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On CNN's Reliable Sources this Sunday, Howard Kurtz did a segment focusing on whether the pundits out there in the media who were telling everyone it would be a Romney blowout, should pay a price for being continually wrong with their predictions. I think Kurtz misses the forest for the trees with his criticism, primarily because any real analysis about just how bad most of the corporate media's election coverage was, would require him taking a look at his own network and not just Fox News.

First and foremost, if we're ever going to do anything about getting the money out of politics, we're not going to get much help, if any, out of the industries primarily profiting from it, which is all of the television stations and radio stations across the country. You're not going to see the pundits out there saying much about all of those advertising dollars when their companies and everyone they work with is thriving because of it.

And then there's the issue of Rove and his ilk on Fox, who was not just that he was misleading viewers with overly optimistic predictions about the election results, but also running a PAC. Fox continually failed to disclose Rove's involvement in the election. They also made a regular habit of bringing on Romney campaign advisers as pundits and failing to disclose their roles as well..

If Kurtz wants to give an honest assessment of the coverage of this presidential election, there's a lot more wrong with it than just pundits getting predictions wrong. And what I noted here is just the tip of the iceberg. Endless focus on polls and the horse race, rather than substance, the issue of media consolidation, fake balance where there is none and a host of other issues are a lot bigger problem than talking heads being rewarded for failure.

Full transcript of Kurtz and his panel's remarks below the fold.

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You've gotta' just love it. From the network that did nothing but hammer on the drummed up fake Benghazi debacle and that has done nothing but attack President Obama ever since he became the Democratic nominee years ago, comes complaints about supposed "media bias" and favorable coverage received by President Obama during the last week prior to the election.

Host Jon Scott asked his panel on Fox News Watch (their so-called media watchdog show which almost makes Howard Kurtz's Sunday show look respectable... almost) what they thought about the poll by Pew Research, which showed President Obama receiving 29 percent positive coverage, and 19 percent negative, compared to Mitt Romney getting 16 percent positive and 33 percent negative.

What they failed to discuss was the fact that the study from Pew also stated that "The final week of the campaign marked only the second time in which positive stories about Obama outnumbered negative dating back to late August," or the fact that most of that positive coverage was due to his handling of the response to Hurricane Sandy. Mitt Romney was running around still campaigning and pretending to hold a "storm relief event," while President Obama was just doing his job. So heaven forbid that Mitt Romney might have actually deserved that negative coverage.

But the hacks at Fox can't believe everyone else didn't follow their lead with being the one organization that the study looked at, which still had much higher negative coverage for President Obama and positive for Romney during that final week. It's always rich watching the pundits over at GOPTV complaining about "media bias" from the other networks and media outlets and pretending that the rest of them are all liberal.

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A few weeks ago, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart debated the so-called "Mayor of Bullsh*t Mountain," Bill O'Reilly. This Monday evening, he called out the rest of the media for following Fox and their right wing freakout over President Obama's appearance on Stewart's show the week before, which he rightfully coined, "Not-Optimal-Gate."

I remember watching that interview and not thinking there was much there which would be considered news worthy or new that would warrant spending the time writing a post about it, only to see the subsequent freak out that Stewart laid into here and I just wound up shaking my head about it in disgust and disbelief. I'm not sure how small a non-controversy has to be from the left to be blown up, or how large a real controversy has to be from the right to be ignored by the right wing media in this country and Fox, but we're sure as hell finding out over the last dozen years or so.

Media Matters has more on the "not optimal" wingnuttery here: "Not Optimal": Conservative Media Use Incomplete Report To Smear Obama As Callous Toward American Deaths.

And as I noted in the headline for the post, Stewart also slammed the rest of the media for jumping on board as well and parroting Fox's talking points on the "controversy."

STEWART: This is what brings us back to "not optimal." This is what brings us back to not optimal and how bullsh*t mountain works its magic. Because ridiculous and hyperbolic and unfounded as the pronouncements from bullsh*t mountain are, for some reason, other news networks can’t resist its siren song. [...]

That’s the thing about bullsh*t mountain, you may not live on it, but whenever it rains, you get the mudslide.

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From this Saturday's Fox News Watch, regular guest and columnist Cal Thomas comes up with this doozy when his fellow panel member Alan Colmes points out the fact that the Republicans' presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his veep lie like rugs and haven't been called out for those lies by the media. Thomas' response... well the Democrats aren't asked enough why they don't have more of their politicians running on the Republican platform. I kid you not.

