(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the September 4, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the talk began with the media’s coverage of Barack Obama’s speech to the nation about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.  Ellis pointed out that the President speaking to the nation from the Oval Office fell flat when compared to his tremendous oratory skills when speaking to large crowds. 

The panel also discussed the media coverage of the Glenn Beck ‘Restoring Honor to America Rally’. Jim Pinkerton and Bill Sammon both felt that the main stream press unfairly spent a lot of time focused on Beck’s history rather than simply covering the event but Henican pointed out that Beck’s well known ideology was part of the story and therefore fair ground.  

The show wrapped with a brief discussion of how the press covers the information that journalists put out on Twitter.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the August 21, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the talk began with the media’s coverage of the ’Ground Zero Mosque’.  Ellis, who lives just blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood,  began by telling guest host Eric Shawn that those people who live in lower Manhattan are more receptive to the mosque than people who live farther away, speculating that people living  in Idaho are 99% against it.

A short while later panelist Jim Pinkerton said “Let’s just focus on the pundit sector.  It’s been a chance for them to demonstrate their moral superiority over the average American by taking this “enlightened,” multi-cultural position.”

Ellis:  “ At the risk, Jim, of sounding enlightened, it is not the role of us in the punditocracy to be as quickly as ignorant as the [most] ignorant member of the public. There are some complex principles here that don’t get played out easily in a left-right angry exchange on cable television, and I think frankly we have some responsibility to remember what those principles are.”

Jim:  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant has just convicted himself.”

Ellis: “ Of enlightenment! I plead guilty as charged, sir.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the August 7, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the talk, once again, turned to the media’s coverage of the Wikileaks investigation.  What started with Jon Scott telling the panel that “the Pentagon obviously believes there’s been tremenedous damage done to the war effort” ended in an exchange now being discussed  ’round the world.

Discussing the recent leaks by Wikileaks, Ellis made the case that “most of us who work in the media will tell you honestly we live off of leaks. Give me more leaks,” he insisted.

Conservative political commentator, and fellow panelist, S. E. Cupp took issue with this saying, “It seems as though the sole purpose of Wikileaks is to discredit and dismantle our war efforts and at any cost.”

She continued, “And I’m sorry, that’s not journalism. They’re just a collection bin for, for you know, documents.” 

Henican responded, “Kind of like the Drudge Report, right?”

Hundreds of viewers took to Twitter and Blogs to discuss these 7 little words, and as one blogger noted,  it was “a comparison that is sure to upset nearly everyone involved.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the July 31, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel discussed the media’s coverage of  the Wikileaks investigation.   Ellis noted that in the Internet Age once the information is out, it’s not only the media that is responsible for what happens with any leaked stories. Later, when the panel discussed  President Barack Obama’s appearance on television’s  The View, Ellis told the panel that ”Everybody needs to chill out here”.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the July 17, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel discussed the media’s coverage of  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’  comments on last week’s “Meet the Press.”   Ellis defended Gibbs — who said that there was a possibility that the Democrats could lose the House in the next election — against both Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Fox News Watch panel.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

  E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the July 3, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel discussed the media’s coverage of General Davis Patraeus, who sailed through the confirmation hearings and is now officially the new commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.  When asked about how he thought Patraeus would do,  Ellis said that if the General is successful ”people will be thrilled—and shocked.” He then confronted Andrea Tantaros – “You don’t want coverage” of Petraeus hearings, he said, “you want an ideological attack.”

Later, while discussing the media’s coverage of the “Russian Spy Ring” , Ellis asked the panelists “can we be grown-ups about this?”, noting that nations spying on both enemies and friends is nothing new or unusual.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the June 19, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel discussed the media’s coverage of the Oil Spill in the Gulf and the less than forthright answers coming fom BP’s CEO Tony Hayward. Ellis felt that the media would be right in ”villainizing villains.”

Later, while discussing the media’s coverage of Barack Obama’s first Oval Office Address to the nation, Ellis noted that the press slammed the President and then pointed out that “Obama was never quite the extreme leftist that some folks were warning about.”

This is a transcript from “Fox News Watch,” June 19, 2010.

JON SCOTT, HOST: On “Fox News Watch,” the oil disaster continues to plague the Gulf. And as the situation grows more dire, the president tries to convince America and the media he’s in control and fighting mad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Make no mistake, we’ll fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Did his prime time performance sway the press?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. Hayward, do you know what the constructs are?

Do you believe BP failed in its obligations?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: The media’s oil spill villain, BP Chief Tony Hayward, gets pummeled by Congress, the president and the press. Can he say anything to make things better?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HAYWARD, CEO, BP: I simply was not involved in the decision- making process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Alvin Greene shocks Democrats in South Carolina, winning their prized primary. How did the mainstream media miss this guy?

A teen sailor took off on a round-the-world adventure. The media yawned. But then her tour took a dangerous twist and so did the media’s interest. Did it come too late?

And a tug-of-war breaks out over which reporter will get Helen’s front-and-center seat in the White House briefing room.

On the panel this week, writer and Fox News contributor, Judy Miller; Fox Washington Managing Editor, Bill Sammon; Jim Pinkerton, fellow, New America Foundation; and Newsday columnist, Ellis Henican.

I’m Jon Scott. “Fox News Watch” is on right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: President Obama making his first Oval Office address since taking office, trying to convince the nation he’s on top of the situation and in control.

The next day, Mr. Obama met with BP CEO Tony Hayward after weeks of pressure from the press to do so.

I want to go over, Bill, some of the media reaction to Mr. Obama’s speech. “Running on empty,” says Mother Jones Magazine; “O-bomb-a, O-B-O-M-B-A,” from the Philadelphia Daily News. And from Salon.com, “Just words: Obama’s Oval Office speech fizzles.” And even at MSNBC, the thrill up the leg is gone, it seems.

