Jake Tapper Concedes Media’s Bias on Obama Medal of Honor Gaffe, Double Standard on Bachmann
ABC's White House correspondent Jake Tapper appeared on the June 27 edition of Dennis Miller's radio show and conceded to a media blackout of Barack Obama's Medal of Honor gaffe. (The President confused a living recipient with the deceased Jared Monti who died in combat.) Tapper admitted that the President made “a big uncomfortable mistake.” He added, ” And I don't think that that got the same kind of coverage as, you know, when Sarah Palin got Paul Revere's ride. ” Tapper's right. His own network, ABC, as well as CBS and NBC have skipped the Monti story . Tapper was on vacation when the Medal of Honor story broke, but he, thus far, has ignored it (although he did cover it online ). Additionally, while the journalist had generic criticism for “the media,” he certainly didn't take ABC specifically to task. Miller critiqued, “Well, you guys gotta work that out in house. But, I will tell you, you're not- the herd's not fooling anybody out here.” Tapper at one point seemed on the verge of admitting to liberal media bias. He allowed, “But the question is, okay, and removing the ideological bias, and I don't- do not generally disagree that there is-” Unfortunately, Miller interrupted him. The White House correspondent attempted to shift the issue to one of sexism, suggesting that Hillary Clinton dealt with much harsher criticism than Obama. However, Good Morning America, where Tapper frequently appears, fawned over both. On the January 18, 2007 edition of that show, Clare Shipman summed up the Democratic battle as one between Clinton's “hot factor” and Obama's “fluid poetry.” An August 29, 2007, a Media Research Center study found Tapper to be wrong on this larger point of anti-Hillary bias. The MRC's Rich Noyes wrote : The top Democratic candidates received much more favorable coverage than their GOP counterparts, with Senator Clinton cast as “unbeatable” and Illinois Senator Barack Obama tagged as a “rock star.” The most prominent Republican, Arizona Senator John McCain, was portrayed as a loser because of his support for staying the course in Iraq. A transcript of Tapper's June 27 appearance on Dennis Miller can be found below: [Tapper moving off a question about Chris Wallace and the “flake” comment JAKE TAPPER: I do think that there is a question, and we were talking about this in our newsroom earlier today, I think there is a question about whether we are tougher, we meaning the media writ large, the Borg, that we are tougher on women candidates than we are on men, because I have to say, you know, anytime Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, you know, misplaces an adjective- DENNIS MILLER: Sure. TAPPER: – we know about it and we cover it in the media. And, you know, this thing that the President did, and, obviously it was a mistake and he didn't mean to, but last week when he misidentified- he's given two Medals of Honor. And he was at the 10th Mountain at Fort Drum and he mistakenly said that he had given one to Sargent First Class Jared Monti when actually Monti was the one of the two Medals of Honor he's given that was given posthumously. Monti died in Gowardesh, northeast Afghanistan in 2006. That's a big, uncomfortable mistake. MILLER: Huge. Yeah, yeah. TAPPER:
Posted by
on July 5, 2011. Filed under