For anyone who doubts the daily double standard of the news media, just look up CBS show episodes from Sunday, Sept. 10. Up first, "Sunday Morning" host Jane Pauley softly and sweetly served one puffball after another to Hillary Clinton for her book-tour kickoff. That evening, anchor Charlie Rose harshly lectured President Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, on "60 Minutes."
Days in advance, CBS rushed out clips of Rose lecturing Bannon on his dissent from Catholic bishops regarding illegal aliens who entered the country as children. Rose said: "Can I remind you, a good Catholic, that Cardinal Dolan is opposed to what's happened with DACA. Cardinal Dolan!"
If anyone can remember CBS shaming anyone on the left with the pro-life worldviews of Cardinal Dolan -- especially those "good Catholics" like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi or former Vice President Joe Biden -- then someone is delusional. It has never happened.
Rose lectured Bannon on Trump's supposed failure to condemn white supremacists after the events in Charlottesville. In fact, the president did condemn bigotry and hatred that Saturday, but liberals mentally censored the condemnation when he awkwardly added that there was hatred "on all sides."
The anchorman introduced that phony "many people say" device. He insisted: "I tell you where many people suggest it should have gone. It should have gone in terms of denouncing specifically, from the very beginning, Neo-Nazis and white supremacists and people of that political view. ... And you didn't at first instinct. In fact, you seemed to be doubling down in terms of a moral equivalency."
If anyone can take tough questions, it's a brawler like Steve Bannon. And if anyone can't handle tough questions, it's Hillary "Safe Space" Clinton. For all her supposed brilliance and tough-as-nails mythology, Clinton detests being challenged. She wants every interview to feel like an award ceremony. Three years ago, with her last book tour, Rose began a PBS "interview" with her by quoting a pro-Hillary poem by Maya Angelou.
Rose's idea of a tough question was asking Clinton: "Where did you find the strength at these difficult moments in your personal life? Whether it's losing an election -- or whatever it might be. Was it people? Was it an inspiration from religion? Was it something else that gave you the courage to keep moving ahead?"
To sum it up, he was asking, "Why are you so courageous and amazing and religious?"
Pauley picked up that baton on Sept. 10. She announced her mind meld regarding the candidate losing, saying, "Hillary Clinton was supposed to make history as the first woman president of the United States." That is precisely how a Clinton supporter would see it. A detractor would celebrate the nation dodging a bullet.
Pauley tenderly asked questions like "How are you?" and "Can we talk about Election Day?" Clinton blamed her defeat on a heavy dose of "sexism and misogyny" and blamed Trump for exploiting "a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances, for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others."
Pauley facilitated: "What you're saying is millions of white people." Clinton agreed. "Millions of white people, yeah," she said. Pauley moved on. "And then there were the Russians," she said.
The "roughest" patch came when Pauley intoned, "But there were serious self-inflicted wounds, too." She vaguely suggested it was time for Clinton to talk about the emails. Then, she lamented that Clinton's excuses for her decisions with emails "never satisfied critics or the press."
The press won't even challenge Clinton on the ludicrous idea that the press heavily favored Donald Trump in 2016. No one with eyes or ears should buy that nonsense.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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