How the media covered 2012's biggest story

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This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Watch," December 29, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JON SCOTT, HOST: On "Fox News Watch," 2012, a year of nonstop news and nonstop coverage, often driven by bias.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: And I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: From the GOP primaries, political conventions, the presidential debates and the big election, the media agenda was clear and present.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ruling on the health care law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Obamacare goes to the Supreme Court, giving the president and his loyal media friends a big win. But it's not over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN RICE, U.N. AMBASSADOR: The best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Details about a deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi get ignored by most in the media, the press buying into the White House spin. But then the truth comes out.

Tragedies in the headlines. The massacre in Newtown and other unthinkable actions challenge the media in their coverage.

Conflicts in the Middle East. A civil war in Syria and other hotspots make it difficult to get the true story, and journalists pay the price.

Eastern states get hit hard by super storm Sandy, the disaster affecting millions. How did the media react?

And who was voted worst reporter of 2012?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: What was the scandal?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said there was a video, it was not about the video.

MATTHEWS: It was about the video, read the newspaper, thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: On the panel this week, writer and Fox News contributor, Judy Miller. Richard Grenell, who served as press spokesman for the last four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. Jim Pinkerton, contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine. And Fox News political analyst, Juan Williams.

I'm Jon Scott. "Fox News Watch" is on right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: We can now definitively say that President Barack Obama will be reelected. Mitt Romney will come up a loser in this race.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: The big media story of the year, the presidential election. And that was how it ended. Barack Obama elected to a second term as president, beating Republican challenger Mitt Romney, an end to a bitter election season that started early with the GOP primaries and events like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS: We saw some of this during your visit to a black church in South Carolina, where a woman asked you why you referred to President Obama as the food stamp president. It sounds as if you are seeking to belittle people.

GINGRICH: First of all, Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: I know among the politically correct, you're not supposed to you use facts that are uncomfortable.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: So that was just part of a long and memorable primary season.

Juan, is that your highlight of the year?

WILLIAMS: My highlight? Oh, no, no, no. But you know, it is telling, again, for Newt Gingrich. He then in a subsequent debate format, when we was asked about extramarital dalliances and the like, said enough of these gotcha questions, and went at the media in specific, John, and I think made the media successfully a target of his ire.

SCOTT: Well, on the Republican side, though, Jim, it is often the case that the media go after Republican candidates?

JIM PINKERTON, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: Right, and that is why Gingrich was so effective in pivoting off, for example, Juan, because the real issue of those debates, all 20 of them or whatever there were, is never what Rick Perry said to Herman Cain or vice versa, it's what they say to the public and gets through.

Gingrich showed a real situational awareness, saying look, the people on this stage are small potatoes compared to the audience out there, and if I can have a chance to clobber a reporter, I'll take it. For example, on the other side, in the Paul Ryan debate with Biden in October, he just simply thought, well, I'm here to debate Biden, so he'd answer the questions, even though it was obviously biased against him, and never once did he turn to the audience and said, look, folks, here is more media bias. If you wonder why Republicans have a hard time, it's because it's the Democrats and the mainstream media against us Republicans. The audience would have loved it, because even independents would agree, yes, it's sort of obvious by now that the media are biased against the Republicans.

SCOTT: All those debates, Judy, so many of them, and did they illuminate

the process, the presidential campaign?

JUDITH MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I think they did. First of all, they were clearly catnip for reporters. I mean, there were thousands of reporters. It was amazing that anything else got covered, given how many reporters were there. But when you have that many debates, you got to see these candidates, and it was a wide range of candidates, really demonstrating a capability or lack of capability to kind of field complex issues. And the voters made up their minds. You saw one media promoted figure after another fall after he couldn't -- or she couldn't quite stand the scrutiny that came upon a front-runner.

SCOTT: The Obama campaign made clear attempts to try to sort of demonize Mitt Romney early. They settled on him as their eventual challenger, did the negative advertising early. But the media as well, there was the Newsweek cover poking fun I guess you would say at Mitt Romney's Mormonism, for instance.

RICHARD GRENELL, FORMER SPOKESMAN FOR U.N. AMBASSADORS: And you know, for Republicans, media bias is a target rich environment. We're constantly up against the fact that they are trying to define us as something that we are not. And I think the Mormonism issue was front and center early on. And I think the Romney campaign did a good job of trying to downplay that.

