Bias

The White House correspondents ought to offer a Richard Clarke-like apology to the nation for their behavior at President Bush's April 13 press conference, but don't hold your breath waiting for it. It was as if the president were being questioned by the Committee to Elect John Kerry, and for all practical purposes, it was. Fully nine of the 15 questions were attempts to harvest a sound bite of Bush admitting failure, either as to Iraq or 9-11. The offenders included reporters from the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine, the AP and, of course, NPR.

The media research center summarized it this way:

White House Press Pound Bush to Admit Errors, Apologize for 9/11

At Tuesday night's presidential news conference, White House corespondents for major national news outlets pounded away at President Bush in an effort to get him to identify errors he's made either before 9/11 or in going to war in Iraq, and urged him to follow Dick Clarke's lead and apologize for the September 11 terrorist attacks. New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller delivered the most obnoxious question of the evening, demanding in an accusatory manner: "Do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?" Similarly, John Roberts of CBS News recalled how Clarke offered "an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11" and queried Bush: "Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you be prepared to give them one?"

If you would like to call the news outlets on the carpet for their blatant partisan bias in questioning President Bush, the Media Research Center has a comprehensive database of news and media contact information, available here.

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