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This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Watch," May 19, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch the latest video at FoxNews.com
JON SCOTT, HOST OF “FOX NEWS WATCH” (voice-over): On “Fox News Watch” --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Every day you receive a steady stream of sensationalism and scandal, stories with a message that suggests change isn't possible.
SCOTT: -- the president takes a shot at the media for only reporting bad news delivered with an agenda. But when it comes to the issues which really matter, where is the good news, and who is reporting it?
Was this good news? Newsweek claims Mr. Obama is it the first gay president.
Or maybe this was good news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOY BEHAR, CO-HOST, “THE VIEW”: Which Kardashian was married for only 72 days?
OBAMA: That would be Kim.
BEHAR: Very good.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Mitt Romney made some good news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MITT ROMNEY, (R), FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to make it very clear that I hope our campaigns can respectively be about the future and about issues and about a vision for America.
SCOTT: The GOP favorite shooting down a super PAC's plan to go negative on the president's past dealings with Reverend Wright. How did the media react to that?
Newly released evidence in the Trayvon Martin shooting case gives credibility to George Zimmerman's story. So are the media covering that?
(MUSIC)
SCOTT: With millions and billions to be made, Facebook goes public with its super-hyped IPO. Did the media coverage create the frenzy?
And how did Mr. Sunday fare on "Jeopardy."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WALLACE, ANCHOR, FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Washington, D.C., for $1000.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT (on camera): On the panel this week, writer and Fox News contributor, Judy Miller; radio talk show host, Monica Crowley; Jim Pinkerton, contributing editor, the American Conservative magazine; and political commentator, Sally Kohn.
I'm Jon Scott. “FOX NEWS WATCH” is on right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: No wonder that faith in our institutions has never been lower, particularly when good news doesn't get the same kind of ratings as bad news anymore. Every day you receive a steady stream of sensationalism and scandal, and stories with a message that suggest change is impossible, that you can't make a difference. That you won't be able to close that gap between life as it is and life as you want it to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: President Obama on Monday delivering a commencement address to graduates of Barnard College, telling them not to trust the media.
Jim, he sounded like a president who thinks the media don't love him.
(LAUGHTER)
JIM PINKERTON, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: And he's telling them to ignore what's going on in Europe, ignore 8 percent unemployment, just listen to me and be happy.
You know, it is pretty astonishing how the president can complain about things like that when Romney, you know, gets kicked around over something he had nothing to do with, this Rickets super PAC add and, meanwhile, The Washington Post doing its part to help out to help out here, has a headline on Friday, Romney continuing with hedge fund allies. Again, this guy is an ally. This guy is some guy doing this, and they're working Romney into it as much as they can. That's typical of what they do and see something happen and they say, well, the guy’s innocent, but there's still that controversy surrounding him.
SCOTT: Is the president upset with the media coverage because he's not getting good coverage or because there isn’t a lot of good news out there?
JUDY MILLER, WRITER & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I don't see how he can be upset about the way the media covered him.
SCOTT: He got the cover of Newsweek.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: I mean the gay-lo cover, as Huffington Post calls it. He gets astonishingly good press. But I think he's just decided that should the Republican conservatives be able to beat up on the media? I'm going to do it; too, maybe it’ll work for me even more than it's already working.
SCOTT: There were a couple of interesting nuggets, Sally, in the CBS/New York Times poll that came out earlier this week. And it drew some reaction from the Obama campaign. It was asked, “Who would you vote for U.S. president?” This poll showed Mitt Romney with a lead there, as we see, 46-43 percent over the president. The Obama campaign said, oh, it's a bad poll, bad methodology.
SALLY KOHN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. So there you go. There you have the bastion of liberalism, according to conservatives, and all of a sudden, they're coming out in favor of Romney. And the White House is attacking him. There two things here. First of all, the liberals like to complain that the media’s biased and so does the other side. The fact of the matter is Romney is new to that as the nominee so he will be vetted the way Obama was before. If conservatives don't like that their candidate is inaccessible to the press, has a history of flip-flopping, and generally not entirely likeable, and has a record of make money by firing people. They shouldn't complain about the media for looking into that. They should get a new candidate.
SCOTT: Interestingly -- I know you've got a mouthful there, Monica. But interestingly, that same time the poll that White House didn't like, also asked this question, did the president publicly support same-sex marriage because he thinks it was the right thing to do. 24 percent said so 67 percent, two out of three, said it was done for political reasons.
MONICA CROWLEY, RADIO SHOW HOST: Oh, yes, which is one of the reasons why The New York Times and CBS both tried to bury some details that came out in this poll. Look, the only political candidates or politicians who can get away with pounding the press are conservatives because the left essentially has a near monopoly on the media. For President Obama, who was the ultimate beneficiary of most fawning, glowing coverage of any candidate or any president ever, for him now to say, well, I was happy to have media coverage and scrutiny in -- scrutiny in 2008, but now that things are starting to go south on me, listen, folks, don't pay any attention to the media.