Now, certain members of the media were nervous about bringing it up, although some of the social media types and bloggers were constantly trying to make this an issue, and it was picked up in the mainstream media by some.

SCOTT: What about we got to the actual conventions, when Mitt Romney got nominated, when Barack Obama got re-nominated, what about the coverage? Was it fair?

WILLIAMS: I think when I look back at the coverage of the Republican convention in particular, I think there was an effort to be fair, but then I think they fell off an edge, and I think the edge in part was Clint Eastwood and that now famous chair, the empty chair, if you recall. I think that suddenly somehow a Hollywood actor, who was brought in I think because remember, he had done the ad during the Super Bowl that seemed to be pro Obama, but here he is endorsing the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney -- suddenly that became bigger than anything that Mitt Romney did. I think that is the most memorable event, according to the American media, from a convention, when I believe not only did Mitt Romney stand out but also Paul Ryan, and several Hispanics, by the way, did an excellent job of presenting a conservative reason to oust President Obama.

SCOTT: Seems like nobody remembers the big flap at the Democratic Convention over whether or not God was going to be on the platform. That kind of thing. The Clint Eastwood moment got all of the attention.

PINKERTON: You are right, but there is a certain rule here, and Republicans just have to learn it. If the whole essence of a convention is a tightly choreographed event, then you tightly choreograph it. And you put things to help you better -- for example, Rubio was terrific, and those videos of the families that Romney helped, those were very moving, and nobody saw them because they were in the wrong hour, in the middle of tight choreography don't say to Clint Eastwood, you just go out and wing it now. That was not smart. And there has been a considerable little cottage industry of finger pointing back and forth about whose idea that was to have him out there. Most of the loyal campaign aides, I mean that as a joke, around Romney, are blaming Romney himself.

MILLER: I was struck by Tom Hamburger's piece in the Washington Post that called the Romney campaign, "campaign malpractice." There were so many mistakes that it became obvious to the press. And the Republicans kept saying, oh, this is an evidence of media bias, but in fact, it was just a badly run campaign, and that became very, very clear, and the voters showed us it was clear.

SCOTT: And then we got to the debates, when the media seemed to have their thumb on one side. Of course, there is that memorable moment when CNN's Candy Crowley gave the president a little bit of a lift. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS: I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Get the transcript.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN: He did in fact, sir. So let me -- did call it an act of terror.

OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

CROWLEY: He did call it an act of terror. It did, as well, take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: This after the president had done so poorly in the first debate in Denver. Did that salvage the race for him?

PINKERTON: It probably did, or certainly helped. Look, again, this is where Romney had to say, look, folks, what you just saw was my opponent, Barack Obama, and my other opponent, Candy Crowley, teaming up against me. And if he'd done that, everybody would have gotten it. Instead, Romney sort of -- it's an unbelievably hard situation to do this on live TV in front of 100 million people, but then again, you need that gift of situational awareness to do what Gingrich could do in the primaries.

SCOTT: Interesting.

WILLIAMS: You know, one quick mention here. And I think it is worthy of our discussion here at year's end, which is that Twitter and social media played a bigger role in the election and media coverage than ever before. And that if you were following conservative blogs, conservative websites, conservative media, you really had a different view of this election and different view of the debates. The debates, for example, the first debate that is so famous, I think turned on the fact that so many people were involved in real-time in scoring that debate as opposed to--

GRENELL: And pressuring the mainstream reporters.

SCOTT: One of the big stories of the year, that's for sure.

Next on "News Watch," pollapalooza and political gaffes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

OBAMA: You didn't build that.

ROMNEY: They brought us whole binders full of women.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Political gaffes got tweeted, blogged and reported as game changers by the press. But were these true verbal errors or made up missteps by the media? Find out next on "News Watch."

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

OBAMA: -- invest in roads and bridges. If you got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen.

ROMNEY: I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine.

BIDEN: He is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They are going to put y'all back in chains.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

SCOTT: A small sample of what the media portrayed as political gaffes, but not all gaffes got the same treatment. We were talking in the break, Juan, about your reaction when Mitt Romney made his binders full of women comment in the debate.