BILL SAMMON, FOX WASHINGTON MANAGING EDITOR: Chris Matthews said he would, “barf” if Obama mentioned one more time that his energy secretary, who’s working on this problem, has a Nobel Prize. That’s even wearing a little thin.

I think the takeaway, Jon, is that this is finally the point where both the left and the right now agree that Obama has had a lackluster performance, to say the least, when it comes to responding to this oil spill. And I think there’s this growing realization that Obama just isn’t going to have a bull-horn moment. Remember, that bull-horn moment when President Bush stood in the rubble three days after 9/11, said, “I can hear you.” It electrified the nation. His ratings, approval ratings went to 90 percent. Obama’s are less than half that now, and they’re falling, because people feel that he’s helpless to stop this thing.

SCOTT: Let’s get your take on that, Ellis. You’re from the Gulf Coast. Do you agree?

ELLIS HENICAN, COLUMNIST, NEWSDAY: That is right. I mean, he is helpless to stop it. You have to count on BP. The bad news for Obama is that the tone has been lackluster, including in the speech. The good news is that, when we feel frustrated with him, there are far worse things from other players. You’ve got a Republican congressman apologizing to the head of BP. You’ve got the company saying another series of stupid stuff. So the good news from the White House point of view is let the others keep talking.

SCOTT: There was another moment this week where the president invoked 9/11 to compare to the gulf oil spill. He said, to Politico, “In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.”

Did the media buy into that comparison?

JUDY MILLER, WRITER & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, I think many, many commentators, Jon, were extremely critical of Mr. Obama for wrapping himself in full-metal jacket, for using those military metaphors in order to look tough. It didn’t fly. It didn’t play well. No one is convinced.

SCOTT: Is that what you get, Jim, when you hire a 27-year-old speech writer, chief speech writer?

(LAUGHTER)

JIM PINKERTON, FELLOW, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: A 27-year-old speech writer who has had several YouTube early moments, if anyone is curious, about him, what he thinks of Hillary Clinton or playing beer pong with his friends. Yes, there is — there’s much to be said for having Ted Sorenson or Arthur Schlesinger as opposed to this kid writing speeches.

What was most interesting to me about all — and speaking of the speech, was what Dan Froomkin, of the Huffington Post said — who is a fan of Obama — as is the entire Huffington Post, and said, the most depressing thing about this speech, to him, was that Obamans really believed internally that it would change everything. They called it an inflection point. They said it would change everything. And, in fact, as Froomkin said, it didn’t change a thing.

SAMMON: As Obama has done so often, he builds up his own expectations so high as to be unrealistic, and you can inevitably only fail to deliver that.

I think, as for this congressman that said — that he got in trouble because he said that the White House had done a shakedown of BP, well, yes, everybody’s going crazy, ripping on this guy. But you know, the New York Times had a front-page story talking about the raw arm twisting of Obama and the governmental overreach of Obama, and they dress it up in this intellectual sort of high-fluting prose, and sort of examined it as a power grab. And nobody bats an eye. But when some hapless congressman inelegantly phrases this, everybody goes nuts, including his fellow Republicans.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: He recanted his own apology.

SAMMON: I’m not — I’m not defending what he’s saying. I’m talking about the hypocrisy and the double standard.

HENICAN: And one of the biggest hits of the Obama administration is they’ve been too cozy and too agreeable with BP. My goodness, this is the most powerful person in Congress on Energy issues for the Republicans. And he makes the Obama people look like they’re swinging baseball bats at Hayward.

MILLER: Exactly.

PINKERTON: It was interesting, in a media-cycle environment, and it took about two hours before Boehner, Cantor, Pence, all denounced the guy, Congressman Barton, and they said they’ll strip him of his chairman — strip him of his ranking membership. I mean, the damage control the Republicans did on this was, I think, from a technique point of view, excellent.

HENICAN: And it’s still out there. They’re still talking about it.

MILLER: Because…

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: That’s because Obama…

PINKERTON: Not anymore. No, it’s not.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: Obama is rescued time and time again by the fact that the Republicans do not have a coherent message. That’s what saves Obama from the worst speech he’s given so far.

SAMMON: But, you know, there’s an eagerness, there’s an eagerness on the part of the press because they don’t like to blame Obama and are sort of tired of beating up on BP — how much more percentage is there in that — to see a Republican that could be a villain and over eagerness, this a-ha, some Republican said something dumb. Let’s make him the villain.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Plenty of villains here. It seems like there’s nobody liked — a Rasmussen poll, Ellis, asked, when they, the media, write or talk about President Barack Obama, what are reporters trying to do? According to results, 48 percent think most reporters are trying to help the president pass his agenda. 27 percent say most reporters are interested in reporting the news, in an unbiased manner. What do you think of those stats?

HENICAN: Well, I don’t know those numbers are so different from what we’ve seen for a long time. But let’s remember, one of the things that this last week does, is it undermines the argument going forward that outfits like MSNBC and Salon and some of the places that you guys love to bash, you know what, they slammed at that guy so hard. You can’t claim any of those folks are in the tank anymore the way…

(LAUGHTER)

PINKERTON: Ellis, did I hear you right, saying this is like nothing new? Because I don’t remember the media trying to help the Bush administration pass its agenda.

HENICAN: But clearly, notice the rhetoric in the last week from the so-called horrific liberal media. I mean, they’re not in the tank anymore.

PINKERTON: Well, there is an element to which they’re playing for the left as opposed to the Obama administration. They think that Obama is deviating from the left.

