Back to Basics

The Obama campaign is complaining about the latest New York Times/CBS poll, because of its “methodology.” Their real complaint, however, is with the results. Whereas in April, the poll showed that in a general election match-up between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, Obama was ahead among women voters by 49% – 43%, now, in the latest poll, Romney is ahead among women by 46% – 44%, which is within the three-point margin of error, but represents an eight-point swing in one month. After the Sandra Fluke/contraception issue, and the whole “GOP war on women” theme pushed by Obama and his media allies, these numbers seemed surprising. But, in fact, they indicate that a majority of women aren’t buying it.

The part of the poll that upset the Obama campaign even more was the percentage of those polled who believe that Obama made his decision to announce his support for gay marriage for political reasons. That number was 67% versus only 24% who said they believe he did it “mostly because he thinks it is right.” That is hugely significant, and it is a gap, a credibility gap, that reverberates throughout the Obama administration.

The White House’s reliable mouthpiece, Chuck Todd, of MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown,” said that the poll was “a callback survey, not a traditional poll.” This point was also made by Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, in an interview with Todd. She questioned the methodology. Yet this same poll matched its highest approval rating for Obama in more than two years, 50%, except for a bump he got after the death of Osama bin Laden in May of last year.

The irony is that this poll, like so many others, is skewed to favor Obama. Of those interviewed, 27% generally considered themselves Republican, 35% considered themselves Democrats, and 34% considered themselves independent. And most do not agree with Obama that the economy is getting better. In fact, 63% believe it’s getting worse or is not getting better, and only 36% believe it’s getting better, which is actually an improvement for Obama. By a 46% to 43% margin, they would vote for Romney over Obama if the election were held now. And this is a group in which 45% have a favorable opinion of Obama, while only 31% have the same feeling about Romney. It goes without saying that polls are a snapshot in time, and will certainly move in both directions in the months leading up to the election. And there are other polls showing Obama with a double-digit lead in the gender gap. But this is significant because it comes at a time when the Obama campaign has ramped up, and made a strong push to win over women voters. The media have clearly carried their message for them.

Obama’s Evolution Toward Gay Marriage

It has been obvious for a long time that Obama, despite his public statements to the contrary, did not oppose gay marriage. But now John Heilemann, the liberal columnist writing in New York magazine, has confirmed the extent of the duplicity. According to Heilemann, “Barack Obama knew the ludicrous pretense that his views on the issue were ‘evolving’ was living on borrowed time.

In a recent interview with Accuracy in Media, Richard Benedetto, a retired White House correspondent and columnist for USA Today, said that “the media have been a huge factor in President Obama maintaining the job approval rating that is not at 50%, but just a little bit below.  I think he works very hard at courting that,” said Benedetto. “He knows how the media cover him. He takes full advantage of it. He makes sure that he’s out there all the time—and that’s part of the game.”

Benedetto was part of the White House press corps from Presidents Reagan through George W. Bush, and covered every presidential campaign over that period since 1984, and every national political convention since 1972. He teaches courses on politics and elections at American University, and still writes commentary, most recently for Real Clear Politics, The Washington Times, and Politico. He is also the author of Politicians Are People, Too, which was published in 2006.

Benedetto describes the media today as being “so far to the Left that if you just try to be fair, and say, to do a certain thing, ‘Let’s be fair, let’s cover this fairly,’ or ‘Let’s analyze this objectively,’ you run the risk of being accused of being a Right-winger.”

Regarding how the Obama administration deals with the press, he said, “reporters who write tough stories are hit pretty hard by insiders in the administration. Therefore, they run the risk of being cut off. This is an administration that knows very well how to work the press, and reward those who they like by giving them leaks and inside information—naturally, spun the way they want it to be spun in hopes of getting out the story out that they want to get out.”

Richard Benedetto was also an eyewitness to the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and he described for us exactly what he saw and did that day.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Benedetto said that he doesn’t believe that respect around the globe for America has increased under the Obama administration, and that support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped significantly during that period. He also believes that Obama has “repeatedly divided the nation and helped create resentment between classes.” Below are excerpts from the interview, which took place on April 12^th. You can read the transcript or listen to the complete interview here.

