,” Schlapp noted as he explained how the press should really study why the public distrusts them. “You're suffering credibility because they feel like you have it against this President and against conservatives.”
That real news didn’t sit well with Acosta who flew off the handle, and asked: “Isn’t part of the reason why those numbers are being driven down is that the President is driving them down?” But Acosta’s accusation was divorced from reality. According to a Gallup tracking poll that shows data as far back as 1985, trust in newspapers has never broken 40 percent and had been on a steady downward trend since 2001. In layman’s terms, that’s long before Trump was president.
The ranting CNN correspondent then targeted Schlapp with an underhanded smear when he asked: “When he tells half the country that we're enemies of the people, how can you stand by that?! Why have you, as a Republican leader in this country, shouted from the mountain tops that this is wrong?!”
But the confrontation was expertly defused by Schlapp when he explained that “I don’t. I don’t stand by it. Jim, I don’t. You’re not my enemy … I think you’re a good man. I think you’re trying to do your job.”
Jim ‘Braveheart’ Acosta’s self-righteous indignation proves that he’s more interested in slinging inflammatory assertions and making a scene than actually being a reporter.
Transcript below:
CNN
The Situation Room
June 28, 2017
5:47:40 PM Eastern
 (…)
MATT SCHLAPP: Look, I'm not trying to indict every reporter. I have a lot of friends that work for CNN who are on this show right now as well. But what I am trying to say is we all have to acknowledge that the Chiron on the screen says “Trump war with the press.” A lot of conservatives and Republicans believe that the national media has been at war with their values for decades. And when we have had to watch story after story after story about this investigation, about things that actually weren't that accurate about the Russia investigation, the fact that they don’t think Trump is a legitimate president, the fact that they are looking for every way to drive negative coverage.
You look at that Harvard study, Wolf, and it's hard for you to-- Put yourself in a conservative's shoes. When you look at the coverage, the overwhelming majority of coverage is anti-Trump. He deserves some of that coverage. They’ve made mistakes. I think they have to own up to those mistakes. But after a while the American people want to go to a place on the dial were they can simply get the straight facts without all this coloring, without all this opinion, without this shading. I think the American people deserve that.
WOLF BLITZER: Let me ask Jim Acosta to respond. Go ahead, Jim.
JIM ACOSTA: Well Wolf, I think that-- and I asked this question of the President when he was running to win the White House: Can you withstand the scrutiny that comes with being president of the United States? He didn't like that question. He snapped at me during that news conference. It was May of last year. And, you know, I think that there are moments when this President is just really sensitive to criticism and he lashes out in this fashion.
I think Matt is right to some extent, that yes, the coverage can get a little too negative sometimes, and that happens during the Obama administration. That happens during other administrations. Coverage of the president is tough, but that's the territory we're in right now. But I think to paint everybody with a broad brush is just not the right thing.
And Wolf, what we're witnessing right now is just this erosion of our freedoms in terms of covering the president of the United States. The president has only held one full news conference since the beginning of his administration, and that was in February. That's way behind the average of other presidents in modern times. This issue of turning off the cameras in the briefing rooms. Wolf, I could hold up my phonetomorrow and livestream that press briefing with Sean Spicer or Sarah Sanders, whoever comes in there, and that is just where technology is right now. So to think that we're going backwards and not having things on camera to me is just preposterous.
SCHLAPP: Can I respond? Look, I think the bipartisan letter from Ari Fleischer and Mike McCurry captures the moment. I don’t think it’s helping politics in America to have these daily briefings. I actually think they’ve been a bit of a side show. And I think a lot of us look at them and say what are the American people learning? What really is the press learning? Jim, I can understand you want as much access as you can get, but your freedoms are not being denied when a White House determines the method by which they want to brief the press. That is their first amendment right.
ACOSTA: They're our cameras and we should be able to turn them on and the White House is saying we can't turn them on.
(…)
5:54:36 PM Eastern
SCHLAPP: But you have to accept the fact that in poll after poll after poll the American people believe that major news organizations are biased to the left. And I think you would do the American people a lot of good if you look at not just Trump's polls, but your own poll numbers. You're suffering credibility because they feel like you have it against this President and against conservatives. And we should all stop that.
ACOSTA: Isn’t part of the reason why those numbers are being driven down is that the President is driving them down?
SCHLAPP: No Jim! You have to own it yourself!
ACOSTA: When he tells half the country that we're enemies of the people, how can you stand by that? Why have you, as a Republican leader in this country, shouted from the mountain tops that this is wrong?
SCHLAPP: I don’t. I don’t stand by it. Jim, I don’t. You’re not my enemy. This is why it doesn’t work, because we’re shouting at each other. I think you’re a good man. I think you’re trying to do your job.
(…)
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By Kristine Marsh
 As has become routine on The View, the liberal hosts ganged up on libertarian host Jedediah Bila Wednesday after she pointed out the mainstream media’s liberal bias. After Playboy's White House Correspondent threw a temper tantrum in yesterday’s press briefing, the panel criticized Trump's treatment of the media. Host Sunny Hostin gushed that the reporter was only there to be a “watchdog” for the White House and to protect us against a “dictatorship.”