WILLIAMS: Well, first, I just thought it was my flaw -- or my feeling as a good journalist, because when he said it, I thought, that is a funny way to put it, that's strange, but I didn't think it was worthy of what followed, which was several days where it dominated social media, and then made its way into mainstream media as evidence that he somehow was out of touch with women, or that he really doesn't know enough women. And then there was political cartoons suggesting it was old Playboy binders. I just couldn't believe it, that it came from that.

GRENELL: And the irony here is that the Democrats always tell us, context is really the key here. And the context was that Governor Romney was trying to find women to promote and to put into the cabinet. That is a wonderful thing to celebrate. And the fact that resumes were put into a binder -- it seems so silly, but I can guarantee you the Obama campaign was there watching and looking for a mess up that would relate to women and jump on on social media, because it all stemmed from the Obama campaign.

PINKERTON: Or a phrase they could take out of context and manipulate it.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: Forgive me, gentlemen, but yes, as a woman, when I heard that, I thought, oh, there we go again. Relegated to that list that's going across somebody's desk, because nobody can find a qualified woman. It's just so hard to find one. That is what resonated. Not all gaffes are created equal. Some resonate with the American people, whether or not the media choose to get behind it.

GRENELL: No, but the difference on that is that it resonated because it was messaged and tailored and pushed. Most people, including the liberal sitting next to me, didn't take it that way.

MILLER: Most liberal men didn't take it that way.

SCOTT: That is true. But isn't it true that Governor Romney had more women in his cabinet than any other governor to that point? Or serving governor?

PINKERTON: I mean, you know, I don't think the Romney campaign did a very good job. I think they kind of ran away from their record as governor, because they were afraid of the healthcare thing. I think Romneycare hurt them in the Republican primary, so they thought, but by the time he'd cinched the nomination, which was March, I think they sort of forgot to pivot to the middle, including highlighting Beth Myers (ph) and all the rest of them.

GRENELL: One thing that the Romney did a terrible job at is treating -- they treated the media like a group. And they would give briefings as a group. Look, I'm a press secretary by training. The one thing you can't do is treat the media as a group. You have got to get them fighting against themselves. You got to get the competition amongst the reporters, amped up. So you leak to one, you give one an interview, you sit down with another and do individual, so they are not all getting the same information, and they are not all able to gang up on you.

SCOTT: We talked about the fact that there were so many polls taken. There was also a lot of coverage of the campaigns, and this poll or this survey is kind of interesting. The Pew Center took a study on the tone of the coverage, and found that both campaigns actually did get more negative coverage, but the preponderance of negative coverage was far worse for the Romney campaign, 38 percent negative, 15 percent positive. Versus the Obama campaign, 30 percent negative, and 19 percent positive. Does that surprise you, Juan?

WILLIAMS: It does surprise you. I think in essence that there is more balance there than I would have thought, because I think the American people overwhelmingly think that the was pro-Obama, I don't think there is any question about that.

GRENELL: These numbers show that they were.

(LAUGHTER)

PINKERTON: The spread between positive and negative was 23-11, that is two to one in favor of Obama. That is a pretty big -- in a close election, that's a pretty big difference.

GRENELL: Juan thought that it wasn't more--

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: I think if you ask people, they say overwhelmingly that they believe that--

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: Hold up, you're right, Juan. People do think that. The Pew Center has its own methodology, which we might analyze some other time, and maybe they come up with numbers that show less bias.

MILLER: 100 points, 100 electoral votes is not a close election. And I am amazed that the bias was that small.

WILLIAMS: We were talking earlier about an incident, a gaffe, where everyone -- at least for my, not Judy's money, I thought it was unfair to Romney. But I think, for example, the "You didn't build it" gaffe, which then became a theme of the Republican convention, I think fact checkers far and wide have said, hey, wait a second, listen to the entire context of that speech.

GRENELL: I think the context was worse for that. When he goes through this whole litany of denigrating success and wealthy people, the whole thing, Juan, is worse. The context for that is outrageous. If you listen to that whole clip, you --

WILLIAMS: Listen to the whole speech, and it is pretty clear that what he's talking about is infrastructure, bridges, roads, education of our people, of the workforce.