SCOTT: Sally --
(CROSSTALK)
KOHN: Jeremiah Wright still airs. This is not going.
PINKERTON: Sally, did I hear you say something along the lines of -- that Romney be vetted the way Obama was vetted. Did you say something like that?
(LAUGHTER)
KOHN: I did. And I know it's an about bugaboo to conservatives that Obama was not vetted, but --
CROWLEY: Correct.
KOHN: But I don't understand the sort of amnesia--
(CROSSTALK)
PINKERTON: Here, let me help you. Here is why it's a bugaboo. Because at it happened -- just as it happened in '08, it’s happening again in '12. Reverend Wright and Obama's entire history is off limits. McCain said so in 08’, stupidly, as Chris Wallace said, crazy to do so. And now Romney says it, too. Both have been manipulated into saying anything that happened Obama did before age 45 is off limits.
(CROSSTALK)
PINKERTON: Whereas now, Romney is getting killed for something he did allegedly 52 years ago.
(CROSSTALK)
KOHN: Jim, to answer that question, first of all, the media, you know, investigated and fanned the flames of the Wright story to the point where the candidate needed to actually go out and a make a full speech. How can you say then that it didn't happen?
PINKERTON: Because Reverend Wright was so flagrant that if John McCain had been sitting in the pews of a right-wing preacher talking about how he hated however, McCain would have been out of the race. What Obama never got investigated on was college, graduate school life. In fact, Miranas (ph), the biographer, is coming out with stuff that should have been out five years ago, is pretty revealing of how lazy and, as Monica said, how fawning they were in '08.
SCOTT: We mentioned the cover of Newsweek that anointed President Obama as the first gay president. Compare that with Mitt Romney's cover appearance on the same magazine roughly one year ago. If you put the two up next to each other, you'll see, there is the -- well, it really talks.
(LAUGHTER)
KOHN: Well, those covers are equally gay, I want to say that.
(LAUGHTER)
KOHN: Come on.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: But --
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: Sally, you’ve done it. You took Jon's breath away.
PINKERTON: OK --
(LAUGHTER)
PINKERTON: -- who is center left, probably liberal guy, founder of USA Today, just said he ought to change its name to "Fantasia," as in fantasy --
(LAUGHTER)
-- Plus, you know --
MILLER: Or as Tina Brown said, let the games begin. Gee, both Time and Newsweek want to sell magazines, isn’t that astonishing?
CROWLEY: But remember, too, the left wing media wants this to all be about Mitt Romney. And this is the statement that you made at the top of the show when you went through his record. And this is not to say that presidential candidates shouldn't be vetted. They should. But the problem is, as Jim points out, Obama has never been vetted. And this election is a full referendum on Barack Obama not on Mitt Romney.
SCOTT: All right, we have to take a break. Up next on “News Watch,” are the media censoring some types of racial crime?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BENJAMIN CRUMP, ATTORNEY FOR MARTIN FAMILY: Trayvon Martin was defending himself. It was self-defense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The media keep up the coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting as the FBI considers a hate crime charge against the shooter. But where are the media and the FBI when it comes to black-on-white racial attacks? Is there a coordinated cover-up?
And who wants to be a billionaire? Did the media go overboard in hyping the Facebook IPO? Find out next, on “NEWS WATCH.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK FUHRMAN, FORMER LAPD HOMICIDE DETECTIVE: The autopsy released -- they described the distance between the weapon and the wound as in intermediate range. Well, this is where the media starts to fail itself. Instead of reporting what intermediate range is in the autopsy world, they just leave that hanging.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: That's former LAPD homicide detective, Mark Fuhrman, explaining how the police and the media handled new information released about the autopsy performed on Trayvon Martin and the medical reports on George Zimmerman.
We have talked about this story before, Jim. There were all kinds of coverage when this was a case, supposedly, of a white vigilante going after a young black teenager who wasn't armed. Does this new information shed any light on the earlier coverage?
PINKERTON: A lot of light, but you won't see it reported. So we now know that Trayvon Martin was on marijuana and had bruised his knuckles or skinned his knuckles, which you tend to get from punching something or somebody. And the headlines are "Trayvon Martin shooting avoidable." And Martin shot at close range. The news here is that they were in a real fight and it looked like, when the wounds on Zimmerman -- that he was really getting clobbered, which suggests the self-defense angle of this that the media have been -- spent two months trying to hide.
SCOTT: Sally -- well, Sally’s shaking her head. But, Sally, when you put up the photo of the back of his head --
KOHN: It's awful.
