How the media covered Congress' busy week

This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Watch," January 5, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch the latest video at FoxNews.com

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JON SCOTT, HOST: On "Fox News Watch."

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-OHIO, HOUSE SPEAKER: So if you've come here to see your name up in the lights or to pass off a political victory as some accomplishment, you've come to the wrong place. The door is right behind you.

SCOTT: Re-elected Speaker of the House Boehner with a message for the new Congress.

Congress approves a compromise deal to avert the fiscal cliff, for now. Did the media tell you what you it does? Taxes raised on most wage earners right now, but no spending cuts until later. The House of Representatives delays the vote to give more relief to victims of superstorm Sandy, causing a reaction almost as violent as the storm itself.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, R-NEW JERSEY: Last night politics was placed before our oath to serve our citizens. For me, it was disappointing and disgusting to watch.

SCOTT: Did NBC's "Meet the Press" host take his anti-gun agenda a step too far? A liberal newspaper in New York reveals the names and addresses of legal gun owners. "The Des Moines Register" publishes a gun ban column, advocating deadly violence against the NRA and Republican leaders.

The war in Afghanistan is still going on. Nearly 70,000 U.S. troops still there, but media interest is MIA.

And get this, Mr. Global Warming, Al Gore, sells his failed cable channel to a network owned by a big oil producing country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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 to the American Conservative magazine; and Justin Duckham, Washington correspondent for Talk Radio News Service. I'm Jon Scott. "Fox News Watch" is on right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOEHNER: There's no substitute for the wisdom of the people. We here are their servants. As speaker, I pledge to listen and to do all I can to help all of you carry out your oath of office that we are all about to take. Because in our hearts, we know it's wrong to pass this debt on to our kids and our grandkids. Now we have to be willing, truly willing to make this problem right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: The re-elected speaker of the House there, John Boehner, addressing the new 113th Congress on Thursday, part of a very busy week on Capitol Hill for lawmakers and the media. First came the hoopla over a done deal to avert the fiscal cliff, and then some outrage over a vote that didn't happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIE: Disaster relief was something that you didn't play games with. But now in this current atmosphere, everything is the subject of one-upsmanship, everything is a possibility, a potential piece of bait for the political game. And it's just -- it's why the American people hate Congress. It's why they hate them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: That was New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, one of a few Republicans who criticized the fact that John Boehner's Republican-led House of Representatives refused to hold a vote on a Senate-approved bill to spend $60 billion on hurricane relief.

Now, they did approve a smaller chunk on Friday, $9.7 billion, and they are promising to hold more votes, but here is how the media jumped on that.

The Newark Star Ledger, headline, "Christie rips GOP on Sandy bill delay." From the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Christie -- Shame on Congress." CNN called it a bombshell. Is that a little too much drama, Jim?

JIM PINKERTON, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: Well, I mean, it works for Christie, doesn't it? I mean, the governor of New Jersey has now set himself up as a sort of triangulated figure looking down with mostly scorn at both the Democrats and the Republicans, and in terms of the middle of the country, which feels very anti-Congress and is sort of worried about the country's direction as a whole and not all that keen on President Obama either, it's a pretty good position to be in.

SCOTT: He does have to run for reelection. The decision to delay the vote, though, to make sure that the money was being well-spent -- I know Bill Kristol defended it in the Weekly Standard, but anybody else?

JUDY MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, no, I just think it's indefensible. I mean, if we're going to start talking about well-spent money, you might as well shut down the entire U.S. Congress. I mean, come on, this was clearly a political move. There was a response to a political move that was genuine, not only by Chris Christie, but by Pete King, who said the same thing. Disaster money should not be politicized, and I think that was a theme that many Americans agreed with.

SCOTT: But I think the point, Justin, that some of the critics of the bill were saying, the Senate bill was that it wasn't all disaster relief.

JUSTIN DUCKHAM, TALK RADIO NEWS SERVICE: Well, let it go to the floor, and that's what the speaker should have done. He just had an open vote on the fiscal cliff and members were allowed to vote up or down, and he could have done the same thing here, and it looked like they had the votes to pass it.

SCOTT: The media meme seemed to be that the GOP was out of touch and divided. Maybe Judy would agree with that, I don't know. Is that the way the headlines were casting this thing?