GRENELL: And the successful people, how dare them think that they are--

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: I think that is spin. And I think that came from the right. And it worked tremendously.

GRENELL: He said it. He actually said it.

WILLIAMS: That is like Romney saying I don't care about the poor. He didn't mean that he does not care about the poor.

SCOTT: Jim?

PINKERTON: I wrote a piece about this, and I recall that Obama said the words "American system," which actually goes back to Henry Clay, not a liberal, who did say infrastructure and monopoly of violence and rule of law are pretty important for anybody getting rich. I think in that case, Obama did get a bad rap.

MILLER: And remember, Etch-a-Sketch, look, the most damage that was done to the Romney campaign often came from people in the Romney campaign. Etch-a-Sketch, you just turn over a page and he's going to be something else. At the end, the American people either didn't know who he was, or they didn't like the person they saw emerging. What should have been an election about the economy became an election about empathy or lack thereof. And that's Republicans' fault.

PINKERTON: Biggest gaffe of the year and probably the biggest game changer in the election was the 47 percent, which came right out of Romney's mouth. I think David Corn gets credit for having probably the most decisive single reporting scoop of the whole season.

SCOTT: All right. More "News Watch" ahead, but first if you see something that you feel shows evidence of media bias, get on that new-fangled Twitter machine, tweet us @foxnewswatch on Twitter.

Up next, why did the media ignore some of the biggest stories of the year?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE KROFT, CBS NEWS: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word "terrorism" in connection with the Libya attack. Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?

OBAMA: Well, it's too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: That was President Obama the day after the deadly attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, attacks conducted by terrorists. Four Americans, including our ambassador, were killed. The controversy surrounding failed security and protection and controversy about how the Obama administration spun the details leading up to the attack, controversies pretty much ignored by the media to this day. Why? Rick?

GRENELL: I just have to say that the NEWS WATCH team just nailed it. That clip to me was -- should have been the entire narrative of the Romney campaign.

The president said it's too early to know if this is a terrorist attack. He didn't know or didn't want to admit that this was a terrorist attack. Weeks later, in the leadup before the election, he then changes and tries to say, well, it was a terrorist attack and we called it from that moment. It was 9/11, he didn't call it a terror attack, and he didn't pay the price in the media for that.

SCOTT: But that is the question. Why? Why are the media not terribly interested in the results of that day?

MILLER: Because it was portrayed as a Republican attack on the president at a time we all should have been pulling together because four Americans are dead. It was a successful campaign to politicize something.

GRENELL: By the Obama campaign.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: And certain media people stuck with it, but very few.

PINKERTON: And I love your use of the passive again. It was portrayed, well, who exactly was that? That would be the mainstream media, the New York Times, the networks, and so on. Yes, they portrayed -- they portrayed Romney as this thug getting in the way of this stuff. And they let President Obama off the hook. And CBS, "60 Minutes," which has been this muckraking TV show, the scourge of corporate polluters and so on, was actually sitting on the video and the transcripts for weeks, letting them dribble out slowly but slowly, slowly, so the impact was lost.

WILLIAMS: Now, from my perspective, I thought that what you had here was a situation where this thing was thoroughly politicized in the midst of a presidential campaign with the goal of defeating the idea that the Obama administration had won, killed Osama bin Laden and was taking credit for it. And two, had any success in terms of its foreign policy in the Middle East.

GRENELL: It was 9/11, Juan.

WILLIAMS: I had that same thought, but there was no evidence.

GRENELL: The president said Al Qaeda had been decimated. And that was his foreign policy credential.

WILLIAMS: OK, that's what was under attack.

GRENELL: On 9/11 there was a terrorist attack, and our U.S. ambassador in Libya was killed. And guess what? The media jumped on Romney and said this is political.

WILLIAMS: It was political.

GRENELL: You are politicizing -- but it came from the Obama campaign first.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: Most of --

GRENELL: They sent out an email and said this was the problem.

WILLIAMS: -- the attack that took place in Libya followed in the footsteps of what was going on in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, where that video did prompt the attacks.

GRENELL: Mitt Romney said the Obama campaign is not portraying this in the proper light. They are being -- they have a weak response. Guess what? We found out from that clip right there. The president didn't believe it was a terrorist attack on 9/11.