BENEDETTO: [Writing for USA Today] requires you to get to the heart of the story fast. It puts a great premium on facts. It does not put a great premium on opinion, mainly because there’s just no room for that kind of thing. What you have to do is give the people the straight story in a short amount of space. The notion that, somehow or other, people spend long periods of time reading long stories is just sort of false. So it was great training, because to become a better and tighter writer—it’s much easier to write long than it is to write short, so it was terrific training.

In a recent interview with Accuracy in Media, author and political activist Deneen Borelli called Al Sharpton an “ambulance chaser,” citing the Tawana Brawley case. Borelli is the author of the new book Blacklash: How Obama and the Left are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation. In the book, Borelli exposes the Left’s attempt to silence black conservatives who are battling against the Obama administration’s goal of expanding the government and increasing the number of people dependent on the welfare state.

Borelli considers the book as a call to action to empower Americans to help stop the cycle of government dependency, which deprives citizens of their rights to freedom and prosperity. Not only is she an author, but she’s a Fellow at Project 21, a network of black conservatives, which is an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, based in Washington, D.C. She’s also a Fellow with FreedomWorks, and a contributor to Fox News. Her website is deneenborelli.com.

Borelli referred to the Trayvon Martin case as “a very tragic situation.” The interview was conducted on March 29, well before the special prosecutor charged George Zimmerman with second degree murder in the case.

“My heart truly goes out to this young man’s parents,” she said. “But, sadly, we have some individuals who are really trying to gain from this tragedy. You have individuals who have made this a race issue because they say it’s a race issue. Yes, there’s a rush to judgment, and now, this has just really blown out of proportion, especially when you have the New Black Panther Party issuing a bounty. Now we have black members of Congress, with their actions and different promises they have made. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have inserted themselves into this situation, and any time they’re on the scene they gain media attention, no matter what the situation is. The other thing I want to point out is that the tone of this incident has been set at the top, from President Obama, when he made his comment, saying that his child would look like him. There was no reason, in my opinion, to make that kind of statement. As I’ve written in my book, Blacklash, I do believe there is a pattern in Obama’s comments where he has chosen racial tension in our country instead of calming racial tension, and I find that very concerning.”

In the rest of the interview, we talked about the Tea Party movement, affirmative action, the Democrats’ hold over the black vote, school choice and ObamaCare, among other things.

Below, in italics, are excerpts from the half-hour interview. You can listen to the entire interview  or read the transcript here.

One thing I realized, especially within the black community, is that there is a monopoly on the message.  The monopoly is generally from the black establishment—I’m talking about Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, different black publications.   They’re all saying pretty much the same thing, and it’s not really a message of liberty, it’s not really a message of personal responsibility.  Sadly, we have this message of victimization, and times that blacks need special treatment when, in fact, that’s all a lie.  That is why I can speak from experience, to say that it’s a lie.  So I implore anyone—but especially our young black youth, and anyone in the black community—to, please, do your research.  Don’t just follow the crowd!  Learn on your own, and then make an informed decision.  That is really how I got to the point where I am today.

Sadly, we have too many Americans who are afraid to be true to what they’re really thinking about President Obama and his failed policies.  When you think about when the Tea Party movement came on the scene in 2009, how the liberal Left tried its hardest to demonize and discredit the movement, calling anyone involved with the movement “racist,” “rednecks,” and “extremists”—I’ve been involved with the Tea Party movement since Day One, and I can tell you, I speak at different groups and organizations around the country, and these individuals are concerned about the direction our country is going in, they’re concerned about the massive growth of government.  Any time government is too big, that means our liberties are reduced, so what I am imploring people to do—I hope my book will not only inform, but inspire all Americans to not be afraid, to speak out and be concerned about the direction our country is going in. 

When you think about how the Left has all the bases covered—as I mentioned before, with the name-calling, if you’re a black conservative, such just as I am—and in the first few pages of my book I talk about all the names that I’ve been called—but I think about how our military men and women are so brave, standing on the front lines, defending our freedoms, it’s the least I can do to stand up for liberty, and what we the people need to do to rein in this government-gone-wild.  I don’t care about the name-calling—I care more about delivering the message of freedom and liberty, but, also, what Americans can do to hold the line for liberty, as well.