Hostin ranted that how the White House was acting with reporters was “scary,” suggesting Trump was trying to lead a “dictatorship:”
SUNNY HOSTIN: They have to stick together. What's scary is she's doing what she's being told to do. This is coming directly from the president. This is coming from the White House. And what they are trying to do, I think, is damage the freedom of the press which is protected by our Constitution, which is protected by the First Amendment. If you look at the recent polls, a majority 65% of voters believe there's a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and the majority say the mainstream media publishes fake news and 37% trust the White House versus 29% who favor the political media. We need to be very concerned about this because this is what happens in Russia, this is what happens in China, when you believe the government state sponsored news over the people, you're leading -- it's a dictatorship.
As a member of the ABC News legal team, Hostin had made this Chicken Little rallying cry before to her fellow journalists, urging them to “unite” against Trump.
But host Jedediah Bila defended Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as doing what every press secretary does in pushing back against the media’s questions. She cited the Russia story and the recent revelations and resignations at CNN as a sign that the media isn’t always working in the public’s best interest.
BILA: Every press secretary does this. I think he [Trump] is echoing the sentiment of a lot of people across the country who are tired of the media...There's been a bombshell report out of people that went behind the scenes at CNN. A lot is for ratings but no new information and plenty to cover. You want to criticize Trump's policies, criticize other stuff and let that unfold. It looks like it's very crafted.
Whoopi disagreed, saying the media spends so much time on the Russia investigation because more and more of Trump’s people get linked to Russia. “Had this been any other president, I don't think they would have been able to get away with any of this,” she stated.
“They have all that and we have the press,” Joy Behar complained, referencing the Supreme Court and Congress. “So the press has to fight him!” she gushed.
Hostin jumped on the bandwagon. “The press is the watchdog of the government and has always been!” she reiterated. At that statement Bila scoffed:
“You think the press, the mainstream media at large was as tough on the Obama Administration as it is on the Trump Administration?” she asked.
It was Hostin’s turn to scoff. “Oh! Are you kidding me? Really?” she said in disbelief. The rest of the panel also expressed outrage that Bila would dare say such a thing.
Whoopi then scolded Bila that most of their audience didn’t agree with her, to applause. This time at least she didn’t add in a personal attack like she did on Monday’s show.
Whoopi also argued again that Obama received just as much media scrutiny as Trump has:
WHOOPI: Let me point something out to you. Actually, you know, there are a lot of folks in this audience that see it a little bit differently. But we see it from a different perspective. [ Applause ]
We see it from a different perspective. In that, you know, we watched the mainstream media sit back while he was called un-American, while he was called all kinds of stuff. He took a lot of hits. I know you don't see it from that perspective, but when I look, I've never seen any president except this one questioned the way he was questioned.
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By Scott Whitlock
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is “to the right,” the “far right.” CBS and The Washington Post on Wednesday conducted a collective freak out over the possibility that the new judge really is in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. The two outlets collectively used the terms “right” or “far right” eight times.
On CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King cited the Post and alerted viewers that Gorsuch “appears to be asserting himself as a force on the Supreme Court's right.” Repeating herself, she underlined, “Gorsuch fills the seat of the late Antonin Scalia and some say he's perhaps further to the right.”
In case anyone was unclear, King concluded, “He is also further to the right than almost all his colleagues on gun rights.” For those keeping score, that’s three descriptions of Gorsuch being on the “right” in just 24 seconds.
In a front page story for Wednesday’s Post, reporter Robert Barnes warned, “On Day 78 of his lifetime appointment, the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Neil M. Gorsuch, revealed himself Monday to be.... farther to the right than almost all of his colleagues on gun rights.”
 The headline blared, “Gorsuch asserts himself early as force on Supreme Court’s right.” Barnes declared, “The bottom line, according to most accounts, is that Gorsuch is a Scalia 2.0, perhaps further to the right.”
Later, the journalist continued his labeling, this time describing the dreaded “far right.”
The views he expressed on the final day came in dissents or concurrences he wrote or joined with other justices. He has sided far more frequently with Justice Clarence Thomas on the court’s far right than with Roberts, closer to the center.
The Post used “right” or far right” five times. CBS and the newspaper have not repeatedly fretted about the“far left” Obama judges, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
On CNN, Tuesday, Chris Cuomo and Jeffrey Toobin fretted over the “very conservative” Gorsuch.
A transcript of the CBS segment is below:
CBS This Morning
6/28/17
7:32:03 to 7:32:27
24 seconds
GAYLE KING: The Washington Post reports that Justice Neil Gorsuch appears to be asserting himself as a force on the Supreme Court’s right. Gorsuch fills the seat of the late Antonin Scalia and some say he's perhaps further to the right. Decisions announced on Monday reveal that he was skeptical about the reach of the Court’s decision two years ago granting same sex couples the right to marry. He is also further to the right than almost all his colleagues on gun rights.
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By Scott Whitlock
 The latest video from James O’Keefe exposed another gaffe from a CNN personality. A day after a network producer admitted there was no “proof,” so far, to the Russia investigation, CNN personality Van Jones called the issue a “nothing burger.” The undated footage shows the liberal analyst stating, “The Russia thing is just a big nothing burger.”
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Jones had made such comments. Appearing on CNN in January, he ranted about Hillary Clinton’s failure: “But she was running against an orange nightmare! She should have won by fifty states! I don’t want to hear about the Russians right now.”
In March, Jones predicted that “liberals are in grave danger” of losing to Trump.
On January 24, 2017, the network analyst hammered Christians, “As a Christian couple, how can you support a Donald Trump when you know the fear he strikes into the hearts of American Muslim children?”
On Tuesday, O’Keefe’s Project Veritas exposed a CNN producer who admitted CNN’s Russia obsession lacks “any giant proof.”
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