RICHARD GRENELL, FORMER SPOKESMAN FOR FOUR U.N. AMBASSADORS: Well, politics were everywhere, and from the headlines it was all politics. It wasn't substance. And if you look at the substance, this was political. You know, Jim said that this works for Governor Christie. I think it only works for Governor Christie in New Jersey, because he's running for reelection. His campaign is in full swing. This bill was loaded with political giveaways, it wasn't just relief.

SCOTT: Well, you know, the fact that Eric Cantor voted on the fiscal cliff deal, he was a no vote, and John Boehner voted for it, obviously -- the media were all over that as though there's this gigantic fracture.

PINKERTON: Well, there was a gigantic fracture, and it wasn't just the liberal media. It was Erick Erickson, speaking of Erics, pointed out on RedState that Cantor had tweeted out -- his press spokesman tweeted before that he was going to vote for it. And then 24 hours later he voted against it. And Erickson said, look, it's not just a liberal conspiracy to call this confusion, when in fact, this is Eric Erickson talking, Republicans are confused.

SCOTT: But the overarching focus of the coverage after this vote was on the GOP in disarray. It wasn't about what did or didn't get done in this fiscal cliff deal, which was more can kicking. Right?

MILLER: Jon, I think that was the meme, if I can use Jim's word. This is the political story that comes out of this debacle. There was only one column I saw that was really thoughtful by Robert Samuelson and RealClearPolitics that said this is also a failure of presidential leadership, because the president wasn't talking at all about the fact that the country is spending more than it's taking in.

GRENELL: But first, it was a financial story, this was not a political story.

MILLER: It was both.

GRENELL: No, it really was a financial story, this is about taxes. This is about budget. We should have had the financial reporters covering this. The political reporters, all they did was talk about sparring and who is up and who is down. We got no news. The New York Times coverage was atrocious, it was all politics, it was no finance.

DUCKHAM: Well, it was not an isolated incident. We saw a GOP schism coming with the Hurricane Sandy bill. We know that Cantor wanted to vote for it, and Boehner was against it. We saw plan B fail, and this is just the latest example. You know, and we also saw the House vote, where we saw the speaker--

(CROSSTALK)

GRENELL: But not all Democrats voted the same way either.

SCOTT: We'll be talking about it more in a couple of months, I'm sure of it. Next on "News Watch", the liberal media versus gun owners.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID GREGORY, NBC NEWS: Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: NBC's David Gregory takes mainstream media arrogance to a new level, showing off a large-capacity gun clip on air.

And a New York newspaper publishes the names and addresses of gun owners. Is that their job? All next on "News Watch."

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENNIS SANT, PUTNAM COUNTY CLERK: I'm a man who follows the rule of law. We're not talking about the rule of law anymore, we're talking about endangering our citizens. These laws were written almost 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, we didn't have computers, we didn't have Facebook, we didn't have social media, and we certainly didn't have Google Maps. I think that's what really broke the camel's back on this request.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Dennis Sant, the clerk for New York's Putnam County, standing firm on his position to not release the names and addresses of residents in his county who have legal pistol permits. He's denying the request from a local newspaper, the Journal News, a paper which already published and put on its interactive website a map showing the names and addresses and locations of permit owners in other counties.

Now, the action that that paper pulled has gotten quite a bit of reaction. Why did they do it, Jim, first of all? Is it their job or is it just to make some headlines?

PINKERTON: I think it's possible they could be liberal crusaders and for gun control, or they could be desperate for attention, in which case we've completely served theirs purposes here by making them famous.

Look, these are unbelievably complicated issues, because as Mr. Sant was saying, the notion of public records changes enormously when it now translates into the worldwide web and social media and tweeting. These are things that every issue of who votes and who pays taxes and who has guns and who is mentally ill are all going to have to be rethought through now that we know that it can go from one to the many instantly.

SCOTT: These are all people who have legal permits to possess weapons. It's not really a gun rights debate, in my view, it's a privacy debate. Isn't it? Do the media know the difference?

GRENELL: I don't think they know the difference, and I think there's also a double-edged sword here. Look, I live in Palm Springs. I'm nervous that if the Palm Springs paper prints the fact that I don't own a gun, I'm putting myself in jeopardy. I need to go get a gun permit just so that I show up as my house is armed, because there are people who now want to go target the houses of those who do not have guns.