I think the Democrat Party gets way too much credit for the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and, when you think about the last election, 2008, with Obama, a lot of blacks did vote for him simply because of his skin color.  But I say Martin Luther King—“content of character,” not skin color.  You need to know where a person stands: If they’re going to be the President—or your local Representative—where do they stand on issues?  How will those issues affect you today and in the future?  But I tell you, with this upcoming election, I think the unemployment, as high as it is across the country—but, also, within the black community, it’s double that among white individuals, it’s 13%, 14% in the black community, and among black teens it’s approaching 40%—these are the numbers and the facts that all Americans need to take into consideration, and especially within the black community.  Not skin color—content of character: That’s how people should be voting.

I believe that admissions, or job entry, or whatever it is that this woman is trying to pursue, should be based on a person’s merit, be based on what skills they have to bring to the table.  Your color has nothing to do with how you can perform a task, how you can pass a course.  Your color has absolutely nothing to do in that regard—and that is why I don’t believe that affirmative action is necessary—because, really, it’s based on individual effort and merit, and not a person’s skin color.

I do mention this in my book, Blacklash—there are a number of black conservatives who are what I call “closet conservatives,” and it’s because they are afraid of being targeted and criticized by their friends, their co-workers.  But I have had people contact me on Facebook, E-mail, and Twitter—especially since my book’s come out, but even before then.  These individuals are thanking me for what I stand for, and thanking me for writing the book, thanking me for what I do, because they agree with me, and they feel the same way, but, on the other hand, they are afraid of being targeted and criticized.

So I do believe more power should be in the hands of the parents, especially when it comes to school choice, because, this way, parents know what is best for their child, for their educational needs; [the schools] will be very accountable, they’ll be hands-on; and the students also know that they have to be accountable, as well… I am totally someone who believes in school choice.  I just wish more and more people—even if you don’t have children—would get involved, maybe be a mentor, because there are so many children today who could use leadership and guidance.  Things are tough today for everyone, but it’s especially hard for our young people, I believe.

if you’re concerned about liberty—I mean, let’s face it: Obamacare is about control.  It’s an unfunded mandate.  Literally what’s going to happen is, you’re going to have some faceless bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor, when, in fact, it should be the individual and the doctor who should be making the best choices and decisions for that individual, for their family.  I know from just going to the post office, for example, the government can’t do anything within economic reason, or to be accountable.  I think post office, and I think motor vehicles, Amtrak—I mean, why would you want the government to decide your health care needs?  I just find that totally outrageous.  So I’m so glad this is being held before the Supreme Court, and we will be finding out—I believe at the end of June or July—what the final decisions are.  The other thing is, look at the waivers that were issued.  That’s another indication of how unpopular Obamacare is, as well.

[Jackson and Sharpton] have a history—there’s a pattern of what they do to try to push their agenda.  Getting back to Al Sharpton, I call him an “ambulance chaser,” I write about how he ruined many lives of individuals who were involved in the Tawana Brawley situation that happened—and how he has yet to apologize.  And, on the flip side, he has a television show.  There’s a lack of accountability here.  I wrote about that in Blacklash.  I hope people will understand what their endgame is—this is just really for their agenda, to monopolize on situations such as the one that’s going on in Florida.

In what may be the mostly timely and important book of the year, Michael Widlanski lays out the current predicament that confronts America—and the West—and the potential consequences if we don’t recognize, acknowledge and combat it. The book is titled The Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat.

At a time that we find the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) welcomed into the White House, having taken control of Egypt’s parliament, and having backed off their pledge not to run a candidate for president in the upcoming elections, the message of Widlanski’s book hits home. This White House visit reversed a longstanding U.S. policy of no formal contacts with the Brotherhood. As Andrew McCarthy, the former U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted the “Blind Sheikh” involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, wrote in National Review, “Obama has overlooked the MB’s intimate ties to Hamas, which self-identifies as the Ikhwan’s [the Muslim Brotherhood] Palestinian branch and is formally designated a terrorist organization under American law. Administration officials have absurdly portrayed the Brothers as ‘secular’ and ‘moderate,’ although the organization, from its founding in the 1920s, has never retreated an inch from its professed mission to establish Islam’s global hegemony.”

