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“Absurd”: NewsBusters suddenly changes its tune on interviews conducted with President Obama

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When it’s convenient for them, the opportunists at NewsBusters will always pull a fast one on their misinformed readers.

In an August 6 article, Scott Whitlock took MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to task for stating that President Obama “agrees with us and we agree with him sometimes“, while dismissing the fact that it’s relevant whether or not the President has done any interviews with the network (emphasis mine):

Matthews defended MSNBC: “By the way, those who talk about the tight relationship between MSNBC and Barack Obama, for example, count the number of times he’s been on this network. Zero.”

To be fair, while it’s true that the President has never conducted a long-form, wide ranging interview with MSNBC, he did grant the network’s flagship morning show, “Morning Joe“, hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, a short interview while he was on the campaign trail leading up to the 2012 election.

But, let’s be honest, Joe Scarborough isn’t exactly the biggest fan of President Obama (or his spokespeople), so even using that particular example doesn’t do much in making a point for Obama supporters like Matthews.

Regardless, Whitlock still decided to play off Matthews’ statement as irrelevant, claiming “it’s absurd to push the notion that Obama not granting exclusive interviews to MSNBC means anything.

He followed with this ridiculous excuse:

He’s appeared regularly on several NBC News outlets. These clips are replayed on MSNBC, mostly to great approval.

Um, newsflash… There are sure to be interviews President Obama has done with several channels or news outlets that received “great approval” from the personalities at MSNBC. It doesn’t tend to matter (for any network) if NBC, or whoever else, has been involved.

Now, as far as NewsBusters’ feelings regarding the number of interviews that Obama gives to different networks, this is a pretty different tune compared to earlier in President Obama’s first term.

In a piece from October 2009, former NewsBuster Jeff Poor whined about the Obama administration granting every network, except Fox News, an interview with Kenneth Feinberg (aka Obama’s “pay czar”), who, at the time, was put in-charge of overseeing the TARP money that top executives at several big banks and car companies received via government-funded bailouts.

He then played stenographer for Fox News’ Bret Baier (who, as a “news” anchor, chose to complain), literally counting down all the number of times different networks have given interviews to the President (emphasis mine):

According to the “Special Report” host, NBC has conducted 12 interviews, CBS with 11 interviews, ABC conducting nine interviews and CNN with seven interviews. But Fox News – a total of two interviews.

Notice that Poor didn’t bother to mention the number of MSNBC interviews, most likely assuming its parent network as being the same thing, when they are two different entities, as far as content goes.

So when a liberal host from MSNBC points out the lack of balance in Obama interviews given to his network, it’s not good enough because the parent network got them, but when NewsBusters itself points out all the networks that have received them, ironically MSNBC is left out, and it’s overlooked.

Maybe if Whitlock had the foresight to look through his own website he writes for, so to not show hypocrisy, he wouldn’t look like a fool without a clue.

Too late for that.



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