SCOTT: And Judy, your thoughts.

MILLER: I think the newspaper was right to do what it did. It can be faulted on not providing the context, which is what Pointer said that it needed, was lacking, why were they doing this, what were they hoping to show, were they trying to show the number of school teachers who had guns, the number of ordinary citizens who had guns, it wasn't clear. So what Pointer was saying is we need more information, not less. But you cannot argue that something that's public information and that a newspaper doesn't have the right to publish it. They do.

SCOTT: Here is an interesting take. Back in 2008, a Memphis newspaper published the names and zip codes, zip codes only of gun owners, and two researchers then did a study, a follow-up on the impact of what happened there. The results, they noted, "crimes more likely to be affected by knowledge of gun ownership, such as burglaries, increased more significantly after the database was published in zip codes with fewer gun permits." Does that surprise you?

DUCKHAM: Well, I mean, going back to this, if it's public record, the paper has a right to look at it. But this isn't a public records issue. This is about responsibility. This is needlessly antagonistic, and at the end of the day, this is sort of reminiscent of the European newspapers who had published the cartoons of Muhammad and then are sort of surprised when there would be a public outcry, and that's at the heart of this.

SCOTT: Speaking of public outcry, the Des Moines Register published a column by a guy named Donald Kaul. He called it his madder than hell and I'm not going to take it anymore program for ending gun violence in America. He proposes repealing the Second Amendment and suggested, quote, "tying our esteemed Republican leaders to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around the parking lot until they saw the light on gun control." Did you see any media outrage over that?

PINKERTON: I didn't, and he also said in that piece, that if you have a gun illegally, then they should experiment with that Charlton Heston quote with the cold dead hands. In other words, he was effectively saying we're going to murder all gun owners who don't register their guns according to his satisfaction.

I'm astonished, that was one of the most heinous pieces of journalism I've read in my lifetime, let alone in this fresh new year, and where are the media gatekeepers? Where are all the Columbia journalism review people and so on, denouncing this, quote, coarsening of the culture? Imagine if Rush Limbaugh had said that.

SCOTT: And then there was NBC's "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. He's gotten more than a little bit of attention over this. Look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY: Let's stipulate that you're right. Let's say armed guards might work. Let's widen the argument out a little bit. So here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn't it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said we could only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets, isn't it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?

WAYNE LAPIERRE, NRA CEO: I don't believe that's going to make one difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Seung-Hui Cho, for the record, shot up Virginia Tech with magazines using ten round clips, which is ten rounds, I should say, which is fairly standard.

You have a little problem with what Gregory did.

GRENELL: Yes, I mean, the hypocrisy in the media is just too much here. Emily Miller at the Washington Times has done a really good job of pointing out how David Gregory is just getting off -- nobody, they're still investigating after three weeks even though he did this on live television, it's illegal what he did. But she points to a guy named Adam Mekler, who is a U.S. vet, who stumbled into the VFW with some ammunition in his backpack and ended up going to jail, having to give a plea bargain and register with the D.C. offenders registry.

SCOTT: You think it was appropriate?

MILLER: I think it was appropriate. I'm much more angry about David Gregory's softball interview of the president than I am him holding up an empty magazine clip.

GRENELL: It's illegal.

SCOTT: All right, more NEWS WATCH ahead. If you see something that you feel shows evidence of media bias, tweet us. "Fox News Watch" on Twitter.

Next, which is getting more media attention, a controversial film about the War on Terror, or the real war?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You really believe this story? Usama bin Laden?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Despite the controversy, a new film about the capture of bin Laden getting big media attention. But the ongoing war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, not so much. Why the lack of interest? Details next on "News Watch."

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You will never find him. He's already disappeared once.

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SCOTT: Part of the trailer for the high tension and controversial film "Zero Dark Thirty," a Hollywood production about the war on terror and the killing of Usama bin Laden. The movie up for the Golden Globe's best film, and getting all kinds of media attention, but when it comes to the real war, not so much. Pew Research polled Americans about what they thought were the top news stories of the year. According to that poll, the top stories of 2012 were the election, the tragic school shooting in Newtown, superstorm Sandy, and gas and oil prices. The war in Afghanistan and U.S. counterterrorism efforts did not even make the top 15.