HENICAN: Sure. And…

PINKERTON: Walter Shapiro, who is a terrific guy, had a column where he said that Obama should be more like Jimmy Carter, and he meant it.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: And let’s understand though that Obama was never quite the extreme leftist that some folks were warning about.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: And that’s why he’d break hearts.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Time for a break.

But first, the discussions continue in here, onset, during the breaks, and interesting things are said when the cameras aren’t rolling. Catch what you don’t see on TV, www.FoxNews.com/FoxNewsWatch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYWARD: And the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico never should have happened, and I’m deeply sorry that it did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: BP heads facing the wrath of the president, Congress and the press. Will the hard hitting coverage sink the oil giant?

And a teen sailor shoves off for round-the-world adventure with little media attention, until it all went bad. Details next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN DINGELL, D-MICH.: Can you tell us how much money BP saved by not using the proper number of centralizers?

HAYWARD: I can’t recall that.

DINGELL: How much time was saved?

HAYWARD: I don’t recall that either, I’m afraid.

DINGELL: How much would this test have cost BP?

HAYWARD: I can’t recall that number, I’m afraid.

I can’t answer that question because I wasn’t there.

I’m afraid I can’t recall.

I’m afraid I don’t know that either.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Just a small sampling there of BP CEO Tony Hayward answering or not answering questions and facing pointed criticism from lawmakers looking for answers as to the Deepwater Horizon spill and its cause. Unfortunately, as most in the press noted, while saying he was deeply sorry for the devastation his company brought to the Gulf Coast, Hayward seems pretty clueless, when it came to providing answers.

He’s become, Ellis, the poster boy in the media for BP and the Gulf oil disaster. Are they right?

HENICAN: Exactly right. You can see why I think Barack Obama’s a stirring orator compared to Mr. “I do not recall.”

(LAUGHTER)

Listen, he’s got the most expensive P.R. representation in America. Why we can’t or someone can’t feed him some better lines than that, because, God, the sound is horrible, isn’t it?

SCOTT: There was a bit of U.S. versus Britain rhetoric going on in the media this week.

Headlines for you to consider, Bill, “BP’s toxic Tony, can’t we cap him,” that in the Los Angeles Times. And then from the U.K.’s Daily Mail, “The gushing geyser of Obama’s anti-British rhetoric that now urgently needs to be capped.”

SAMMON: Well, I mean, obviously, people in Great Britain are worried because, if Obama completely destroys BP, it’s not going to have any money to pay out to the pensioners. So there’s a lot of worry that the pensioners in England aren’t going to have pension payments.

Look, BP screwed up royally. There’s no question about it. And they deserve the lion’s share of the blame. OK, let’s be clear about that. Yet, there’s something too easy about villianizing big oil, which is already right out of mainstream media central casting for the villain, is big oil.

And yet, you have this chairman guy, from Sweden that came out the other day and said, we’re going to make it good for the small people. And everybody jumped on that and said, oh, he’s calling us small people. It was an idiom. If he’d said “the little guy,” no one would have batted an eye. But because he’s Swedish and doesn’t have the complete command of the idiom in the English language, the media took a cheap shot and said he was pulling a Leona Helmsley, you know, that only little people pay taxes, and just crucified him. So there’s a little bit of over eagerness to villianize BP

SCOTT: The president, Judy, criticized Tony Hayward, the CEO, to no end. Then, finally, they held had a meeting with him, it seemed, after he got all kinds of media pressure to do so. When they hold the meeting, they essentially give Tony Hayward the media equivalent of the perp walk into the White House.

(LAUGHTER)

In fact, did that work?

MILLER: Well, no. it worked in terms of BP coughing up $20 billion as a down payment in a fund that’s going to be administered, not by BP, but by an, “independent person” to settle claims. But I think, look, Obama is in an impossible position. He’s reliant on BP, no matter what happens, unless he takes over this crisis. And if he takes over the crisis, he’s totally responsible for it.

SCOTT: Well, he already said…

MILLER: He’s got no place to go with this. This is a losing issue for him.

SCOTT: Well, he’s already said publicly he’s responsible, right?

PINKERTON: Right, but the problem we face is the media sees this as a dramaturgy with Hayward and Svanberg and his people. And we all assess, quite rightly, the quality of their P.R. spin and things like that.

And Obama seems to have gotten elected and thinks he can govern just giving speeches with teleprompters and stuff, and nobody, either the media has the technical capacity to do what matters most, which is fill up this oil spill and then stop the next one from happening. That discussion is not of interest to the sort of theater critics in Washington and New York.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: But — but…

SAMMON: But as Jon said, Obama himself said, I’m in charge. I’m responsible. It’s clear to everybody that BP can’t get this thing stopped. They did the junk shot. They did the cap. Nothing has worked. And Obama has rightly said, I’m responsible, I’m the commander-in-chief. I’m going to get this thing…

(CROSSTALK)

SAMMON: And so he has — he does bear that responsibility.

(CROSSTALK)

HENICAN: Let me defend the concept of villianizing villains. These are the people who did it.

(LAUGHTER)

We don’t need to feel sorry for them.

(CROSSTALK)

HENICAN: …the blame.

SCOTT: All right, time for another break.

Coming up, a young girl sets sail into a sea of media controversy.

ANNOUNCER: Adventure on the high seas for a teen sailor takes a dangerous turn. Then the media pay attention.

And this guy gets on the ballot, then wins. Why was he such a surprise to the press? All next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCOTT: This is Alvin Greene. He could be the next U.S. Senator from South Carolina. He just won that state’s Democratic primary. His victory a surprise to his fellow Democrats and baffling to the press.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALVIN GREENE, D-S.C.: And they identify with me because I’m more in touch with the constituents of South Carolina than any of my opponents. I am — they relate to me and I relate to their struggles and their issues, you know, better than any of my opponents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: OK, Jim, here is a guy who got no attention from the press before the primary. And now he’s getting all of this attention. Why?