McCarthy added that “The administration further hailed the Brotherhood’s triumph in post-Mubarak legislative elections and made a point of abandoning the policy against formal MB contacts—though, in now-familiar Obama fashion, it simultaneously claimed that this ‘outreach’ broke no new ground.”

I point this out because it exemplifies what Widlanski’s book is about. Our media, our intelligence agencies, our government—particularly the Obama administration—and academia have all sought to downplay the truth about radical Islam, and the threat it poses to the West. In doing so, they have actually aided our enemies, in some cases quite knowingly. He also highlights the media’s negligence in investigating terror organizations and their operations in the U.S.  Widlanski argues that a number of European countries, faced with a more immediate demographic threat, have begun to act to combat the threat in ways that we have not in the U.S.

In a recent interview with Accuracy in Media, Widlanski described the main sources of terror threats we face today:

“There are, basically, two or three major terror centers in the world today. The terror ideology, a lot of it originally came out of Arabia, what today we call Saudi Arabia—the Wahhabi doctrines that became the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has moved around to various parts of the Middle East. It is the spiritual godfather of al-Qaeda. It is also the spiritual godfather of Hamas. The second major terror center, Arab-Islamic terror center, is in Tehran. The regime of the Ayatollahs came to power to spread jihad throughout the world, and they’ve been very successful.”

Michael Widlanski is an Arabic-speaking specialist in Arab politics and communication. His doctorate, which is one of five degrees he holds from three different universities (including three of them from Columbia University in New York) dealt with Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter, correspondent, and editor, respectively, at The New York Times, the Cox newspaper Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.

As more facts have come out about the tragic death of young Trayvon Martin, the news media have been confronted with the consequences of their rush to judgment when news of this story first broke nationally. The first week or 10 days of national coverage turned out to be more of a lynch mob than a sober take on an unfolding story. It had all the makings of “First the hanging, then the trial.” And then more facts began to emerge.

The word of the day was justice, as called for by the likes of Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz, the MSNBC hosts who are among the leaders of the “presumed guilty” rush to judgment of the Hispanic American, George Zimmerman, for what they believe was a cold-blooded murder of an unarmed, black teenager, Trayvon Martin. The problem is, that’s not the way our justice system is supposed to work, and there are significant facts in dispute.

Undoubtedly, this was a tragedy. If a jury finds that Zimmerman committed a crime, and murdered Martin, he should face the consequences and do the time. In our system, those decisions are left to judges and juries, not talk-show hosts desperate to goose their ratings, who act as if they are unquestionably perched on some moral high ground.

What everyone agrees upon is that on the night of February 26th of this year, Trayvon Martin, who was visiting his father’s home in Sanford, Florida, near Orlando, had gone out to a 7-11 convenience store for candy and a drink. Meanwhile, Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch captain who was not on duty that night, was returning to his home when he noticed and became suspicious of Martin and called 911, as he had done over 40 times in the previous year and a half while participating in that program. Zimmerman was following Martin, and was told by a dispatcher not to do that. Zimmerman said “Okay,” and there was a break in the recorded record of what happened in the following moments. Shortly thereafter, there was a physical altercation between the two, Zimmerman fired a shot from his 9MM handgun, and Trayvon Martin lay dead on the ground.

The police arrived at the scene moments later, and their report suggests there had been an altercation between Martin and Zimmerman. One of the policemen stated in the report that “I observed that his back appeared to be wet and he was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from his nose and the back of his head.”

The report filed by the Sanford police indicates that there were at least six witnesses who saw or heard at least some of the events that led to Martin’s death. They ranged in age from 19 to 56. Five were described as “white.” The race of the sixth witness was listed as “O,” meaning “other.”

Part of what led to the rush to judgment was the fact that Zimmerman was described as a white male in the police report.

“I’m sick of the Israelis, the Americans—everybody talks too much! If you’re going to attack Iran, you attack it! You don’t talk about it endlessly, obnoxiously, ad nauseam-ly.” So said, Bernard Shapiro, founder and chairman of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and editor of The Maccabean Online, in a recent interview with Accuracy in Media. “This has been going on for how many years?,” added Shapiro. “You’d think the Israelis didn’t know that the Iranians were building this five years ago? Ten years ago? Every day they sit and talk about it and question it and endlessly debate it, the Iranians dig deeper, more Israeli soldiers are going to be killed, the more dangerous it will be to put it out of commission.”

