by WorldTribune Staff, May 23, 2017
A journalist who has been around long enough to remember what objectivity is has incurred the Left’s wrath for daring to be – objective.
Former CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer told CNN on May 21 that “today, you saw a very different President Trump. He actually sounded presidential.”
The 80-year-old Schieffer told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that “you may agree or disagree with what he said, but he sounded like a president. This went over very well, mainly because he stayed on script. No tweets today. But a dignified speech.”
Schieffer immediately came under fire for appearing to praise Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia.
Guest host John Berman pushed back:
“You know, Bob, though, that there will be people who look at that last comment you made and say, ‘You’re normalizing the president,’ ” Berman said. “You’re saying because he met this admittedly very low bar for not sounding foolish, in fact, he was in fact presidential. What would you say to criticism like that?”
Schieffer responded: “Well, I’m not trying to normalize him in any way. I’m trying to do what reporters do … report and try to emphasize what I think was important here.”
The website RawStory also blasted Schieffer, running a story with the headline, “CNN guest normalizes Trump for reading Saudi speech without ‘popping off.’ “
Dan Gillmor, who is listed as a teacher of journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, tweeted: “How journalists normalize Trump: ‘This went well because he stayed on script,’ says Bob Schieffer.”
“Bob Schieffer is an old-school newsman. There’s no doubt that the former ‘Face the Nation’ host leans left, but he is still capable of reporting, you know, the news,” said Legal Insurrection’s Mark Finkelstein. “That is too much for denizens of the modern MSM to tolerate.”
Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Policy found in a recent study that Trump was the target of historically negative media coverage during his first 100 days in office, drawing 80 percent negative stories in nine major media outlets versus 20 percent positive.
By comparison, the coverage of former President Barack Obama’s first 100 days was 59 percent positive and 41 percent negative, according to the study.
Slam: Left judges CBS veteran Schieffer on words of praise for Trump speech added by World Tribune on
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