WILLIAMS: I think you are hanging on a word here, terrorists, extremists.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: I think he meant the president said he did not believe it was a terrorist attack. I think the fact is, he knew on 9/11, because they were watching the real time attack happening. And look, Juan, no offense, you are kind of repeating the spin here, saying it was Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Actually, they are kind of separate. Egypt and Tunisia were clearly riots of --

WILLIAMS: Thank you. That's what I just said.

PINKERTON: But you then put it in a sequence within Libya, too.

WILLIAMS: No, they come -- Libya comes after those attacks had occurred.

PINKERTON: But the thing is, they were different sources. And the different genesis. And one was crowd mob action. The other--

WILLIAMS: Correct.

PINKERTON: Well, the thing is, to conflate the two makes it seem like all three are the same.

WILLIAMS: No, I didn't say that. What I said was this came afterwards, and it could be that you have people who had extremist goals and are coordinating attacks taking advantage of this moment in the Middle East.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: This is the fallacy -- the fallacy here is post fact ergo propter hoc, after this therefore because of this. The Libya thing was terrorism, as Rick has been saying. Egypt and Tunisia things were--

WILLIAMS: Now we know.

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT: And to continue Jim's Latin run -- (INAUDIBLE) personae in this was Ambassador Susan Rice, who of course went on the morning shows and said

that this was all spawned by the abhorrent video. Then when it all came out that there was a different story behind it, she withdraw her name from consideration to become secretary of state, and then went on NBC to say this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICE: When I went on the Sunday shows on September 16th, I was doing just as I have always done, providing the best information available to me and available to our government at the time. I was very careful to explain that the information was preliminary and it could change. And yet I think it was misconstrued and contorted into something much more nefarious. That was never indeed the case nor my intention.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Having worked at the U.N., Rick, what do you think of that explanation?

GRENELL: I have seen the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.'s desk. I know there is a classified computer on that desk. And I know that she has entire staff that are geared towards intelligence gathering.

To suggest that she was handed talking points at the end of the process and said, just repeat these, is a bold-faced lie. She watches on the classified system how these points are developed. She knows what is supposed to be fact or what we're thinking is fact. So to suggest at the end of the day that this was about the Youtube video is a flat out lie, and she wasn't held accountable for it for weeks.

SCOTT: Next on "News Watch," tragic shootings and how the media reacted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Sandy Hook school massacre, Aurora, Colorado theater shootings, the killing of Trayvon Martin. Three horrible tragedies making headlines, all three getting major media attention. But was the coverage guided by a liberal agenda? That is next on "News Watch."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL VANCE, CONNECTICUT STATE POLICE: We will make sure that if there is anything that's emergent, that we get it out immediately, and then it's -- through you folks. I want to thank you for everything that you've done, you've (INAUDIBLE) professional, and we do definitely appreciate that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Connecticut State Police Lieutenant Paul Vance talking to the media in Newtown, the scene of the tragic school massacre in which 20 children and six adults were murdered by a 20-year-old. The killer committed suicide as police closed in on him. One of many tragedies which received major media attention this year.

It's a challenge for the media in covering a story like Newtown. Juan, as you know well know, I mean, just talking about it is so tough for any parent?

WILLIAMS: It's one of the great difficulties. From the media perspective, you want to be responsible, because you are aware that "Fox News Watch" exists, Jon. And if you act in a way that is rude, that is our normal behavior, you know, get it first, get that interview first, be most aggressive in covering a story, you risk a deep offense to the public, and you will be held accountable. You know, you will notice here that the rules with regard to interviewing children, the rules with regard to pursuing families of victims really were held in check in this instance. I think it's because there is a new set of rules with regard to media behavior.

SCOTT: There were a lot of mistakes made, especially in the early minutes of the coverage here, and I think a lot of it has to do with this new social media atmosphere, in which everybody's Facebook page and so forth are acceptable.

PINKERTON: And the feeling that reporters think they are in competition with Twitter and so on, so they got the fellow's age wrong, and they got his identity wrong, they named the wrong guy, his brother. They got whether the mother worked at the school or not, they got that wrong.

