STUDY: At Least 90% of TV News Fails to Call Trump Prosecutors ‘Democrats’

Barring a last-minute hiccup, today a Democratic prosecutor — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — will begin his unprecedented criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s certain presidential nominee in November’s general election. Despite the obvious political implications of such a prosecution, a new study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage shows at least 90% of their coverage failed to inform viewers that Bragg and the other elected Democrats going after Trump are “Democrats.” It’s as if the networks prefer to disingenuously portray the indictments and civil lawsuits as the work of nonpartisan career prosecutors, rather than as partisan attempts to use the court system to hobble the electoral prospects of the country’s top Republican. For this study, our analysts reviewed all broadcast evening news coverage from January 1, 2023 through April 10, 2024. Here’s a rundown of how the networks are failing to adequately disclose the partisanship of the three elected Democrats prosecuting Trump: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg; Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis; and New York Attorney General Letitia James. ■ Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg: Bragg attained his current post after he ran and won as a Democrat in the November 2021 general election. During his campaign, Bragg all but promised to use his office to pursue the former President — to hold him “accountable,” as Bragg not-so-subtly put it as he vied with other Democrats for the coveted nomination. And Bragg isn’t just a mainstream Democrat — he’s clearly on the far left (“progressive”) wing of the party. A New York Times “fact check” last March grudgingly documented the links between Bragg and left-wing billionaire George Soros as “real but overstated....Mr. Soros donated to a liberal group that endorses progressive prosecutors and supports efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system — in line with causes that he has publicly supported for years. That group used a significant portion of the money to support Mr. Bragg in his 2021 campaign.” In other words, Bragg is exactly the sort of ideological prosecutor the Soros squad pushed in big cities across America a few years ago, with damaging results for the people who live in those jurisdictions. In spite of this, since Bragg zeroed in on Trump early last year, the Big Three evening newscasts have rarely mentioned his undisputed partisanship. ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 56 stories discussing Bragg’s “hush money” case against Trump, yet sharp-eared viewers only once heard that Bragg was a Democrat — on February 26, 2024, when correspondent Aaron Katersky relayed how “a spokesman for Trump... called Bragg ‘another deranged Democrat prosecutor.’” That’s still better than the CBS Evening News, which aired 48 stories discussing Bragg’s case, none of which revealed that the District Attorney is a Democrat. NBC Nightly News was the most informative on this score, informing viewers that Bragg is a Democrat in 16 out of 59 stories, or about 27% of the time — still barely one-fourth of stories. Add it all up, and the Big Three only labeled Bragg as a Democrat 17 times out of 163 stories, which means Bragg’s partisanship was omitted from nearly 90% of evening news stories about his election-season indictments of the former President. ■ New York Attorney General Letitia James: Twice elected as an anti-Trump Democrat (in 2018 and 2022), James showed her ambition for higher office when she briefly challenged incumbent Kathy Hochul for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2021. After two months, she dropped that campaign in favor of a second term as the state’s Attorney General. “There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway, and I intend to finish the job,” James explained. That same day, she stepped up her investigation of the Trump businesses that led to the unprecedented $355 million civil judgment against the former President, now being appealed. In other words, James seems to have concluded she needed to win a judicial victory against Trump to make herself more popular among Democratic voters. Yet on ABC, CBS and NBC, there’s been even less discussion of James’s blunt partisanship than of Bragg’s. Through April 10, ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 44 stories mentioning James’s suit against Trump and his businesses, yet only one — back on November 6 — identified the state Attorney General as a “Democrat,” in a fleeting on-screen graphic that was shown for less than two seconds. Similarly, the CBS Evening News produced 35 stories that discussed James’s civil case, but only once did viewers learn about James’s partisanship. As with ABC, the information was disclosed in an on-screen graphic, as the March 24, 2024 Sunday night newscast briefly showed a Trump campaign message demanding that “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James” keep her “FILTHY HANDS OFF OF TRUMP