(LAUGHTER)

PINKERTON: Well, I mean, I think we’re now seeing what happens when most of the media kind of lays off their local political reporters. Zero people knew who this guy was. And they just saw his name on the ballot and they voted for him. And now we pay a price for that, as Americans.

SCOTT: Is this adding to the excitement, if you will over what’s going to happen in November?

SAMMON: Well, sure, but, you know, I look at how the media treats this guy. Whenever a Republican does something inflammatory or says something inflammatory, the press says, is this the face of the Republican Party. Sharron Angle, in Nevada; Dick Cheney; Rush Limbaugh, whenever they say something crazy, that’s the face of the Republican Party. When a Democrat is arrested on obscenity charges, it’s, well, he’s a Republican plant. Without a shred of evidence!

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Ellis wants to say something crazy, but we have to move on, Ellis. I’m sorry.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Moving on to a teen girl’s quest…

HENICAN: How do you know?

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: …for adventure and fame. It all ended in a sea of controversy and perhaps shame. Abby Sunderland, the California teen who wanted to a break the record and become the youngest person to sail around the world alone. Pretty much ignoring her quest in the media, that is, until she ran into trouble in the Indian Ocean and had to be rescued in an expensive operation paid for by the Australian government. And then we all learned that Abby and her parents had, at least discussed, what else, a TV deal. And she was supposed to appear in a reality show after she came home.

Surprise you, Ellis?

HENICAN: No, and the media handled it exactly right. It wasn’t a story when nothing happened. And then it got to be a pretty good story. And now it’s a fascinating, twisted media story. Yes, we should be covering it now.

SCOTT: So — all right, Judy, you’re shaking your head.

MILLER: Yes, and I want to see the story that explores whether or not it’s legally possible to take custody away from that father.

(LAUGHTER)

I haven’t seen it yet.

SAMMON: Aren’t 16-year-olds supposed to be in school?

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Well, I think they were all home schooled in that family.

All right, here’s something interesting. Did you know that YouTube is in the news business? YouTube, you know, the Internet site, famous for piano playing cats and other quirky videos, is testing a new feature called “News Feed, videos from both citizen journalists and professional news outlets, with 24 hours of video footage uploaded to the site every minute. There is also all kinds of news being reported or at least uploaded.

So is this the future of news gathering?

SAMMON: I think there’s some good stuff coming out of these kinds of things, although I see this project is being headed up by the Berkley Graduate School of Journalism. So I’m sure just as fair and balanced as the rest of the mainstream media in their story selection.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: Is there a slippery slope?

PINKERTON: There’s obviously an editorial issue there. But, look, they’re providing news from Kyrgyzstan, which is one of the most important stories that no reporter that I know of is covering because they can’t afford to anymore.

Yes. And the good news is that there’s some actual reporting on this sight. Most of what we see from so-called citizen journalists is a lot of people with uninformed opinions. And I say, go cover some stuff, guys. Maybe we’ll learn something.

MILLER: Yes, but if everybody is a journalist, then nobody ultimately is a journalist. And none of us will be covered by a shield law to help us to protect our sources if we go down this direction. So I find it worrisome. And also, potentially interesting, but worrisome.

SCOTT: Well, there’s also the possibility, obviously, of fakery. You can do an awful lot with an Apple laptop and a home video.

PINKERTON: That’s why you eventually have to turn it into brands. It’s got to be a trusted brand. So-and-so presents the news from X, and you trust them or don’t trust them. It has to be built up over time.

SCOTT: If you’re a congressman, you’ve got to look out. Everybody’s got a camera. There was a Democratic congressman walking down the street outside our Washington bureau the other day. A kid holds up a flip camera and asks an innocent question, and the guy grabs the kid by the back of the neck. And that got all over the YouTube. And now he has been forced to apologize. So you’ve got to watch. Everybody’s got a camera. Everybody could be a journalist.

SCOTT: All right, we have to take one more break.

When we come back, time to play musical chairs in the White House briefing room. One very special seat is up for grabs. When the music stops, who gets to sit there? That’s next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCOTT: Let the musical chairs begin. Journalist Helen Thomas resigned last week after some offensive comments about Jews in Israel. That leaves open a prominent space in the White House briefing room. And though her empty seat is cold for now, the battle for front-and-center is heating up. The hot seat up for grabs, leading contenders are Fox News, currently in the second row, and Bloomberg News, currently just to the left.

So let’s go to the Washington expert, Bill Sammon.

How does the process work? How do they pick?

SAMMON: I need the leg room. So I need to sit in the front — no.

(LAUGHTER)

I’m not going to advocate here on behalf Fox News, because I am doing that privately to the board. But I will tell you how the process works. The White House Correspondents Association board makes the decision. It’s not the White House. Robert Gibbs has nothing to do with it.

SCOTT: Who moves from up then from the second row or wherever?

SAMMON: That opens a whole can of dominoes, where…

SCOTT: So Ellis could get that seat.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: It is possible. It is possible.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: Keep hope alive.

SCOTT: Wow! Let’s start a letter writing campaign on your behalf.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: Thank you, Helen.

SCOTT: You heard it first here on “News Watch.”

(LAUGHTER)

That is a wrap on our program this week.

Thanks to Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Bill Sammon and Ellis Henican.

I’m Jon Scott. See you next week.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican

Ellis Henican is frequently a member of the ‘Fox News Watch’

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the June 12, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel discussed the media’s coverage of the BP Gulf Oil Spill and President Obama’s reaction.  Ellis felt that the press is “blaming Obama for something that they should be focusing on BP about” and also pointed out that we don’t want to see the President as a “steroidal maniac.”