Look, this was not a good occasion for the press. And I thought it -- it to me symbolized what (INAUDIBLE) was talking about, was the church services on Sunday had big signs out in front, "no press, no media." They just didn't want them. I mean, at their best, reporters are sort of a necessary evil, and I think in many cases, the public viewed them as evil on this story.

SCOTT: Should the media, should -- some say should not even pay attention to the people who commit these atrocities, in hopes of preventing emulation the next time around?

MILLER: Yes, I think that is just an impossible dream. It's not going to happen in modern journalism.

But this, I have to say about the early mistakes that were made, a lot of them were made by reporters who were quoting the police. For example, the identity mishap was the result of the fact that the perpetrator was carrying his brother's driver's license, so the name that was released was the name of the brother. It was quickly corrected as soon as the police figured out what had happened.

But we can't be better than the police. We are depending on information that the police have, or other sources who were trying to make sense of it at that point. I don't think that a lot of the criticism is fair at this point.

GRENELL: But if -- journalists don't fact check anymore. What they do is they take what someone says and they just regurgitate it. So it's now become a form of gossip in many ways, because it's this is what someone told me, I am going to tweet it, I'm going to say it. So maybe in situations like this, a journalist should say the police are saying...

MILLER: But they did, they did quote the police as being the source.

SCOTT: Talk about fact checking. One of big crime stories of the year was the shooting of Trayvon Martin back in late February. That was a story that got widespread media attention when it first happened. But as more facts came out, it seemed to disappear.

PINKERTON: And as more photographs of Zimmerman come out showing him beaten up, the story has completely disappeared. That was supposed to be the Rodney King case for this year, and it didn't work out that way.

WILLIAMS: I disagree. You know, I think that in fact, that story has continued in the American press. And now, Zimmerman is suing NBC because they edited a tape that made him look like he was a racist. And I think he might have a case here.

But I will say to you that that case on two counts I think is worthy of the media attention it received. One, we -- it is one of these line of gun cases that we have seen now I think risen to a higher level by what happened in Connecticut. Even recently, another black person was shot for playing his music too loud in a parking lot. That story continues.

The second thing I would say about that case is, you know, there are so many shootings in the black community in this country on a daily basis that get no attention, and yet in that case, the media found it convenient because they thought mistakenly that Zimmerman was a white male who had shot this black kid wearing a hoodie, but who had been simply out to get Skittles and had an iced tea in his hand. And it made for a caricature of the story rather than the reality.

MILLER: It was also the social media, by the way, Juan, which picked up this story first, and made it a national story. That is a positive side of the social --

WILLIAMS: Yes. It took about a month before the story hit the national press.

MILLER: That's the positive side of the social media. The negative side we know all too well.

SCOTT: And we'll let you know what happens with that lawsuit that Zimmerman has filed against NBC News.

Next on "News Watch," the challenge for journalists covering conflict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mideast conflicts heated up, tensions between Israel and its neighbors. A civil war in Syria and nuclear threats from Iran. All big stories. Did the media pass or fail in the coverage? And are journalists on the ground becoming real targets? Details next on "News Watch."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS: We weren't physically beaten or tortured. There was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first. And when we refused, there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Gazi (ph) several times, and when you are blindfolded and told -- and then they fire a gun up in the air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: In Syria to report on the civil war tearing that country apart, NBC News correspondent Richard Engel and his crew kidnapped by what he believes was a group loyal to the Assad regime. He and his crew were allowed to go free after a firefight between their captors and rebel forces. It just goes to show, again, Judy, the danger of this line of work.

MILLER: Exactly. And it's getting ever more dangerous, with each passing year. We have lost 28 American journalists, 28 journalists in Syria this year, which rivals the kind of worst years of the Iraq war, which was 32 in 2006 and 2007. But the story has to be told. We are criticized if we don't go in to tell that story, and we are criticized for being reckless if we do. It's such a difficult call, but if I were an editor at this point, as Richard Engel's story shows, I would not let a reporter go inside at this moment.

SCOTT: I know you were friendly with Marie Colvin, who was one of the early victims of this.

MILLER: One of the early casualties, and a very brave, pioneering reporter, and her loss is being felt to this day.