TOWER.” Compared to its competitors, NBC Nightly News was again the most informative. The newscast discussed the civil case in 26 stories, seven of which (27%) mentioned James’s party affiliation. Yet that means the vast majority of stories (73%) omitted this important information. The final tally: As of April 10, the Big Three have aired 105 stories about the civil case against Trump, but only nine mentioned that the official who brought the charges, Letitia James, is a partisan Democrat — leaving this crucial fact out of 93% of network stories. ■ Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis: As with Bragg and James, Willis’s partisanship is not in dispute. She ran and won as a Democrat in 2020, and she is running for re-election this fall as a Democrat. This spring, during a misconduct hearing into her affair with a lead prosecutor, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported “prominent Democrats” in Georgia were “rallying around” Willis, hoping to keep her from being removed from the Trump case. Nonetheless, while ABC’s World News Tonight (60) and the CBS Evening News (39) have aired a combined 99 stories mentioning Willis’s prosecution of Trump, none — ZERO — have told their viewers that the District Attorney is a partisan Democrat. For its part, the NBC Nightly News mentioned Willis was a Democrat eight times out of 50 stories — omitting this fact from the remaining 84% of its coverage. Add it all up, and out of 149 evening news stories about the Georgia election case against Trump, a scant five percent revealed that Willis was a Democrat, vs. 95% that kept viewers in the dark. +++++ From the beginning of these cases, journalists have had a choice in how they frame these various legal challenges to Donald Trump: Democrats vs. a Republican (i.e., a partisan food fight), or nonpartisan law enforcement vs. an accused lawbreaker. Clearly, the editorial choices made by these broadcast networks shows they are framing these cases as the actions of nonpartisan law enforcement officials — all of whom just happen to be Democrats. But if it were a leading Democrat who had been placed under the legal microscope by a trio of elected Republicans, does anyone think that the media would be so reluctant to even mention the partisanship of the prosecutors? Of course not.

FLASHBACK: When a Juvenile News Media Tried to Destroy the Tea Party

Fifteen years ago this week (April 15, 2009), the grassroots Tea Party movement rallied to oppose the massive government programs (bailouts, ObamaCare) pushed by new President Barack Obama. In response, left-wing cable networks employed adolescent jokes to belittle the movement, while the broadcast networks decried it as a front for “corporate interests.” The media putdowns failed, of course. The following November, the energy supplied by the Tea Party contributed to a “shellacking” of Democrats in the 2010 elections, as Republicans gained 63 House seats and six Senate seats (seven if you count Scott Brown’s upset in a January special election in Massachusetts). The first T.E.A. Party (Taxed Enough Already) protests took place in various cities on February 27, 2009, a reaction to presumed new taxes that would inevitably result from the Obama administration’s huge bailouts and spending programs. A major national protest was scheduled for April 15, “tax day,” the deadline for filing federal income tax forms. Filling in as host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on April 13, David Shuster mocked the Tea Party by repeatedly deploying a slang term for a sex act called “teabagging.” “It’s going to be teabagging day for the right-wing and they’re going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals,” Shuster sophomorically sneered. The next night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper got into the act. “Republicans are pretty much in disarray...They’re searching for their voice,” analyst David Gergen dryly opined on the April 14 AC360. “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging,” Cooper snickered.       The big protests against Obama’s policies were April 15. That morning on New York City’s Imus in the Morning radio program, CNN analyst Paul Begala suggested true patriots would have no problem handing their cash to liberal bureaucrats, as he derided those protesting as “just a bunch of wimpy, whiny, weasels who don’t love their country....There are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they’re whining because they have to write a check?” Over on NBC’s Today, Chuck Todd dismissed the Tea Party as no big deal. “There’s been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called ‘tea parties’ around the company, country, hoping the historical reference will help galvanize Americans against the President’s economic ideas. But I tell you, the idea hasn’t really caught on....It hasn’t galvanized the party the way they would hope.” On CNN that afternoon, correspondent Susan Roesgen decried the protest as “a party for Obama bashers....It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right wing conservative network, Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.” On