Later when the panelists discussed White House correspondent Helen Thomas’ retirement, Ellis stated his hope that her coveted seat would be awarded to a reporter based on something other than the “opinions they may hold.”

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
“Fox News Watch,” June 12, 2010.

JON SCOTT, HOST: On “Fox News Watch,” it’s full spin ahead as the White House pumps it out for positive press and the president talks tough on TV.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: How did the media react?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HELEN THOMAS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Tell them to get out of Palestine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Controversial comments cause Helen Thomas to end her long reign at the White House, leaving a prized briefing room seat up for grabs. Which reporter should get it?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROD BLAGOJEVICH, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS: You and the media have been lied to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: The corruption trial for a defamed governor gets started. Has the media circus begun as well?
Did pressure from the press help pin a suspected killer to a murder?
Slipping and sliding with V.P. Biden. Which members of the media were part of the party?
On the panel this week, writers and Fox News contributor, Judy Miller; syndicated columnist, Cal Thomas; Jim Pinkerton, fellow, New America Foundation; and Newsday columnist, Ellis Henican.
I’m Jon Scott. “Fox News Watch” is on right now.
SCOTT: Oil continues to gush into the gulf this week as reports of progress were mixed. And images of the oil slick and dead birds kept the media’s attention. The White House ramped up its efforts to prove that Mr. Obama is fully engaged in stopping this thing, releasing pictures of his meetings and unleashing an angry President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Well, that sound bite from the media unleashed a torrent of media reaction.
Sum it up for us, Cal.
CAL THOMAS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: First of all, the president was set up to say this by Matt Lauer, who used the word butt-kicking. And the president took it to the next level.
SCOTT: And suggesting he didn’t think the president was sufficiently angry.
THOMAS: But the media is complicit in this. They’re the ones that built him into even a kryptonite defying superman. He was the man — he said it himself. Lower the waters and he could even walk on water, including in his — as far as many of the press were concerned.
(LAUGHTER)
But now, it appears that he’s mortal, like the rest of us, with the exception of Ellis here.
(LAUGHTER)
And all of a sudden, there’s buyers remorse that’s kicked in.
SCOTT: After the ass-kicking comments, let me read a couple of headlines. On Matt Drudge, he wrote, “Obama goes street, seeking ass to kick,” and Time magazine’s senior political reporter, Mark Halperin, called the headline racial. Was it?
(LAUGHTER)
JIM PINKERTON, FELLOW, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: I don’t think so. But I can see why, you know, Drudge picked the headline. And I can see why plenty in the media loved the idea of Obama as an African-American and they loved the street credibility. As I said in the show a couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher said he should pull out a gun. And Spike Lee and these kinds of people celebrate that aspect of Obama. And when he pulls it out, Drudge just simply took note of that.
SCOTT: There seems to be more media reaction to the president’s handling of the crisis. I think he got a pass in the early days, but is the White House working, do you think, to appear tougher?
(LAUGHTER)
JUDY MILLER, WRITER & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Message — we care. The president gets it. I mean, we all may be very sorry that we asked the White House and the president to show us that they cared, because now they’re doing nothing, but that.
But you know, the president’s anger seems to be as directed at the press and the media as it is at BP. No matter what he says, and the message somehow, is this really what this crisis is about, messaging? Or is it about the fact that he still isn’t doing the things that he could do to counter this crisis? And that the press doesn’t seem to pay much attention to.
SCOTT: Let me read you, Ellis, something that AP wrote. Ron Fournier, from the AP, Washington bureau chief, he wrote this about the Gulf oil spill. He said, “Nobody led, not the president of the United States, not the chief executive of BP, not Congress, federal agencies or local elected officials.” Are they just now figuring that out?
ELLIS HENICAN, COLUMNIST, NEWSDAY: Wait, no ass in the question?
SCOTT: No ass.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: I like when you talk dirty like that.
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: Listen, when it comes to symbols in P.R., tone maters. And the tone was wrong at the beginning. It was the no-drama Obama that so many Americans thought we wanted after the eight years of maybe a little too much drama. And now we’re getting the flip side of it.
SCOTT: So do you think he should jump up on a fire truck and grab a bull horn?
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: No. No. because I think it’s fake. I think what he needs to do — I think we got a pretty good read of it, which is a little flash of anger. But I don’t think we want this guy to pretend to be some kind of steroidal maniac. And it’s not productive and not who he is.
PINKERTON: I agree with Judy and Ellis both just said, which is, look, emotion doesn’t really matter. What matters is the technical competence of the government or BP to clean this stuff up. If we can drill that deep, we can clean up that deep. Nobody seems to be thinking about, well, what machines and technology do we need to solve this problem? Obama could be cool as a cumber or hot as hell, and it wouldn’t make a difference to the oil.
THOMAS: Even of greater significance, I think, is how the European media, especially the British media, are turning on a president that they admired during the campaign. You had on your show on Friday, Happening Now, James Harding, the editor of The Times of London, who said, the British people are angry the way that BP has been treated. They pointed out, over there, the huge, millions of pounds of money tied up in pension funds, and they don’t like the way that BP is being beaten up in the British press.
MILLER: Oh.
HENICAN: A hit for the home team.
MILLER: Yes.
HENICAN: And I know this is American sometimes, when we have international issues, we’re for the home team. There’s nothing unusual about that.
(CROSSTALK)
MILLER: Wait a minute, wait a minute.
(CROSSTALK)
PINKERTON: Cal, there’s a very high correlation between teams in the World Cup and who the folks…
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
HENICAN: …as they call it.
THOMAS: I hadn’t heard of that.
SCOTT: But is it being jingoistic, what Mr. Obama is saying?
MILLER: No, look, 40 percent of BP’s stock is owned by people in the United States so let’s not kid ourselves. These are huge international conglomerates that spend huge amounts of money. And that’s something that I wonder, where is the press when BP spends millions on these ridiculous ads in newspapers that also basically say, we care, we care.
PINKERTON: Where is the press? Taking the money.
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: No, no, no, no, so of the press, they’re blaming Obama for something at that they should be focusing on BP about.
SCOTT: And then there was this, Cal, Reverend Jesse Jackson was telling people they should boycott BP stations, which really isn’t going to hurt the BP corporation. It’s going to hurt the individual franchisees that own the stations. Should he just be ignored?
THOMAS: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: In a word?
THOMAS: In a word.
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: But you say that…
THOMAS: A long time ago. No I never ignore you, Ellis.
HENICAN: But you say that to everything.