SCOTT: -- of Zimmerman's head, clearly this guy was taking a pounding.
KOHN: First of all, I want to dispute the fact this is being reported. The findings have been over ABC --
(CROSSTALK)
KOHN: Second of all -- but again, I think this is sort of turning into a "we're trying it decide the case in the court of public opinion." Let's remember why this case came to light in the first place. It was because almost a month went by and there were no charges, no investigation, nothing against Zimmerman. And the majority of the activists --
(CROSSTALK)
SCOTT: There was a police investigation.
(CROSSTALK)
SCOTT: There with a police investigation and they decided, under Florida law, not to file charges.
KOHN: But the sole point of all of the media frenzy in the first place was not to convict George Zimmerman in the court of public opinion, whatever anyone would like to argue otherwise. It was to get a trial. To say we need the facts to come out. Let's know what happened. And that was it. And now that's where we're at.
SCOTT: Monica?
CROWLEY: But remember that the initiative narrative was set up by the left-wing media and by the left. You had members of Congress, who ought to have known better not to go out with public statements condemning George Zimmerman and saying that Martin was hunted down like a dog, without any of the set of facts. What we have seen over the subsequent weeks of this case is you get one narrative, then another and then you get another. And now we're on the third or fourth based on the details coming out. And it behooves us to take a step back and not make any further judgments on this, certainly not if you're in Congress and certainly not if you are in the media.
MILLER; Monica said this from the beginning, and I think you're right, and I think that the way in which -- what we're learning now about the case, the investigation, the sloppiness of this investigation, the fact that the police department itself didn't even have a homicide department or division. All of that is worth knowing. But this is the way things are supposed to work. You get a story, or you have an issue that's ignored, that the social media bring to the fore, then you have a set of allegations, counter allegations. Evidence comes out. And now we all have to take a step back and let justice work.
PINKERTON: I don't think it was sloppy at all. I think there was an enormous amount of information. They knew from the get-go -- including the prosecutor who just indicted Zimmerman and would love to send him to jail for the rest of his life. They had all the injury on the wounds. They had all the medical reports. He had broken his nose he had a bashed- up head, they went ahead and indicted him anyway, not evening mentioning obviously exculpatory evidence because they were afraid of Al Sharpton--
(CROSSTALK)
SCOTT: And then there's the doctored NBC 911 call that was, you know, put out there in a very sort of inflammatory environment to make it seems like this was all about --
(CROSSTALK)
CROWLEY: Again -- again, to back up a larger narrative that went far beyond just the concrete details, as limited as they are to the general public, to back up the larger narrative that this was a white-Hispanic -- a new term coined by The New York Times to describe George Zimmerman --
(LAUGHTER)
-- Which makes no sense. But again, to fit the larger racial narrative they've been trying to ram down everybody's throat.
SCOTT: On that point, Thomas Sowell, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, wrote this week that the media tend to ignore stories of black-on-white crime. And as an example, he wrote about two reporters, two white reporters at the Virginia Pilot who were attacked by a mob of young blacks, and their own paper didn't report the story.
MILLER: That's true, but, Jon, what’s really ignored, day after day, is not white-on-black, black-on-white, but black-on-black crime and murder, which is what’s really going on. It goes totally unreported in the media.
PINKERTON: So hats off to Richard Cohen, writing in The Washington Post, talking about Mayor Bloomberg defending the stop-and-frisk policy they have in New York City, and making the point -- this is Cohen talking - - that 90 percent of the murders in New York City occur to people of color. They're the victims of it. And they're, according to Cohen, using Bloomberg's statistics; there are 5600 people in New York alive today because they have these tough policies that cut the murder rate in this town by 80 percent.
SCOTT: Well --
(CROSSTALK)
SCOTT: More --
(LAUGHTER)
Sally wants something in there, but we've got to take a break.
If you see something that you feel shows evidence of media bias, e-mail us at newswatch@foxnews.com
Up next, the Facebook IPO and the big media hype.
ANNOUNCER: The Facebook IPO finally hit with billions and billions to be made. But is the social media site a solid investment? Did the media overdo the hype?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: I've lived my whole life to say, "Alex, let's make it a true daily double."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And it was power players week on "Jeopardy." Who are the winners? Who are the losers? Find out next, on “NEWS WATCH.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, surrounded by Facebook co-workers in Menlo Park, California, opening up NASDAQ trading on Friday morning and launching the Facebook IPO.
Sally, the media love this guy and they loved his IPO or so it would seem.
KOHN: I guess. Two points here. Number one, I don't quite understand how the supposedly liberal media -- if they're liberal according to some at this table, perhaps then they're socialists. They're the liberal media and yet they love Facebook and this IPO that’s going to make everyone billionaires. I'm confused by that. I'm also confused as to why the conservatives haven't covered more of Eduardo Saverin renouncing his citizenship in order to evade --
CROWLEY: We have.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
KOHN: -- adopted country. I think that's the bigger story we should be talking about.