ABC’s World News that evening, correspondent Dan Harris framed the protests as something “cheered on by Fox News and talk radio,” as he emphasized how “critics on the left” claimed “this is not a real grassroots phenomenon at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests.” “Organizers insist today’s ‘tea parties’ were organic uprisings of like-minded taxpayers from both parties....but some observers suggest not all of it was as home-grown as it may seem,” NBC’s Lee Cowan echoed on Nightly News. Over on CBS, correspondent Dean Reynolds cautioned that “it’s important to keep in mind that fresh polling indicates there is not all that much passion about high taxes in the country at large right now.” “All of these tax day parties seemed less about revolution and more about group therapy,” New York Times reporter Liz Robbins dismissed in an online piece that afternoon. “People attending the rallies were dressed patriotically and held signs expressing their anger, but offering no solutions.” Someone must have thought she went too far — Robbins’ snarky observations were omitted from the version of the article which appeared in the Times’ April 16 print edition. Following the protests, MSNBC’s Countdown on April 16 provided a platform for left-wing activist and actress Janeane Garofalo to accuse the Tea Partiers of ignorance and racism. “Let’s be very honest about what this is about,” she sneered. “It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” The disdainful coverage of the April rallies set the tone for the rest of the year. “What do you call a crazed group of people that disrupts a meeting on health care and hangs the congressman holding it in effigy? A mob,” ex-CNN reporter Bob Franken deplored in his August 7 “Politics Daily” column on AOL. “When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism. Why should Republican lawmakers and the AstroTurf groups organizing on behalf of the health care industry be viewed any differently?” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann growled that same night on Countdown. “They’ve waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil; raised questions about whether he was really born in this country; falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels; decried his speech to students as indoctrination; and called him everything from a ‘fascist’ to a ‘socialist’ to a ‘communist.’” ABC’s Harris scolded on the September 15 World News. “Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.” When radical liberals take to the streets to rail against Republican policies, the media like to paint their cause as popular and bend over backwards to present the protesters as mainstream and normal. But when it came to the anti-big government Tea Party, the media’s mission was to disparage and destroy the grassroots opposition to the Obama administration’s unprecedented liberalism. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                          

FLASHBACK: Celebrating Liberal Justice Jackson, the ‘American Dream’

Exactly two years ago today (April 7, 2022), the U.S. Senate voted 53-47 to confirm federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. Eighteen months earlier, liberal journalists fumed when a nearly mirror-image Senate vote (52-48) elevated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Court, rebuking it as a “power play” and “the most partisan confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice in American history.” But Jackson’s confirmation was a time for “celebration,” as reporters applauded a new Justice who “represents excellence” and the “American Dream.” The media’s effusive praise of Jackson began as soon as President Biden announced her selection on February 25, 2022. “From the beginning, the federal appeals court judge was the frontrunner, with stellar academic and legal credentials and a compelling life story,” CBS’s Jan Crawford touted on the CBS Evening News. Over on CNN, legal analyst Laura Coates pronounced Jackson “almost a legal deity.” Two days later on Meet the Press, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell proclaimed: “She has extraordinary credentials.” In March, as the Senate Judiciary Committee began its hearings, NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor assured viewers Jackson was ready: “I was texting with one of her closest friends today and they told me yesterday was very, very emotional, but that they believe that their friend is like an Olympic athlete who has been training for this her whole life.” If the media presented Jackson as the hero of the hearings, they left no doubt the Republican Senators were to be seen as the villains. “Tom Cotton was thuggish....Lindsey Graham was screamy and weird,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid erupted on the March 22 The ReidOut. During a CNN panel discussion, the Grio’s Natasha Alford blasted Ted Cruz as a “clown” while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin derided Cruz’s line of questioning — on Critical Race Theory — as “a trip to the surreal.” Referring to the Republican Supreme Court nominee who in 2018 was smeared by Democrats as a rapist, the Washington Post’s lead editorial on March 23 exclaimed: “Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Jackson worse.” Jackson’s biggest flub of the hearings came on March 23, when Senator Marsha Blackburn asked if she could “provide a definition for the word woman?” A four-year old could have answered such a simple question, but Jackson preferred to evade: “I am not a biologist.” That night, ABC and CBS aided the nominee by refusing to even show the exchange during their evening news recap of the hearings. The headline in the next day’s USA Today exemplified the media’s attempt at damage control: “Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson to define ‘woman.’ Science says there’s no simple answer.” “The Republican manhandling of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson this week was convincing evidence that the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation process is irredeemably broken,” the New York Times’s Carl Husle scolded in a front-page new story on March 24. On CBS Mornings, correspondent Nikole Killion said the hearing consisted of “searing attacks on the first black woman who is likely to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.” Co-host Gayle King fretted: “It was very painful to watch.” “Watching her sit there, as we’re looking at that picture right now, I felt as if I was watching a relative go through hell,” the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart rued on PBS’s NewsHour that Friday (March 25). “We work so hard as African Americans to get to these spots and to stay in these spots... to have to jump through these hoops and be questioned by people who aren’t even at our level.” The hearings changed no votes (do they ever?), with all Senate Democrats (plus three Republicans) voting to officially confirm Jackson roughly two weeks later (April 7). Glass ceiling metaphors abounded. “The star debater from Miami Palmetto Senior High School responsible for lots of shards of glass today, as she smashes through now, this ultimate ceiling in the legal world,” anchor Linsey Davis exulted during ABC’s live coverage. “This moment, of course, is 233 years in the making and she is shattering a double-paned glass ceiling as a black woman,” correspondent Yamiche Alcindor echoed during NBC’s special report. “For the first time in history, four of the nine justices will be women, and white men will be in the minority,” ABC congressional correspondent Rachel Scott announced on World News Tonight. “It was a moment of historic celebration,” CBS’s Nikole Killion enthused the next day (April 8) on CBS Mornings. “Cheers erupted from the Senate floor, to watch parties across the country.” “It’s a very proud moment for a lot of people today,” beamed co-host Gayle King. That afternoon, President Biden held a political event at the White House to further advertise Jackson’s confirmation. Gone was the bitterness with which the media approached the confirmation of Justice Barrett a year-and-a-half earlier. “It feels a little bit like a party here at the White House,” a smiling Mary Bruce recounted during ABC’s live coverage. “This is actually the biggest celebration I’ve seen so far during the Biden administration, and this is a very happy, excited crowd.” “She has achieved so much. She represents excellence to so many people,” ABC’s Deborah Roberts enthused a few minutes later. “Yes, she’s the first black woman, but I don’t think for a lot of people that is really what this is about. This is a woman who just represents excellence....She’s the American Dream.” Certainly, any judge who makes it to the Supreme Court should be celebrated for having reached the pinnacle of their profession. It’s too bad that the media can’t be equally effusive when the high-achieving judge who reaches the Court has been appointed by a Republican president. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.               

FLASHBACK: The Liberal Media’s Slanted Farewell to Pope John Paul II

Today is Easter Sunday, a good time to reflect on the liberal media’s coverage of the passing of Pope John Paul II, 19 years ago this week (April 2, 2005). While the media praised John Paul for his “charisma” and “magnetism,” journalists rejected what they characterized as his “extremely conservative” policies, as if long-standing Catholic Church doctrines were merely one Pope’s personal opinions that could be discarded on a whim. American journalists had long separated any admiration for John Paul as an inspirational world leader from their opposition to teachings that ran afoul of modern secular tastes. “There are some who say he would have been more comfortable in the 5th century, but some theologians say that, really, some of the 5th century Popes were more progressive than John Paul II,” reporter Jerry Bowen snarked on the August 15, 1993 edition of CBS’s Sunday Morning. “There are 60 million Catholics in America, and for many of them he also speaks with the voice of a conservative crank,” the Washington Post’s Henry Allen scoffed in an October 2, 1995 Style