GRENELL: These are the real journalists, to be honest. These are the ones who are risking their lives to tell the story. You have got Deb Amos at NPR, who is fearless. Edie Lederer, who is now at the U.N., but she was one of the first female journalists in Vietnam. These journalists are the ones who deliver us the real news.

MILLER: But at a price that is just becoming too high. If you are responsible for these reporters--

GRENELL: I think there is a lot of people volunteering, though.

MILLER: -- do you really let them go in. Yes, I'd volunteered too to do it, but looking back on it, I say maybe that wasn't such a wise thing to do.

GRENELL: It's a great public service, though. I'm grateful and I think you got to let them go in and tell the story.

MILLER: Many journalists who are on the inside, who are there, who know the terrain better than we do at this point. If Richard Engel, if this could happen to him, one of the most experienced reporters in the field, it's a cautionary tale.

PINKERTON: Look, he is a very brave guy, and I fully admire him. And I think he should be applauded for going, but he did videotape himself going across the border into Syria. In other words, there might be a certain arc here, in terms of look, I'm just reporting from sort of a semi-anonymous place in Syria, as opposed to simply broadcasting, literally, my presence, so that anybody, including the Assad people who captured him, would have a pretty good clue where he was.

WILLIAMS: You know, I think it's getting more and more difficult to do this job, to be a foreign correspondent in the world. I think there are fewer and fewer of them. And I think the understanding by the despots of the world is that you have to control the story and you have to control the media. And they are getting better at it, I'm sad to say. Getting better at it not only in terms of what we would consider mainstream media control, but getting better at it in terms of controlling the Googles of the world, controlling the social tweeting and twittering--

GRENELL: But I think that's only because there are less journalists doing real reporting in dangerous places.

WILLIAMS: Correct.

GRENELL: And we have got more journalists like Buzzfeed that have just quick in and out gotcha stories.

PINKERTON: Rick, you made the point during the break that you are following people tweeting from refugee camps in Syria and stuff like that. Any really eager news consumer, and there should be more of them, can, as you were pointing out, find ways to get at least perspectives if not necessarily fully rounded journalism.

SCOTT: The question goes to the reliability of the information you are getting out of places like this, because as Juan was alluding, some of these despots have figured out ways to shape the coverage by allowing access or providing favors to certain people.

MILLER: But there comes a point where you draw the line. For example, an interview with Usama bin Laden was just great before 9/11. I got offered one. Other people have. But after 9/11, if you took him up on that offer, you were being reckless and irresponsible, because he had already proven that his goal was to kill as many Americans as possible. There comes a line where you have to say, for the safety of that reporter, even if he or she wants to go, we're not going to let this happen.

WILLIAMS: You know, I just wanted to mention here that we just went through this war with the Palestinians and Israel. And one of the incredible outcomes of this was, now you have both governments going to tweet and send out messages, their version of the conflict. I've never seen anything like it. It's new in this year.

SCOTT: It is. It has been fascinating. We have had some of those tweets on this program.

Next on "News Watch," the media take on super storm Sandy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Historically we've never seen an event like this, a perfect storm that actually makes landfall.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was big, she was nasty, and she was destructive. Super storm Sandy slammed the East Coast, causing major damage and heartache. Did the media coverage pass or fail? Answers next on "News Watch."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, R-N.J.: I've got a job to do here in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. And I could care less about any of that stuff. I have a job to do. I have got 2.4 million people out of power. I have got devastation on the shore. I've got floods in the northern part of my state. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, just days after Hurricane Sandy became super storm Sandy and ravaged his state and other areas in the region. The media were criticized for overhyping that storm, but when you look at what it did, I don't know. What do you think?

GRENELL: Yes, I think they got it. They nailed it. They said it was going to be a terrible storm and it turned out to be a terrible storm. I think the coverage afterwards, because it was really in line with the election, was terrible, in that Katrina coverage was all about the president of United States handling. This one was not. It was not about President Obama's handling. And as we have seen on this show and other shows, it hasn't gone well. There are a lot of people still without help from the government. And yet that criticism was not directed at President Obama at all.