Shapiro has been a fierce advocate for Israel for more than 50 years. He is the author and editor of the new book, The Battle for Eretz Yisrael: Jews, G-d, and Israel, 1992-2011, which documents Israel’s attempts to find and gain its identity. Shapiro is a native Texan, but he attended Berkeley in California where he obtained degrees in political science, communications, and public policy. He moved to Israel, where he lived for several years. I have known Bernard for nearly 50 years. He was a fixture at the House of Books in Houston—where I also grew up—and which his family owned and ran for many years.

In addition to his concerns about the current confrontation with Iran, Shapiro gave his views on Zionism, his beloved grandfather who was the inspiration for his love of Israel, the so-called “Oslo peace process,” the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. He also delved into media bias and double standards when it comes to Israel, and what he describes as Barack Obama’s “big, pro-Muslim offensive.” While his views at times are controversial, his knowledge of these subjects is unquestionably vast. He has brought together some of the great analysts and thinkers on these subjects, whose articles and reports appear regularly on Shapiro’s websites.

Below, in italics, are excerpts from the interview. You can listen to the entire interview or read the transcript here.

I used to be very upset about the Holocaust.  I used to have a certain amount of anger at God because He let the Jews die so easily during the Holocaust, and religious Jews didn’t seem to revolt against the Nazis.  But when I began to learn about Zionism and Israel, I saw a whole new dimension to my political and ideological beliefs.  I saw that Jews on their own soil—that means in the land of Israel—were much stronger than their arms and men.

My grandfather was Harry W. Freeman, and he lived between 1886 and 1959.  He died when I was eighteen years old, but he raised me like his son.  He taught me to write, to love poetry, to love music—but most of all, he had a certain passion for the Jewish people, and he was one of the founders of the Zionist movement in Houston.  Of course, he was in constant dispute with the German Jews who were in Houston and were anti-Zionist.  You know, the German Jews felt like, if Israel existed, then they would lose their status as Americans, they would be accused of a double loyalty.  Of course, my grandfather never believed that.  He was a rebel all his life.  He was born in the Russian-Poland area of Europe, he rebelled against the czar, and ended up being driven from Europe by the czar’s secret police back in 1907.  But it was fortunate for me, because he ended up in Texas, and I didn’t get killed during the Holocaust.  He was a strong believer in social justice, women’s rights, education for everyone.  He argued the case before the Supreme Court that got blacks the right to sit on Texas grand juries.  He was a remarkable person.

The news for Media Matters keeps getting worse and worse. After weeks of stonewalling the excellent Daily Caller series that broke on February 12, Media Matters founder David Brock and his co-author Ari Rabin-Havt of the new book The Fox Effect have selectively responded to some of the allegations made in the series. Media Matters for America is the far-left, George Soros-backed organization that claims its purpose is to monitor and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. But as characterized in The Daily Caller series, “Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in Democratic politics. The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country. Brock, who collected over $250,000 in salary from Media Matters in 2010, has himself become a major fundraiser on the left. According to an internal memo obtained by TheDC, Media Matters intends to spend nearly $20 million in 2012 to influence news coverage.”

According to one of the sources who talked to The Daily Caller, “Every Tuesday evening, meanwhile, a representative from Media Matters attends the Common Purpose Project meeting at the Capitol Hilton on 16th Street in Washington, where dozens of progressive organizations formulate strategy, often with a representative from the Obama White House.”

While their tax exempt status with the IRS has been challenged in the past, it is coming under renewed scrutiny, says The Daily Caller, and some Republicans in Congress have expressed intentions to look into their activities to try to determine if they should be able to maintain their tax-exempt status. The issues include the fact that they are involved in “political training” of Democrats, and that their frequent calls and meetings with White House officials, according to C. Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel under President George H. W. Bush, “could prove problematic if the organization is privately sharing information with President Barack Obama’s staff.” Gray said that “If a section 501(c)(3) organization is privately providing to the Democratic Party information for their use in their political activities, that’s a contribution to the party,” and thus not allowed by the IRS code with their current status.

As AIM’s Cliff Kincaid reported in a column on February 7^th, “the head of Media Matters has officially dropped the mask of media critic by creating a so-called Democratic ‘Super PAC’ devoted to re-electing President Obama, adding Democrats to the Senate Democratic majority, and taking back the House of Representatives from the Republicans.”