It's bad enough that he just completely ignores Colmes' points about the lying and how unrealistic and harmful his campaign rhetoric has been, but then he's got to stretch and claim that the media pointing out the fact that the Republican party is pretty much all white and not all that inclusive of minorities or concerned about issues that affect women, is the same as the media not asking Democrats why they don't have any "pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party." Never mind the fact that it's not true that there aren't any Democrats who agree with some or all of the issues Thomas was addressing here. As Colmes pointed out, it's a completely ridiculous comparison.

SCOTT: Well, should these presidential candidates be pressed to give us more?

COLMES: Of course they should.

SCOTT: We don't know what President Obama wants to do in the next four years.

COLMES: Of course we do. We've had him for four years. He's been much more opaque than Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney the minute you ask him in an interview, nobody presses him on how you gonna'... he wants to cut everything down to twenty percent of the G.D.P., he wants to cut taxes for the rich. He wants to raise military spending. And he wants, he said last night... that he was going to not increase taxes on the middle class. That is physically impossible. How's he going to do all that and solve the budget deficit problem? Nobody has pressed him on this and the media has not done its job nor have they held these people accountable for their lies, their constant lies about Barack Obama, the constant lies about what their plan is. They have not been held accountable.

THOMAS: You sound offended.

COLMES: Well, I am offended.

SCOTT: Well, are the media going to do the same thing at the Democratic convention?

THOMAS: Oh, no, no no. Here's what the media are going to do at the Democratic convention. They're not going to apply the same standards to Democrats as they do to Republicans. If they did, this is what it would look like. The media would be asking the Democratic leaders, why don't you have any pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party? It is all monochromatic, ideologically among Democrats. But when it's Republicans, they always say we need to hear more from groups, blacks, African Americans, women. So when the Republicans get those people up on the stage, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio and others, well obviously they're just tokens. They don't really represent the party. So it's a complete double standard and you're never going to hear the same questions asked of Democrats as you do of Republicans.

COLMES: You're talking about race and ethnicity versus ideology. They're two very different things.

THOMAS: Well, not to the media they're not. Because if you're a black conservative, then you've gone off the, to mix a metaphor, the reservation...

COLMES: And I wonder why black conservatives aren't too happy about the Republican party. I wonder why.

I'd like someone to ask Thomas what's "pro-life" about starting wars, why after busting the bank under Bush that anyone should really believe Republicans are for "small government," and why the only ones Republicans want to raise taxes on are the working class. I don't expect we'll see that happen any time soon. Republicans are "pro-life" until you're born. Then you're on your own. And all the happy talk or minority speakers at their convention and propping up a few of their leaders which is supposed to show they care about diversity isn't going to change the fact that their policies are cruel and benefit the rich. If we had more "fair" coverage Cal, Republicans would be asked about those issues more often, rather than all this stupid horse race coverage we're treated to day in and day out.

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The Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson on Thursday blasted "the average working journalist" for having a "slavish, dog-like loyalty" to President Barack Obama.

Guest hosting on Fox News' Hannity, Carlson told the conservative Media Research Center's Brent Bozell that he was outraged because the media had not spent enough time promoting Ed Klein's anti-Obama book, The Amateur.

"What is it about this president that so commands the slavish, dog-like loyalty of your average working journalist?" Carlson wondered.

"[Obama is] a radical and there are so many that are just radicals in the liberal media," Bozell speculated. "But it's also that they were completely vested in him in 2008. They gave him 100 percent positive treatment. And the last thing a liberal likes to admit is that he was ever wrong."

Carlson saved his harshest criticism for MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who recently accused Newark Mayor Cory Booker of "an act of sabotage" for saying that Obama campaign ads about presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital were "nauseating."

"What a Stalinist!" Carlson exclaimed. "So it's not criticism, it's betrayal."

"He really is the original throne sniffer of the Obama administration," he added, referring to Matthews.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism determined that Romney's coverage was twice as favorable as Obama's between January and April. Romney's coverage was 39 percent positive during that period, while Obama's coverage was only 18 percent positive.

"That means Romney’s depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president’s," The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz wrote. "So much for liberal bias."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Conservative Fox News contributor Dick Morris is asserting that the news media "ruined" President George W. Bush's presidency because coverage of the Iraq war was "too harsh."

During a Wednesday morning segment with Morris, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy pointed out that Arthur Brisbane, ombudsman for The New York Times, recently complained that the paper had been more critical of President George W. Bush while he was in office than it had been of President Barack Obama.