SCOTT: Katrina killed a lot more people obviously than Hurricane, Super Storm Sandy, but what do you think about FEMA and their handling of the two--

PINKERTON: There is no question, if you are homeless after a hurricane in the Bush 43 era, it's the president's fault. If you're homeless after Sandy, and again many more people were killed in Katrina, but plenty of people in a big city like New York are still homeless. And that is -- the media like Bloomberg, too, so they can't really blame him, and they like Christie, because Christie embraced Obama. They don't have any person to blame. I guess they'd have to blame Bush 43, even though he's been out of office for four years.

SCOTT: I think I saw Judy shaking her head.

MILLER: I mean, come on. I was watching a lot of television during Katrina. It's not only the numbers of people killed. It was the complete disaster of FEMA. It was you're doing one heck of a job, Brownie, when people were in a stadium where they didn't have a food and water. Where there were reports of rampant crime.

This performance was much better, much improved. And the president himself handled it better. He came up to New York.

(CROSSTALK)

GRENELL: But let's be real about when you call 911. It's a local responder. When you are on your roof and you can't get off your roof and you are calling somebody, it doesn't ring at the White House. It is the local responder, mayor that is in charge. And it was a disaster down in Hurricane Katrina because the local responders did a terrible job. Not because the White House--

WILLIAMS: That is not true. This is a false equivalency, first of all. This was a terrible situation down there, where the federal government and specific the White House did not pay attention, did not understand the severity of the damage being done to New Orleans and that entire area and that population. There was a racial overlay to it that added power to the story.

This situation happened toward the end of a political campaign, and you have a Republican governor, as we just saw, in New Jersey, Chris Christie, praising the president's performance. That became the news item, when people said why would he do that, it undermined Mitt Romney's campaign.

But in terms of the government's performance, at the moment, at the time, the president in fact made a virtue of the fact that he showed up and said, I'll do anything and everything to help you.

SCOT: Well, did the media embrace that image of Christie and the president?

PINKERTON: They did. I think Christie, to use the phrase I was using earlier, showed great situational awareness. When he was asked about any Romney and presidential election, he said I don't care about that, I don't care about that. He was speaking to the people in New Jersey and the country, who don't really like partisan politics as much as journalists do, and went right to them. And I think the payoff for Christie, if you can put it that way, I think he is now going to sweep to reelection in 2013. His most prominent opponent last week, Cory Booker of New Jersey, dropped out. Christie proved that if you can play the media properly, as he has been doing for four years as governor, you can be a superstar, even if you are a Republican.

SCOTT: All right. Next on "News Watch," some of the worst reporting of the

year now ending.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCOTT: Every year, a conservative media watchdog organization, the Media Research Center, names the worst reporters of the year. Votes were cast by some of the best and brightest in the business, including a few "News Watch" panelists. This year, their 25th, has quite a few you will recognize. Here are some of the nominees.

First, for the "Obamagasm" Award, the runners up, CNN's Pierce Morgan for his gushy interview with Obama strategist David Axelrod. Newsweek's Andrew Sullivan for asking why are Obama's critics so dumb? And Diane Sawyer for her sappy report on Barack Obama's love letters. But the winner of the Obamagasm award goes to --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: This guy has done everything right. He has raised his family right. He's fought his way all the way to the top of the Harvard Law Review, in a blind test, becomes head of the review, the top editor there. Everything he's done, as clean as a whistle. He has never not only broken any law, he's never done anything wrong. He's the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American, and all they do is trash the guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Next, the "Audacity of Dopes" Award for the wackiest analysis of the year. Runners up, the New York Times, Andrew Liptak (ph) for his piece on the U.S. Constitution. NPR's Ari Shapiro for refusing to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance at a Romney political rally he was covering. And the Washington Post's Dana Milbank for claiming the Fast and Furious scandal was not a scandal.

And the winner of "Audacity of Dopes" Award goes to --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERS MORGAN, CNN ANCHOR: How many times in your life, Mr. President, have you been properly in love?

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, PRESIDENT OF IRAN: I'm in love with all of humanity.

(LAUGHTER)

AHMADINEJAD: I love all human beings.

MORGAN: That might be the best answer I've ever heard to that question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: You can see all of the awards at mrc.org. There are some special ones, trust me.

That is the wrap on "News Watch" for this week. Thanks to Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Rick Grenell and Juan Williams. I'm Jon Scott. Have a great

New Year. We'll see you again next week for another edition of "Fox News Watch."

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