Brock heads up the Super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, as well as Media Matters, and the two are housed in the same Washington D.C. offices.

In other developments, Fox News has reported, and provided links to all of the legal documents that reveal that Brock paid $850,000 in what he characterized as a “blackmail” payment. According to the documents, Brock was being threatened by a former domestic partner with information on Media Matters’ donors and the IRS. This might provide useful information if Congress actually investigates.

In yet another potential financial controversy, Media Matters has collected $365,000 in ill gotten gains from three foundations that convicted Ponzi-scheme operator Bernie Madoff had “invested” in.

While the mainstream media are still overwhelmingly intent on seeing Barack Obama reelected as President, a number of journalists and news organizations are apparently having second thoughts. Or at least they are willing to examine the claims and representations that the Obama administration continues to put forth. This has been the surprising case regarding Obama’s State of the Union address in late January and the budget that he proposed in mid-February. Hopefully this may mark a turning point in how the media allow themselves to be used by the Obama administration, but don’t count on it. More likely it is isolated incidents of self-respect, and an acknowledgement that they can differentiate between normal political spin and outright lies.

The double standard still could not be more clear. During the many Republican debates there has been a constant effort to get the candidates to provide sound bites for Democratic ads during the general election, calling each other liars and flip-floppers, moderates, liberals, influence peddlers, and plutocrats. The ABC New Hampshire debate in which George Stephanopoulos spent a substantial amount of time on the burning issue of whether or not states have the right to ban contraception seemed like a Saturday Night Live skit in how it attempted to make the candidates appear radical. But now it looks more like coordination with the White House in preparation for their battle to make contraception a “free” entitlement for all under ObamaCare.

President Obama rarely faces such questions. He has been able to largely stay above the fray, managing the news flow, picking softball interviewers like NBC’s Matt Lauer before the Super Bowl, and ABC’s Diane Sawyer a few days before that. But what is new, and has the ability to change the dynamics, is that some of the loyal left in the media have begun to actually directly challenge Obama’s claims and narrative. Not enough of them, but it is starting to happen.

There are still hard-to-believe spectacles such as the Super Bowl on February 4 that played like an infomercial for the reelection of President Obama, in front of an audience estimated at 110 million people. But what is new is that within a day of the President’s State of the Union (SOTU) address, the Associated Press (AP) and The Washington Post were both out with detailed refutations of some of Obama’s signature claims—claims to do with the auto industry, the green energy industry, job creation, the size and scope of government under his term in office, Afghanistan, tax fairness, energy production, and relations with Israel.

During halftime of the Super Bowl was the much talked about two-minute Chrysler ad, with Clint Eastwood, calling it “halftime in America” and seeming to endorse a second Obama term, while suggesting the President was in the middle of a great accomplishment, namely saving America’s auto industry and with it the city of Detroit, Michigan.

Eastwood denied that he intended anything political with the ad, and it’s hard not to take Dirty Harry at his word. But the political overtones were clear, even to some of the giddiest of Obama’s allies in the media. For example, Frank Rich, formerly of The New York Times, currently with New York magazine, was on CNN the following night with Piers Morgan on his weekday show.

As reported in a recent posting, Accuracy in Media presented its annual Reed Irvine Media Awards for Investigative and Grassroots Journalism amidst a trumped up controversy reported in The Washington Post, Politico and Big Journalism. Awards were presented to Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News for her investigative reporting on Operation Fast and Furious as well as Solyndra and other “green energy” projects in which the Obama administration has invested Americans’ taxpayer dollars; and Dana Loesch, Editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism, for her tireless work as a grassroots journalist.

The pro-Democratic Party media watchdog, Media Matters, led the effort to browbeat Attkisson and CBS into backing out of accepting the award. They claim her reporting was shoddy and that CBS shouldn’t allow her to accept an award from a partisan group, as they call Accuracy in Media. Yet as AIM’s Cliff Kincaid recently exposed, the head of Media Matters, David Brock, has created a so-called Democratic “Super PAC” specifically devoted to electing Democrats and defeating Republicans.

Kincaid, the director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, said at the awards event, AIM is nonpartisan, independent and yes, conservative.