"It's terrific that he said that," Morris explained. "There are two factors that make the media liberal. One is that the reporters are liberal. But the other fact is that the media tends to react to what it last did badly. So for example, it was relatively mild toward Bush during the early years of his administration after 9/11, and then it over compensated by being too harsh during the Iraq war."

"And then when Obama got elected they said, 'Oh, wow. We just ruined a presidency with Bush. Maybe we'll be nicer to Obama,'" he added. "And I think you will begin to see a bit of pendulum swing against Obama even though the media itself is liberal."

A 2003 study by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that 71 percent of guest on U.S. television news programs were pro-war, while only 3 percent were against the Iraq war -- a ratio of almost 25 to 1.

A recent analysis by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that coverage of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was twice as favorable as the coverage of Obama during the primary season.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Rachel Maddow asks why during the week that Osama bin Laden was killed, the Sunday morning show producers decided to bring on one Bushie after another to sit at the grown-up table and give their opinion on the matter.

If that question sounds familiar for our readers here it's because just like this past Sunday, our own Nicole Belle asks that same question pretty much every week when we cover the Sunday morning bobblehead shows here at C&L. I wonder if David Gregory's producer was watching? It would be nice to get him or her to answer Rachel's question.

I'd love to see Rachel get Meet the Press, but she probably couldn't get any Republicans to come on with her, or not very many of them anyway. Unlike David Gregory, she actually asks follow up questions to people who come on the air and try to lie to her.

Transcript below the fold:

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From Thom Hartmann's show on Russia Today, a look at how CNN and Fox covered Palin and Breitbart being booed in Wisconsin compared to "the Dean scream" that derailed Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

Pitifully I think the first person to finally mention them getting booed on the air was Rachel Maddow Monday night followed by Ed Schultz who also showed it. So much for that non-existent "liberal media" the right keeps pretending exists.

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Rachel Maddow visited the set of The Late Show with David Letterman and discussed media bias, talk radio and Rush Limbaugh's rise to fame and her thoughts on the WikiLeaks recent data dump.

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During a panel discussion on John King USA about PBS's decision to edit out some of Tina Fey's remarks criticizing Sarah Palin while accepting The Mark Twain Prize, Mrs. John King Dana Bash points out that this is not the first time PBS has been "accused of editing to favor Republicans" and that PBS has been accused of being too liberal. It's too bad that the panel and Bash didn't bother to point out the fact that this edit by PBS of Fey's remarks shouldn't be all that surprising to anyone paying attention since the network took a turn to the right some years ago.

That said, I don't expect anything better from anyone on CNN. Introspection as to how our media is not serving their basic purpose as the fourth estate in America isn't exactly their strong point to put it lightly. Since sadly Bill Moyers left the air at PBS... again... I'm not sure why anyone would perceive that network to be "too liberal" other than from listening to the Villager's on their television sets telling them that it is day in and day out. If anyone thinks that The McLaughlin Group or the PBS Newshour or Charlie Rose are liberal, they're not watching those shows. I consider Frontline to be fairly neutral in their reporting and that's about the extent of what I might watch on that network on any kind of a regular basis. They've got Tavis Smiley on there on a nightly basis but his show sure as hell doesn't make up for the shows that lean to the right or the loss of Bill Moyers. He just gave right wing hack Dennis Miller a sad and sorry softball interview on the same night this panel segment aired.

Here's what got ignored during this segment where they made light of the editing of Tina Fey's remarks.

PBS Panders to Right With New Programming:

A new public television program called the Journal Editorial Report, featuring writers and editors from the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, will debut tonight on public television stations around the country. The show joins Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, hosted by conservative CNN pundit Tucker Carlson, and a planned program featuring conservative commentator Michael Medved as part of what many see as politically motivated decisions to bring more right-wing voices to public television.

According to reports in the public broadcasting newspaper Current (1/19/04, 6/7/04) and in the New Yorker (6/7/04), conservative complaints about the alleged liberal bias of the program Now With Bill Moyers contributed to the momentum to "balance" the PBS lineup. The new programs seem to be the result of that pressure. In fact, Now will soon see its role on public television diminish, as the program is cut from one hour to 30 minutes when Moyers voluntarily leaves the program later this year. He will be replaced by co-anchor David Brancaccio, formerly of the public radio business show Marketplace, who expresses no obvious ideology. If Carlson, Medved and the staff of the Wall Street Journal editorial page are all necessary to balance the liberal Moyers, by 2005 there will be no one on PBS to balance them. Read on...

And there's this.

PBS Stolen by Right Wing in Cunning Bait and Switch:

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