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Judd Gregg Lectures MSNBC: "Irresponsible"
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) attacked MSNBC hosts Contessa Brewer and Melissa Francis on Thursday, questioning their “integrity” as journalists and calling them “irresponsible.”
The scuffle started with Francis asking Gregg to name specific areas of the budget he would cut after he criticized the White House’s proposed freeze on nondefense discretionary spending, saying President Barack Obama has done little to reduce the size of government.
“That’s good in theory,” Francis started to say before Gregg cut her off.
“It’s not a theory,” Gregg said. “Don't tell me it's good in theory. What are you? How do you get off saying something like that?”
Francis then jumped in to offer Gregg a chance “to tell us how to practically put it to work.”
Gregg then launched into an attack of the administration for increasing spending and the federal debt, quickly getting interrupted by Brewer.
“My partner Melissa, Sen. Gregg, is really asking for specifics,” Brewer said. “If you don't believe we should have a $1.3 trillion budget, which programs are you willing to cut?”
“Are you willing to tell schools, no money for you?” Brewer asked.
“Nobody is saying ‘no money for schools,’” Gregg responded. “What an absurd statement to make, a dishonest statement to make.”
“Sen. Gregg, what we're both asking is which programs to cut?” Brewer said. “Senator, you're going to be asked to cut certain programs if you're on the senate Banking Committee — just tell us which one you'll cut?”
Gregg said he’d ‘eliminate’ the money for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, cut stimulus spending and reform entitlement programs. But after being given his chance to outline his proposals, Gregg still clearly had an ax to grind with the two hosts.
“I've made very specific proposals and I'm willing to stand by them. The problem is that this administration’s view of governance is economic prosperity created by growing the government dramatically,” he said. “Then it gets misrepresented by people like yourself that say if you do this you're going to end up not funding education. That's the most irresponsible question.”
“You can't be duplicitous about this,” he added. “You can't make a representation and then claim you didn't make it. You know, it just shouldn't work that way. You've got to have some integrity on your side of this camera, too.”
MSNBC: Shuster Tweets "Inappropriate"
MSNBC may be obsessed with the four men arrested for trying to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s telephones, but the network says reporter David Shuster crossed the line when he attacked one of them via Twitter.
Just before leaving for New Orleans to cover the story, Shuster used a Twitter message to tell Conservative Filmmaker James O’Keefe — one of the four men arrested by the FBI — that he’s “not a journalist,” that he “intended to tap phones” and that he “will go to prison.”
“The comments were inappropriate,” an MSNBC spokesperson told POLITICO Thursday. “We have talked to David about them.”
Still, Shuster continues to cover the story for MSNBC. At 3 p.m. Thursday, he’s expected to interview Andrew Breitbart, who pays O’Keefe a salary and published his undercover anti-ACORN videos on his website Big Government.
MSNBC has been all over the arrests at Landrieu’s New Orleans office, dubbing the alleged attempt to tamper with the phones of the Democratic senator “PhoneGate” and “Bayou Break-In.”
On Wednesday night — when other news networks were focused on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann devoted the first 20 minutes of “Countdown” to the Landrieu case.
In addition to speaking with Shuster from New Orleans, Olbermann talked with analyst Richard Wolffe and former Nixon counsel John Dean, famous for his role in the Watergate coverup.
Fox News, by contrast, has spent relatively little time on the story.
Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group, reports that Fox devoted roughly 4½-half minutes on O’Keefe’s arrest Tuesday during its evening and prime-time shows, while spending over an hour on the ACORN tapes when that story broke on Sept. 10.
It’s quite a contrast from last fall, when Fox gave loads of airtime to the undercover videos in which O’Keefe pretended to be a pimp seeking help from ACORN. The 25-year-old activist appeared on “Glenn Beck,” “Hannity” and “Fox & Friends” and was named the “Power Player of the Week” by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
A Fox spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Ari Rabin-Havt, vice president of research and communication for Media Matters, said that in addition to the airtime Fox gave the ACORN story, the network also allowed O’Keefe, Hannah Giles — who appeared as the prostitute in the undercover tapes — and Breitbart to talk up their legal defense fund.
Rabin-Havt said that given the amount of time Fox provided for what he considers an “unethical piece of journalism,” the network has “some culpability” for whatever O’Keefe may have done next.
But while Media Matters sees Fox as overhyping the first O’Keefe-related story, those on the other end of the political spectrum now see MSNBC giving too much play to the second.
Seton Motley, director of communications for the Media Research Center, said that MSNBC is “hyperventilating in their coverage” and that O’Keefe’s been “convicted in the court of Twitter by David Shuster.”
“I think what the MSNBCs of the world are trying to do is to undo what [O’Keefe] did to ACORN with this,” Motley said.
Breitbart also thinks the media have gone overboard.
“For those in the mainstream media committed to report the false and libelous narrative of ‘Watergate Jr.,’ ‘wiretapping’ and ‘bugging,’ I predict much egg on your J-school grad faces,” Breitbart wrote on his Big Journalism site.
Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, noted that the different levels of coverage between the ACORN story — presumably bad for liberals — and the O’Keefe arrest — presumably bad for conservatives — is just par for the course.
“One thing we’ve seen repeatedly on ideologically oriented shows, in cable and radio, is not only the ideology evident in how a subject is treated but whether a subject is covered,” he said.
During the campaign, Jurkowitz pointed out that Fox hosts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity focused more on issues such as the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while MSNBC hosts Olbermann and Rachel Maddow offered more coverage of issues relating to Sen. John McCain’s campaign tactics.
“If you were watching the Fox hosts or the MSNBC hosts, you’d be getting different subjects of the campaign covered,” Jurkowitz said. “You are getting in some ways a different world.”
Ed Schultz Curses Robert Gibbs: "Full Of Sh*t"
MSNBC host Ed Schultz is tearing into Robert Gibbs and the rest of President Barack Obama’s team, telling the White House press secretary that he is “full of sh—.”
Speaking at the progressive Blue State Bash event at the Minneapolis Convention Center on Saturday, Schultz relayed a combative exchange he had off the air with Gibbs, who last appeared on his program “The Ed Show” on Thursday.
“I know it’s being recorded, but I wasn’t told it was off the record,” Schultz said in a video posted on theuptake.org. “Mr. Gibbs and I had quite the conversation off the air the other night. I’m gonna tell ya, I told him he was full of sh—.”
“I did,” Schultz continued. “And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Sen. Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said: ‘And I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out. I’m telling you you’re losing your base. Do you understand you’re losing your base?’”
Schultz set a fiery tone in the nearly 20-minute speech that eviscerated the Democratic Party for not listening to its progressive wing.
“We have to get these people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement and get them the hell out,” Schultz boomed. “We are still in an ideological fight for this country.”
The liberal talk show host — who was asked by North Dakota Democrats to run for the Senate seat vacated by Sen. Byron Dorgan’s retirement — implored the audience to hold the Obama administration’s feet to the fire.
“We have to make sure President Obama gets the message: We’re with you, but you have to be with us,” he said. “If we don’t speak up and tell the White House they’re wrong right now, who will do it?”
Schultz also said that despite turning down an opportunity to run for the Senate, he would have used the same aggressive tone on the campaign trail.
“I want all of you to know that I am not running for the United States Senate,” he said. “But I also want you to know that if I did, I’d kick their ass.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sources: MSNBC, Politico, Twitter, NY Mag.
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