THOMAS: He should have been ignored years ago. He has long outlived his sell-by date.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: All right, and when it comes to the meeting with Tony Hayward, the BP CEO, it seemed like Robert Gibbs, the presidential spokesman, sort of got badgered into it. He didn’t have an answer earlier in the week when asked whether Mr. Obama would meet with him. By the end of the week, it was all set up.
PINKERTON: The press figures this stuff out slow, as we agree. And then they say, why isn’t Obama being emotional. OK, so the White House in a meeting say, let’s get emotional. And the press figures he hasn’t met with BP: Let’s meet with BP. The Obama administration does not appear, I don’t think even Ellis will agree with this, to be ahead of the story.
HENICAN: Well, but…
SCOTT: So they’re being pushed into it by the media, pushed into their management of it?
HENICAN: A little bit. But let’s remember, the pageant doesn’t matter. What matters is turning off the oil.
THOMAS: Yes, absolutely.
HENICAN: And being aggressive. But yet, we’ve taken this role in the media and then we want to be drama critics — no, this didn’t happen quickly enough or he didn’t show emotion.
MILLER: That’s true.
PINKERTON: Right. But it’s bad enough to be drama critics, but it’s worse to be — let your script get written by the media.
THOMAS: That’s exactly right.
PINKERTON: And that’s what the White House is doing.
THOMAS: That’s what happens. The media is writing the script and then he doesn’t play to the script and then they criticize for him not playing to the script.
PINKERTON: If only the media would say…
HENICAN: Quit doing that.
(LAUGHTER)
PINKERTON: If only the media would say…
HENICAN: Quit doing that.
PINKERTON: If only the media would say, bring in the people who made “Ironman” and actually clean up the spill. Then Obama would do that.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: We’ll, we’ve brought in Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner is here.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Nothing succeeds like success.
It’s time for a break.
But first, we have some interesting chats here on the panel during the breaks, and you can catch what we don’t say on TV after the show at Foxnews.com/Foxnewswatch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
THOMAS: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Helen Thomas’ rein at the White House comes it an end after spewing her views about Israelis. Should her absence have come sooner? And now that her prize seat is open, who is going to get it? Details next, on “News Watch.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today. Any comments on Israel?
THOMAS: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.
REPORTER: Ooh. Any better comments?
(LAUGHTER)
THOMAS: Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland.
REPORTER: So where should they go? What should they do?
THOMAS: Go home.
REPORTER: Where is home?
THOMAS: Poland, Germany.
REPORTER: You think the Jews should just go back to Poland and Germany?
THOMAS: And America and everywhere else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: Well, those words from veteran journalist, Helen Thomas. The reaction to them caused her to call it quits. She retired, apparently ending the career she began as a copy girl in 1942. Thomas had covered the White House since John Kennedy was president, and because of her longevity, she held that prized front-row center seat in the White House briefing room. Her departure asks the question, which news organization will get that seat? We’ll get to that in a second, but first, her statements, your reaction.
MILLER: Well, you know, John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism advisor, can’t bring himself to say the word Jerusalem. He says Al Quds instead. So maybe Helen didn’t want to mention the word “Israel” and speaks about occupied Palestine.
Look, I think the L.A. Times got it right. It’s a sad finale to a career that was truly distinguished and trailblazing in many ways, but it should have ended. It was time.
SCOTT: She had a history of strong opinion, especially in the latter years.
THOMAS: OK.
SCOTT: Did you once, in your one of your columns, call her Mount St. Helen?
THOMAS: No, that was somebody else. I wish I had thought of it.
(LAUGHTER)
But look, this is part of the continuing debate between liberals and conservatives when it comes to the media. Do the personal biases of reporters and columnists enter into their reporting? This was an exposure on a scale of ten on a scale of one to ten that, of course, that it does. And it didn’t help with that video, the close-up of her features, which reminds me of the opening scene of Macbeth.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Yes, I thought I was looking at the “Blair Witch Project,” or something.
PINKERTON: Howard Kurtz reported that she said back in 1982, “Thank God for Hezbollah.” Now, I guess the rest of the Press Corps, which sort of enjoyed listening to her talk and trash, especially George W. Bush, just gave her a pass on that. Just kept that secret for almost 30 years, as she was rooting for the terrorists who were killing Americans.
THOMAS: And killing Jews.
HENICAN: Well, listen, very good argument for the 65-year-old retirement age.
(LAUGHTER)
Even the 75-year-old retirement age.
(LAUGHTER)
I mean, listen, you know, she’s a woman who had a great run, a great career, and has gotten to be an old coot at the end in saying all this stuff.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: She’s 90.
HENICAN: No, that’s — that’s — but you know, there’s one piece, even though, I think we all are happy to denounce what she said. There’s a little thing we need to be careful of though when the Correspondents Association and others get into the business of weighing the positions of people inside the Press Corps. I don’t think we want the White House doing that. And I don’t think we want our own brethren doing that.
SCOTT: You’re talking about the seating chart?
HENICAN: Yes, the seating chart, the question of whether…
MILLER: And who is suppose today seat them, Ellis?
HENICAN: No, but…
THOMAS: First come, first serve.
HENICAN: Granted, but seat them based on the media organizations they represent, on the work they do, not so much on the personal opinions that they may hold. Because tomorrow, guys, that’s going to turn on you all.
MILLER: I don’t think they did that. They — they…
HENICAN: They were revoking her seat and talking about pulling her out of that role in the White House.
MILLER: They’re just now considering whether or not an opinion journalist ought to be in the front row. And I think that’s appropriate for them to decide.
HENICAN: But let’s do it uniformly. Let’s do it uniformly.
SCOTT: A lot of viewers might be surprised to know that the White House does not do the seating chart. It is done by something called the White House Correspondents Association.
THOMAS: Right.
SCOTT: Which is, after all, a group of political reporters.
You’ve worked in the White House. Who gets the seat? I mean, how does that process work?
PINKERTON: It’s all politics, like everything else. The finalists appear to be Fox News and Bloomberg News and…
SCOTT: Fox is the only network that doesn’t have a correspondent in the front row. And Bloomberg…
PINKERTON: I’m rooting for Fox.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Bloomberg, the Financial Wire Service, or Financial Service, it doesn’t have a correspondent in the front row.
PINKERTON: You make a good case, Jon.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: Should we let ratings decide?
(LAUGHTER)
THOMAS: I think, with the exception of the hookups, because broadcasters have requirements that print and radio people even don’t have, television broadcasters, I think it ought to be open seating. It is on Southwest Airlines. That works out all right.
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: So you’d hire some kid to sit there from six in the morning to save our seat?
THOMAS: No, no.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
HENICAN: Is that where we’re going with this?
THOMAS: Look, that’s part of the elitism that people hate about the media, that you’ve got these prime seats reserved for the elite media. What is the — the elite media are down in market share. They’re down in circulation in their newspapers. Who’s got the audience? This network.