section story. So as the Pope’s health deteriorated to the point that his death seemed imminent on April 1, 2005, network news coverage reflected journalists’ longstanding hostility to what they saw as “rigid” Church policies. “Most of his views, you’d have to say, are extremely conservative,” NBC’s Matt Lauer asserted that Friday morning on Today. “He was, of course, controversial here,” ABC’s Peter Jennings intoned on World News Tonight. “Some American Catholics have chafed at his insistence that they follow the Church’s traditional social doctrine.” “Abortion, birth control, women priests,” reporter Dean Reynolds listed. “It’s all driven a wedge between the Vatican and America, regardless of the Pope’s standing in the world.” “He was responsible for appointing almost all of the 117 cardinals eligible to vote,” CNN’s Paula Zahn pointed out that same night, “making it very likely that the next Pope will share Pope John Paul II’s conservative stances on issues like abortion and the role of women in the church.” The next morning, as the media vigil continued, NBC’s Lester Holt again channeled the dissatisfaction of American Catholics. “Some believe his unyielding stance alienated American Catholics,” Holt argued on Today. “Pope John Paul II’s legacy in the world’s most powerful country may be that of a house divided, a man who changed the world, but in many ways, was unwilling to change his Church.” That Saturday afternoon, the Vatican announced the Pope’s death, with live coverage on all of the broadcast networks. While most of the coverage was respectful and positive, there was an obvious yearning for a more liberal Pope. Anchoring ABC’s coverage, Bob Woodruff asked Atlanta’s Archbishop Wilton Gregory about how “many believe...that perhaps this particular Pope has been too conservative socially for many Catholics in the United States.” Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews directed the next Pope to approve the use of condoms. Discussing the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Matthews instructed: “A new Pope is going to have to grab that one and grab it hard, and he’s got to get to people to say ‘You may not like condoms, they may not be, but they’re a lot better than HIV/AIDS.” “John Paul found himself at odds with millions of Catholics in the United States and Europe who considered him reactionary and out of touch,” CBS’s Martha Teichner sniffed the next day on Sunday Morning. On Monday night, CBS treated the upcoming selection of a new Pope as akin to a popular election, reporting on a poll of American Catholics demanding more liberalization. On the April 4 CBS Evening News, anchor Bob Schieffer cited the Associated Press survey: “American Catholics hope whoever succeeds the Pope will make some changes in the church.” “The next Pope will have to work hard to gain back the support of many Catholics who were put off by the policies of the very Pope that so many have come here to mourn,” anchor Brian Williams, in Vatican City, agreed on Wednesday’s Nightly News. Correspondent Bob Faw continued the theme: “Embraced by multitudes....John Paul also alienated others. Lifelong Catholic Serra Sippel was so angered by his teachings she quit going to mass.” Faw then ran a soundbite from an American critic of John Paul on the issue of women priests. Rea Howarth, of Catholics Speak Out, sniped: “This Pope didn’t care to learn from the likes of women.” Make no mistake: much of the coverage of Pope John Paul that week was positive, a testament to the powerful inspiration he provided to the world throughout his long tenure. But in discussing the issues that divide Catholics, the media couldn’t resist skewing their coverage in the direction of those who would reinvent the John Paul’s Church to better match the world view of secular liberals. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                  

FLASHBACK: The Media LOST IT When Mueller Declined to Charge Trump

Five years ago this weekend, a confused and disoriented liberal media was forced to deal with the fact that Robert Mueller had ended his investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged “collusion” with Russia without recommending any charges against the then-President. Just like that, “Russiagate” was over. Journalists had obsessed over Mueller’s investigation since he was appointed on May 17, 2017. From that date until May 21, 2019 (the night before Mueller handed in his report), the three evening newscasts alone had cranked out an unprecedented 1,909 minutes of coverage. Intense as that was, it paled beside the uncounted thousands of hours of coverage on the liberal cable networks, CNN and MSNBC. “Democrats are dreaming of a Watergate-like gotcha moment,” NBC’s Chuck Todd admitted on February 24, 2019, less than a month before the Mueller probe ended. Two weeks later, on March 10, ABC’s Terry Moran painted the stakes as high for a news media which had long assumed Trump’s guilt: “If Mueller, after two years, comes back and says, ‘I don’t have the evidence to support that charge,’ that’s a reckoning....It’s a reckoning for the media. It’s a reckoning around the country if, in fact, after all this time there was no collusion.” The liberal media’s “reckoning” came late in the afternoon of March 22, when Mueller handed in his report without recommending any additional charges. Journalists who had heavily promoted the idea of Trump’s guilt were flummoxed. “How can they let Trump off the hook?” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews wailed on Hardball. “Where’s the collusion report? Where’s the obstruction report?...I am a bit unsettled by the fact that all this investigation has yielded so far no indictments about collusion.” The next morning, MSNBC’s Joy Reid was spinning conspiracy theories. “It feels like the seeds of a cover-up are here,” she sourly suggested. One of Reid’s guests, AboveTheLaw.com editor Elie Mystal, blamed racism: “Look, if I’m the Trump children, I’m having a party tonight. Right? They won the white privilege regatta....There’s not an African American person in this country that could have been investigated for 22 months, had their family investigated for 22 months and come away scot-free.” On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, CNN’s Brian Stelter said the previous two years of nasty coverage was all Trump’s fault: “The press is just following a trail that Trump created. He has proven time and time again that he cannot be trusted....Trump’s daily deceptions have given this country ample reason to be suspicious.” On the same program, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein agreed with Stelter’s absurd spin: “I think the media, the press has done one of the great reporting jobs in the history....Look, let’s look at where disinformation and mistakes and lie have come from. Hasn’t come from the press, it’s come from the President of the United States and those around him.” That afternoon (March 24), Attorney General William Barr publicly released a letter detailing Mueller’s major findings, while lawyers worked on creating a declassified version of Mueller’s lengthy report (which would be released the following month). Some reporters opted to play it straight, relaying the plain meaning of the report. “So, this vindicates the President on collusion,” MSNBC’s Katie Tur decided that afternoon during live coverage. “It’s an all out win for the President and consistent with what he’s been saying since day one,” ABC’s Dan Abrams acknowledged that evening on World News Tonight. But too many others insisted on clinging to their fantasy of a premature end to Trump’s presidency. “Now, while the Mueller investigation may be over, plenty of others are not,” correspondent Hallie Jackson reassured liberals on Monday morning’s Today show. “Does this conclusion make it more likely that Democrats will move to impeach the president,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough conjectured on Morning Joe that same day. CNN’s Laura Coates complained that while Mueller hadn’t charged Trump with any wrongdoing, he hadn’t exonerated him either. “I happen to look at that as kind of ‘a Mueller maybe,’ which to me is really atrocious....I’m completely unsatisfied.” Coates was part of a CNN echo chamber that zealously hammered the idea that Trump wasn’t “exonerated.” NewsBusters’ indefatigable video editor Bill D’Agostino looked at 24 hours of CNN coverage after Barr’s summary was released, and found the networks’ talking heads peddled that phrasing an astonishing 120 times, an average of five times per hour. Watch:     That night, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani confronted CNN’s Chris Cuomo: “You guys on this network have tortured this man for two years with collusion and nobody’s apologized for it! So, before we talk about obstruction, apologize for the overreaction to collusion!” “Not a chance. Not a chance. Not a chance,” Cuomo responded. “Never.” But New York Times columnist David Brooks thought an apology was deserved. “If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize,” he wrote in his March 25 column. But MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough wasn’t in the mood for decency. “There’s some people I respect that write for these papers that have actually written columns condemning the media’s behavior: Be ashamed of yourself. Be ashamed of yourself,” he sneered on Tuesday’s Morning Joe, seeming to refer to Brooks. “A lot of you who were bitching and moaning last night and being morally self-righteous: you are the bad actor. So save your breath, all right?” he theatrically declared. “No, we’re not going to divert our eyes! Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead, follow the story where it leads us.” “If the President was so damn innocent, why does it take two years to get cleared of collusion?” Chris Matthews growled on Tuesday night’s Hardball. But ask it the other way: if the Trump-bashing media were so damn correct, why couldn’t a two-year investigation from well-funded prosecutor with subpoena power prove it? Perhaps because too many in the media had let their anti-Trump imaginations run away with them. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.               