Judy, does that surprise you?

MILLER: It doesn't surprise me, John, it depresses me enormously. This week, the New York Times ran a piece that said that the president was getting a recommendation that we should have 6,000 to 20,000 troops left in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of combat forces in 2014. That piece didn't even make the front page.

SCOTT: So are Americans losing interest because of the lack of media coverage, or are the media not covering Afghanistan because there's no interest?

PINKERTON: All I can say is it reminds me of Vietnam. I'm old enough to remember that in the early '70s, and the public and policy makers lost enthusiasm and interest in the war long before the killing stopped, and that's kind of a tragedy that we were sending young men over to Vietnam after the public had turned on to other things.

I see the same thing happening again. It's very unfortunate and it's certainly a sobering reminder to those who advocate intervention someplace that the public support has to be sustained. If it's not, you have a situation like this.

SCOTT: This all started with the 9/11 attacks, and this was our response to it. Can the media afford to lose interest?

DUCKHAM: Absolutely not. And I think the most depressing sign of this disconnect is the fact that so many Americans were really introduced to John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, via a sex scandal, and not the more distressing information that's coming out, such as the continuing insider attacks and what not.

SCOTT: Rick?

GRENELL: Yes, you've got issues like Iraq, which is starting to implode and really moving towards Iran, a better relationship with Iran, and Syria, 60,000 people dead. We have a media, again, that's all political and not substance.

SCOTT: Up next on "News Watch," Al Gore's new pact with Al Jazeera.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you are getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news, which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there sharing her view of Al Jazeera, the Arabic news channel owned by the country of Qatar. That network referred to as the terrorist network by some critics.

Well, this week, Al Jazeera made a deal with Al Gore and his partners to buy their CurrenTV. It's their far, far left cable channel that not too many people were watching.

So Mr. Global Warming, Judy, sells his TV network for a tidy profit, apparently, to an oil producing country. Did anybody in the media note the irony there?

MILLER: Well, Fox News noted. A number of other people did as well. I just think it's marvelous that Al Gore has managed to take a station that nobody watched and turn it into a cash cow for himself. He has made $100 million off of a station that nobody watched. Now, Al Jazeera is very, very good when it comes to Middle Eastern news, in that they broadcast it, unlike American news stations, as we've been complaining about. But the problem with Al Jazeera is that they are not very good when it comes to looking at corruption, in say, their own country. That's the problem with- -

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: That's why we have to focus on the corruption of, oh, I don't know, a former vice president selling a TV network for way beyond its value to a foreign oil power. And look, I don't want to get Brian Stelter from the New York Times in trouble, but he actually quoted the Fox News opinion headline, "global warming guru Al Gore hypocrite" on CurrenTV. That -- it's so potent, if the media were really doing their job, they would be taking this whole deal apart.

SCOTT: They say they are going to start Al Jazeera America, that's going to be the new name of the channel. Time Warner, when they found out about this deal, dropped CurrenTV from their line-up. Do they have a chance?

DUCKHAM: Well, I mean, there is still a stigma of Al Jazeera from back in 2003, but a lot of Americans don't really fear that anymore. Al Jazeera had a moment where they really legitimized themselves in the eyes of the American public, and that was during the Arab spring.

SCOTT: Here is this quote that I love from the Wall Street Journal, Rick. @glennbeck, formerly of this network, tried to buy CurrenTV. He was rebuffed, the Journal says, because the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us, meaning Al Gore and company, and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view. So how does Al Jazeera fit in there?

GRENELL: The same thing happened with the sale of Newsweek. And it's this political point that outlets are trying to make.

I come from this from the standpoint that all media is biased, Al Jazeera included, and you just have to deal with that and try to balance it out. I think Al Jazeera has come a long way and they are doing a much better job today, and you do get great foreign news.

SCOTT: And of course, the fact that by closing this deal in 2012, Al Gore doesn't have to pay such high capital gains taxes because he got it in before the fiscal cliff deal. That is interesting.

That is a wrap on "News Watch" for this week. Thanks to Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Rick Grenell and Justin Duckham. I'm Jon Scott. Thanks for watching. We'll see you again next week.

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