While opining over Andrea Mitchell's coverage of the Iowa caucuses where she made the statement that they were too white and too Evangelical to be representative of the rest of the country and weren't always good at selecting the eventual GOP presidential nominees, Bill O'Reilly guest Bernard Goldberg could not argue that her coverage was an example of media bias as some on the right have done, and Goldberg even called her statements "factually correct."
That didn't stop him from taking a swipe at MSNBC's upcoming prime time coverage of the Iowa caucuses and of MSNBC in general with O'Reilly trying to paint them as some "far left network."
GOLDBERG: Fox is going to be covering this with journalists. CNN is going to be covering the election night with journalists. MSNBC is covering it with five commentators whose views range from far left, to really, really far left.
Yeah, unlike that "fair and balanced" coverage we get from Fox that just loves President Obama and Democrats. And here's part of O'Reilly's response.
O'REILLY: They know their only hope tomorrow night is to get the people who hate the Republican Party...
GOLDBERG: Bingo.
O'REILLY: ... to watch them hate the Republican Party. But I'm not offended by that because there's no false advertising on MSNBC, I've got to tell ya'. They just flat out say, we're the far left network. We're going to get our couple of hundred thousand viewers an hour and that's what we're do and blank you if you don't like it. That's it.
GOLDBERG: That's exactly right.
I hate to break it to both of them but if they think MSNBC's coverage at night is "far left" then they don't know what the "far left" looks like, or they're pretending they don't at least. They lean towards the Democratic Party, but far left... I don't think so. I've got a few Socialists they could talk to around here if they want to know what the "far left" looks like. And calling CNN and Fox's pundits on election night "journalists" is a joke. They're pundits just like the rest of them in our corporate media. The nerve of either O'Reilly or Goldberg to be criticizing anyone else in the corporate media for biased coverage is simply laughable on its face. Sadly the two of them are counting in the misinformed Fox audience to not get the joke.
They did hit on one point I actually agree with, which is the corporate media's obsession with the horse race instead of actually covering the issues and where these candidates stand. Sadly, their own network isn't any better (and usually worse) at that than the other two they were criticizing.
There is as they criticized, way too much coverage of the horse race and who is up and who is down in the polls and not enough coverage of the candidates and where they stand on issues. That said, as I noted, Fox is as guilty of it as anyone, and what did O'Reilly turn to during this interview? That Fox was going to beat the other networks with their ratings for the night. So way to keep it focused on the issues Bill, other than just how important it is that someone is still watching your show or your network at night.
And to his charge that MSNBC is "liberal" I've said this before and I'll say it again. You might be able to make that claim about some of their prime time lineup. You cannot say their daytime lineup is liberal. It's corporate and includes Joe Scarborough who may as well be part of the programming on Fox. Mrs. Greenspan who commonly reports on so many issues where she has a conflict of interests it's not even funny.
And as to their afternoon or evening lineup, Dylan Ratigan who is more of a Libertarian born again faux liberal, who decided Wall Street was bad after seeing the light after who knows how many years of carrying water for them, and whose show plays like a bad rerun day after day with the same guests and the same overly simplistic, over generalities and the same talking points with the "both sides" are equally bad meme when they are not, and guests like Tom Coburn brought on among others who don't deserve the air time they're given treated as some bastion of reasonableness. So spare me with anyone trying to label Dylan Ratigan as a liberal.
And then we've got Chris Matthews who can't figure out whether he's pro-choice or not depending on which way the wind is blowing that day and continually brings on the likes of Tom DeLay as his best buddy, or at least he did before he finally wound up being convicted and who fluctuates with his political leanings where at times it's enough to make your head spin.
Matthews, along with his buddy David Gregory are more concerned about still making the D.C. cocktail circuit and who they're going to have access to for their next interview than anything that someone could call "journalism." Sadly I think O'Reilly and Goldberg travel in some of the same circles, but you'll never hear them admit that on the air.
I've also seen plenty of criticism of Maddow, Schultz and O'Donnell's nightly coverage and whether or not they're glossing over coverage that a lot in the liberal community consider important, most of which, I do not disagree with. The sad state of affairs is that if you really want to follow the "news" these days, our corporate media, no matter who they are, may not be covering it.
About the only thing more pitiful about what our corporate news has turned into is watching O'Reilly and Goldberg pretend that Fox isn't the biggest part of the problem with what's become of it.