REWIND: Riding to Obama’s Rescue, After Wright’s Radicalism Exposed

Sixteen years ago this weekend, Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was in real trouble, after ABC publicized excerpts of sermons delivered by Obama’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The video showed Wright, in the pulpit, rationalizing the 9/11 attacks as justified (“America’s chickens are coming home to roost!”) and blasting America as the “U.S. of K.K.K.A.” Obama, who had built his campaign around the idea of unity, had attended Wright’s church for two decades, so there could be no suggestion that the Democratic candidate was unfamiliar with his pastor’s rabidly anti-American views. At the time, Obama had only the slightest advantage over New York Senator Hillary Clinton, so any whiff of scandal could lead Democratic voters to abandon the freshman Senator in favor of the former First Lady. Liberal journalists, however, adored Obama, so over the next several days the media elite became the candidate’s personal rapid-response team. The first line of defense: Wright’s radicalism was a phony issue that voters should ignore. “All this seems to have nothing to do with actual issues that the country is facing, which these candidates should be talking about and we probably should be talking about,” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper groaned on March 13, 2008, a few hours after ABC’s Brian Ross broke the story on Good Morning America. “I don’t even know how these candidates can talk about policy,” MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell complained to The New Republic’s Michael Crowley the next afternoon (March 14). “How do we get away from this?” That weekend, the Obama campaign decided that the way to end the discussion of Rev. Wright’s hatefulness was for Obama to start a broader discussion of race in America. The candidate spoke on Tuesday, March 18, 2008, and journalists instantly declared it the best speech of their lifetimes. On ABC’s World News, anchor Charles Gibson saluted it as “the seminal speech of his presidential campaign...an extraordinary speech.” George Stephanopoulos decreed it was honorable that Obama should not repudiate Wright for his anti-American views: “By refusing to renounce Reverend Wright, that was in many ways an act of honor for Senator Obama.” “It was daring,” fill-in anchor Campbell Brown exclaimed on CNN’s AC360. “Quietly, but clearly with great passion, he walked the listener through a remarkable exploration of race from both sides of the color divide, from both sides of himself.” “It was a very blunt, very honest, very open speech that really put out into the open the furtive conversations and furtive thoughts on both sides of the racial divide that have been going on for generations,” the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart opined on NBC Nightly News, calling the speech “a very important gift the Senator has given the country.” “A speech worthy of Abraham Lincoln,” crowed MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, calling it “the best speech ever given on race in this country....I think this is the kind of speech I think first graders should see, people in the last year of college should see before they go out in the world. This should be, to me, an American tract. Something that you just check in with, now and then, like reading Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn....One of the great speeches in American history.” “Most people will never hear the elegant complexity of Obama’s speech in full...though they certainly should,” Time’s Joe Klein enthused in his “Swampland” blog. “It was the best speech about race I’ve ever heard delivered by an American politician.” The next morning (March 19), ABC’s Stephanopoulos was still thrilled: “As a speech, it was sophisticated, eloquent. Barack Obama is as fine a writer as you’ll find in a politician,” he touted on Good Morning America. “It’s being called a defining cultural moment in America...It was without question a defining moment in American political history,” CBS’s Maggie Rodriguez echoed on The Early Show. In that morning’s New York Times, a “news analysis” by Janny Scott suggested the candidate’s remarks belonged on a hypothetical Mount Rushmore of presidential addresses: “In a speech whose frankness about race many historians said could be likened only to speeches by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln....” On Easter Sunday, March 23, the media were still raving about Obama’s greatness. “He gave a great speech. I think it was a brave speech,” ABC’s Claire Shipman applauded on This Week. A few months later, Shipman’s husband (Time correspondent Jay Carney) would go to work for the Obama administration as Joe Biden’s first press secretary. “Obama really won over his base, he won over the American media. They loved that speech,” quipped Politico’s Roger Simon on CBS’s Face  the Nation. Indeed, a sympathetic media was crucial to the success of Obama’s strategy. Journalists’ glowing coverage transformed an exercise in crisis damage control into a campaign triumph. The episode undoubtedly helped to seal his victory over Hillary Clinton. All with a little help from his friends. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.