Fox News Channel - Transcript
Interview
Fox News Channel Interview With Rep. Lamar Smith
Subject: Media Fairness Caucus
Interviewer: Bill Hemmer
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MR. HEMMER: You want to fight media bias? There's a new Republican group in Congress that's gotten together to do just that. Leading the way is Congressman Lamar Smith. He's one of the leaders of this group, chairman of the Media Fairness Caucus. He's my guest on the Hill.
How are you, sir? Republican out of Texas. Good morning to you. Welcome to our show.
REP. SMITH: Bill, good morning. Good to be with you.
MR. HEMMER: What do you want to get out of this?
REP. SMITH: Well, we are filing the papers today to create a media fairness caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the purpose of this organization and it will start off with about a dozen members is not to censor. It's really to encourage the media to adhere to the highest standards of their profession and to provide the American people with the facts, not tell them what to think.
MR. HEMMER: You know, I'll tell you --
REP. SMITH: That's a high hurdle.
MR. HEMMER: I find this at the Fox News Channel; I can't say that I found it yet in a member of Congress.
REP. SMITH: Well, there are a lot of members of Congress who are worried about the liberal media bias that we see every single day, you know, the most recent poll says only nine percent of the American people think the media are objective and fair. They have a huge credibility gap and two to one, they think the media are liberal, not conservative. And we've got all kinds of examples. You look at the last election where the national network news programs covered Obama and McCain, but gave three times the negative coverage to Senator McCain than Senator Obama. That's just one example.
You've got other examples, for instance, in the case of contributions by reporters, 20 times as many reporters gave contributions to Senator Obama than Senator McCain, and you have that reflected ever since.
So we think something needs to be done about it, and let me just say and this is going to sound radical, I don't mean for it to be radical, but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias and I think that because if the American people don't get the facts, they can't make good decisions and if the American people can't make good decisions, then our democracy is threatened.
MR. HEMMER: I would not necessarily call that radical, but I do find interesting though and we talked about this story yesterday, Newsweek magazine has an editorial out this week, saying that the media has been in the tank for the White House. Do you sense a shift or some sort of change now that we're 120, some 130 days in?
REP. SMITH: Yeah. I haven't seen any signs of a change whatsoever. The media have given the Obama administration a free pass, in fact, President Obama has gotten three times the positive coverage that, say, President Bush did in his first three months in office. There's very little criticism and you have to rely, frankly, on Fox News and a few other media outlets to get the facts to the American people, otherwise, they wouldn't know and let me thank Fox for -- you're, frankly, the only balanced coverage out there and it's much appreciated by a lot of us.
MR. HEMMER: Well, appreciate that. Thank you for saying that. I want to know where you cite the double standard today? I mean where do you find it the most?
REP. SMITH: The double standard, I think, comes from the national news not covering stories that they ought to cover. You can think of a couple of stories just in the last couple of days about, for instance, Judge Sotomayor who has been nominated for the Supreme Court. We haven't found any stories that cover the fact that according to the Almanac of Federal Judges that she got the worst rating as far as courtroom demeanor goes. We haven't found a single outlet, major outlet that pointed out that 60 percent of her majority rulings have been overturned by the Supreme Court, I mean, that's just this week's example, but every single day there are examples of sort of a double standard where the national media is giving a pass to the president and his appointees or his officials rather than scrutinizing them. And the role of the media is to be even and fair --
MR. HEMMER: I hear you on that. Do you have any Democrats in your group?
REP. SMITH: We hope to have some Democrats. We're just getting started. We'll accept anybody who believes --
MR. HEMMER: When you do, I want their name and we'll put them on the air, okay?
REP. SMITH: We'll get them to you and we'll keep going --
MR. HEMMER: Get a rebuttal on this, too. Lamar Smith, thank you, Republican out of Texas. It's a new program, first time in Congress we've sever seen that.
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