It turned out that only a few hours before the event took place on Thursday, Ms. Attkisson contacted us at AIM to inform us she had been called away on assignment, and was sending someone in her place to accept the award on her behalf. That person was Chris Isham, the Washington bureau chief for CBS News. Chris was very gracious in accepting the award, saying, “Thanks very much, Roger, and thanks for the plug for CBSnews.com. Sharyl was very sorry not to be here today. She is traveling out of town on assignment. I am going to accept this award on her behalf and on behalf of CBS News. Sharyl will be donating the proceeds of this award ($1,000) to the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (applause). As many of you may know, this murder was connected to the Fast and Furious Operation. In fact it was Terry’s death in December of 2010 that really motivated a number of whistleblowers to come forward and talk to Sharyl and members of Congress about what was going on and really generated the story and really allowed us and congressional investigators to dig into this and drill down on this operation. Sharyl has spoken with the family of Agent Terry and let them know that they will be receiving the proceeds. They were very heartened and heartened that people are still talking about this issue and focused on it. CBS News is very proud of Sharyl’s groundbreaking reporting, as you’ve described it. It represents the best at CBS News—the kind of original reporting that we are extremely proud of. That we are fully committed to and will remain.”

That was hardly a repudiation of AIM, or the award. CBS is very deserving of sharing in this award with Sharyl, and we fully endorse that.

Newsbusters Tim Graham gave a great analysis of the double standard—media have no problem accepting awards from liberal groups that overwhelmingly favor liberal journalists.

“This is not the liberal position,” wrote Graham, “when, say, journalists accept awards from their ‘progressive’ activist groups like the ‘Maggie Awards’ handed out by Planned Parenthood (Rachel Maddow).

There are so many scurrilous, condescending and false charges on MSNBC on any given day, that it is tough to catalog all of them. The NBC brand, which used to have much higher standards, is being damaged on a daily basis by its cable news division. A few items from MSNBC’s Florida primary analysis demand retractions and corrections, which will likely never come. They don’t care. They are hit men for the Democrats. That’s who they are, that’s what they do.

During the 5 p.m. hour on January 31^st, the day of the Florida primary, Chris Matthews was on with New York magazine’s John Heilemann and Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman. It was the usual pile-on of the GOP candidates, not that they’re not doing a good enough number on each other. Clearly they are. But that doesn’t excuse the lies and the sloppiness of the commentary.

Heilemann was explaining that the negative campaigning in 2008 between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama never was anything like what we’re seeing among the Republicans, particularly between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Heilemann, along with Mark Halperin, wrote the book that is the liberals’ favorite account of the election, Game Change. So you would think he knows the history of that campaign pretty well.

Here is a transcript of the three of them talking:

Heilemann: Howard and I were talking before, you know people think back to the Clinton-Obama race in 2008 and how negative that was, how tough it was, etc. There was not a negative ad run between Clinton-Obama until March in that race. We’ve seen negative ads [in this Florida primary] on an unprecedented scale.

Matthews: I’m trying to remember, guys, how bad it got between now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. What I remember when the now President said something we all thought then was pretty rotten, he said, “She’s likable enough,” Well that was considered very ungentlemanly, to put it lightly. That would be like the morning starter. They [Romney and Gingrich] don’t even say anything even remotely that nice.

Fineman: Liars, phonies, erratic, crazy!

Heilemann: Hillary Clinton, when she had the outburst in Ohio, “Shame on you, Barack Obama.” Again, that was considered a moment of great, emotional outburst and people talked about how bitter this campaign was getting.

Matthews: She didn’t call him a liar.

Heilemann: She didn’t come out and call him a liar, they didn’t call each other unfit for office. Nobody taunted, and kind of belittled the other one. Nothing quite like we’re seeing right now in this Republican race.

But Heilemann was simply wrong. A Google search turned up loads of examples of negative attacks, both publicly and in ads, between the two, and well before March of 2008. There were many to choose from, but I’ve just picked a few that were described as such on CNN, ABC, CBS, The Young Turks and Robert Reich’s blog. Perhaps Heilemann doesn’t agree with their characterizations of these ads and comments as “negative.”

For example, Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary wrote this in his blog on January 24, 2008: “Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party.