SCOTT: Well…
HENICAN: And I appreciate that you liked when the Huffington Post got that nice role.
THOMAS: Oh, yes. That’s dear to my heart.
(LAUGHTER)
HENICAN: Good. Good.
SCOTT: I’m pulling for my buddy, Major Garrett, to move up a row.
MILLER: Yes.
SCOTT: Time for another break.
If you come across a one-sided story that you think illustrates media bias, e-mail us at Newswatch@Foxnews.com.
Up next, the Blagojevich corruption trial begins and the media gives it center stage.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BLAGOJEVICH: It’s the beginning of a process to finally unlock the lock box that’s holding the truth in.
ANNOUNCER: The Rod Blagojevich trial begins and the Blago media circus takes the stage. What antics should we expect?
And the media’s mission to pin Van der Sloot for murder may see success. What role did the press play in the latest drama? All next, on “News Watch.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCOTT: Well, the media have been tracking him for five years, Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the disappearance of an American teenager, Natalee Holloway. He says he will tell authorities in Aruba where to find her remains, that according to police in Peru where he is accused of killing another young woman, Stephany Flores. Van der Sloot is currently in custody in Peru, held on murder charges.
He has been sort of the media’s favorite criminal suspect, uncharged criminal suspect. Did they — you know, did the media essentially build the case against him?
HENICAN: First of all, I’m not sure I’m going to go with “favorite” on that. It was a fascinating case down there. And the fact it was never able to be made, and everyone had great suspensions but we never quite had the proof to make the case. Listen, it was a compelling story and I think we covered it. There’s nothing to apologize for there.
THOMAS: Two things about this story. First of all, kudos to Greta Van Susteren, of this network, who has kept this story, and especially Van der Sloot, alive in the public consciousness for these several years. She’s done a tremendous job on that.
Secondly, look at the story itself, predatory, big male, preying on young innocent females. Let’s see, where else have I heard this? CSI, all of them. Every network show has the same theme. It plays into the desire by the advertisers to a female audience, so they can sell them more products. It’s something you see in entertainment. It is something you see in real life.
SCOTT: But wasn’t there the feeling that the media chose him as a villain because the media felt that he got off too easily when he was arrested those two times in Aruba before?
MILLER: I think I agree with Ellis on this one. It’s just a question of, this is where the trail of evidence was leading, and the only question is, and I’d like to see more reporting on this, why did it take so long to actually nail the guy. Why did another woman have to die? What happened in that investigation, other than Greta? And hats off to her.
THOMAS: Incompetent police in Aruba and…
MILLER: Absolutely. I want to see more about that and who was paid and what’s…
PINKERTON: At least one other woman, as Geraldo Rivera on this network suggested, there might well be more than just these two. What is also interesting, too, is everybody’s got videotape now. The Peruvian casino and the Peruvian hotel can give us the story of this guy’s life. There’s a new element in the media which is closer to television.
SCOTT: Let’s talk about another legal story now, this one, out of Chicago, the corruption trial of former Governor Rod Blagojevich and the media circus that surrounds him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BLAGOJEVICH: It’s very difficult when you’re falsely accused of things you didn’t do, when you’ve been lied about, when people have been lied to, and you, in the media, have been lied to. The government has hidden behind their lies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT: He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to profit from his power to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama once he was elected president, and accusations that Blago squeezed people for campaign contributions.
Judy, he has never met a camera he doesn’t like. Are the media rooting for him?
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: Look, I just — it’s a gift that keeps on going. I just don’t know how they’re going to find a jury of men and women who don’t have an opinion about Blago, because they’ve seen so much of him. You know, really, he’s compared himself to Nelson Mandela and even to Osama bin Laden. How good does it get?
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Have the media picked a villain in this case, Jim?
PINKERTON: I think the media are fascinated. I’d say this. In the week of Sestak and Romanoff and White House machinations, it’s a legitimate story. I think if you had to pick a story that’s going to grow and grow and grow over the next year, it’s this one.
HENICAN: Jim is exactly wrong about this one.
(LAUGHTER)
This guy is irrelevant. He’s a second-rate reality-TV star at this point. Maybe marginally more interesting than the hair-gel guy on “Jersey Shore.” Yesterday’s news, yesterday’s news.
PINKERTON: Did he talk — did he talk to Rahm Emanuel or not?
THOMAS: There you go.
HENICAN: I don’t know.
SCOTT: But it does seem to play on two levels, this story.
THOMAS: Yes. That’s right.
SCOTT: There’s the local Chicago story and the national story.
(CROSSTALK)
THOMAS: A political story.
Now, you said second rate. Remember, Nixon called Watergate a third-rate burglary. That’s how they all start.
HENICAN: No. We’re sticking on second rate.
SCOTT: It’s not the crime. It’s the cover up.
THOMAS: There you go.
SCOTT: All right, it’s time for one last break.
When we come back, some in the media hit the slippery slope of journalistic ethics. Wait until you see these pictures.
ANNOUNCER: And wet and wild time at the V.P.’s summerfest. Some in the media got to play, too. Should they have passed? That’s next, on “News Watch.”
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCOTT: Oh, summer just a few days away now. The warm weather already here, allowing the president’s man to take away from the daily drudgery of running the nation, and enjoy a backyard beach party at vice president’s mansion.
Joining the White House insiders; a few journalists and their families. CNN’s Ed Henry and Wolf Blitzer; The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, slipping with the vice on his bouncy castle water slide. Chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, there as well, frolicking with super soakers.
Now, we took note of it. It caught Jon Stewart’s attention as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JON STEWART, HOST, “THE DAILY SHOW”: So which reporters jumped at the chance to jump on Biden’s big bouncy castle? Well, for starters, there was David Sanger, of the New York Times, hanging with chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. There’s CNN’s Ed Henry and Wolf Blitzer with a couple of their best iReporters.
(LAUGHTER)
You’d think — you’d think, with all those reporters there, they’d have better video. But still, it’s fun to see politicians and the people we count on to hold them accountable super soaking each other.
(LAUGHTER)
Fighting over who gets to sit shotgun in the White House briefing room, jockeying for an invitation to bar-b-ques.
Are you journalists or are you rushing a sorority?
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: Nobody here on the panel got an invite. Appropriate?
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: So, I don’t know. I used to ride the metro liner with Joe Biden to see what he knew about intelligence. I don’t know if sliding down the slide and all that different.
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: All right, that’s it for this week.
Thanks to Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Cal Thomas and Ellis Henican.
I’m Jon Scott. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you back next week for another edition of “News Watch.”