SCOTT: The fact that we're sitting here today means we didn't get a share of the Facebook IPO.
(LAUGHTER)
CROWLEY: -- millionaires and billionaires that were created on Friday, right? I do think there was a lot of hype but, to be fair, a lot of the business news outlets -- I was on Fox Business Friday morning when the IPO was coming out of the gate. Fox Business, flooded the other networks, flooded by newspapers too -- gave the floor to a lot of the Facebook naysayers, too, people who were sort of pouring cold water on this, saying be cautious about this, it might know be the next Google, it might be the next Groupon. So investor beware.
SCOTT: So on the frenzy and hype meter, Judy, where are we?
MILLER: I think we're about right. I think there's been a lot of questions raised about whether or not tis stock is going to be worth what it's going for. And I think there's been a lot of, gosh, even more concentration on the young man who started it all.
I do think that Fox and other networks have covered the Saverin business and have covered, thanks to the movie, a lot of the people who made Facebook possible. And we know a lot about this story thanks to the media.
SCOTT: Jim, you're the most technologically plugged in guy that I know.
(LAUGHTER)
Is anybody remembering the dot-com bust here?
PINKERTON: Yes. I mean, this Facebook has gotten slapped down a lot. When General Motors pulled their advertising from them that was awkward for them. Again, there's so much momentum for a company with a billion users – or whatever the number is by now -- that they've got a lot of popularity. But there is -- the wrap.com called Facebook quote, "a legacy system," end quote, because they're not keeping up with mobile as much as desktops. When a company this young is called legacy, it's a sign of how quickly things move.
And the most cutting point was actually in USA Today, by Cord Jefferson (ph), who said, quote, "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold." Something to think about for all of those people on Facebook. It's free to use so how are they making money? They're making money by selling your stuff off.
KOHN: Yes.
PINKERTON: It's just a useful reminder to people; let's think about how this company works.
MILLER: Just a word. Having been in Egypt is that Egyptians really love Facebook because they credit Facebook with having helped bring about their revolution. Whether or not they're grateful next year is a separate issue.
SCOTT: MySpace came along a little too early I guess.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: Friendster.
KOHN: Friendster, I was going to say.
CROWLEY: The bigger story here, too, which really I don't think has gotten covered about Friday and the IPO is that this is a great story about American capitalism. A college kid with a great idea turns it into this huge business. And in his short life, it's already an iconic American company.
KOHN: It's a great American story.
SCOTT: We have to take one more break. When we come back, big-name media stars show what they know on "Jeopardy."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST OF “HARDBALL”: If she were on "Jeopardy" right now and the topic was national government, American government generally defined, would she look like an imbecile or would she look OK? Does she know anything?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Pay back. NBC's Chris Matthews in one of his many shots at former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, insinuating she might not do well on "Jeopardy." This week, we all found out how well he would do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Who is Gary Powers?
ALEX TREBEK, HOST OF “JEOPARDY”: We need the full name.
MATTHEWS: Who is Gary Powers?
(LAUGHTER)
TREBEK: No.
MATTHEWS: What is a U.S. attorney?
TREBEK: No.
MATTHEWS: What is a hostile work place?
TREBEK: No.
MATTHEWS: What is Istanbul?
TREBEK: No.
MATTHEWS: I got the wrong answer then, Mary Tyler Moore.
(LAUGHTER)
TREBEK: Well, let's take a --
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Not a great showing by Chris Matthews. However, another Chris, “Fox News Sunday" host, Chris Wallace, was another story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Letter X sports?
TREBEK: That's right. You're on the board.
Chris?
WALLACE: Who was JFK?
TREBEK: Right.
WALLACE: I always knew you were going to ask one of these questions. What is Canada?
TREBEK: Yes, correct.
WALLACE: What is Detroit?
TREBEK: Yes, that's it.
WALLACE: Who is John Travolta?
TREBEK: You got it.
WALLACE: Let's make it a true daily double but this is way too much money.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: I'll -- I'll bet $2,000.
What is New Orleans?
TREBEK: New Orleans, correct.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: What is Trenton?
TREBEK: Right.
Did you get "Gone with the Wind"?
WALLACE: I did have to do the adding. It didn't come so quickly, but I did pick "Gone with the Wind."
TREBEK: And you risked $3400 and that takes you up to $50,000.
(APPLAUSE)
TREBEK: $50,000 --
(APPLAUSE)
TREBEK: Congratulations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Next time he comes to New York, I'm going to make him buy lunch.
(LAUGHTER)
That’s a wrap on “News Watch” this week.
Thanks to Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Monica Crowley and Sally Kohn.
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