(Saturday 2:30 and 11:30 PM on the Fox News Channel)

On the May 29, 2010 edition of Fox News Watch, the panel debated the media’s coverage of the Joe Sestak scandal.  Ellis argued that “this is standard practice in every single political juridiction”  and suggested that maybe we should “indict the entire political system.”

Later in the show he admitted that back home in Louisiana there is “an awful lot of anger” about the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

This is a transcript from “Fox News Watch,” May 29, 2010.

JON SCOTT, HOST: On “Fox News Watch,” as the oil disaster worsened in the gulf, the media step up their coverage and push for more action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Man, you got to get down here and get control of this. Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: The president finally comes face-to-face with the press.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWS CORRESPONDENT: How can you say that everything that can be done is being done, with all of these experts and all of these officials saying that’s not true?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Did the press push the president to prove he’s engaged?

 (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIR, ANCHOR, SPECIAL REPORT: Did the White House offer you a job to not get in the primary?

REP. JOE SESTAK, D-PA. & U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: And I answered that yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Felony or fib? Are the media digging for answers into Congressman Joe Sestak’s White House bribe story?

The New York Times reports on the military secrets in the Mideast. Was this good journalism or an anti-American act?

From high-priced prostitutes to prime time, is this defamed politician a desperate hire to bring ratings to one of these cable channels.

And new graduates want to be new journalists. Are they ready for the challenge?

On the panel this week, writer and Fox News contributor, Judy Miller; syndicated columnist, Cal Thomas; Jim Pinkerton, fellow, New America Foundation; and Newsday columnist, Ellis Henican.

I’m Jon Scott. “Fox News Watch” is on right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR, “GOOD MORNING AMERICA”: What more can the president do here. He didn’t — go ahead.

CARVILLE: George? George? The president of the United States could have come down here. He could have been involved with the families of the 11 people. He could have commandeered the things there. We could have sent the people. We could have sent the Scripps people, on research vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. He could have demanded a plan in anticipation to this.

Right, he can’t exactly fill the hole up. The — last night, I was on Larry King with the CEO of the — the former CEO of Shell. They said they’ve got 85 percent of the stuff cleaned up in the gulf in Saudi Arabia. He could be commandeering tankers and making B.P. bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be, with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard, with the people in Plaquemines Parish, doing something about these regulations.

And these people are crying. They’re begging for something down here. And it just looks likes he’s not involved in this. Man, you’ve got to get down here and take control. Put somebody in charge this have and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: That’s ABC News contributor and Democratic strategist, James Carville, sending a clear message to President Obama and his advisors earlier this week to try to take control of the Gulf oil spill disaster. Well, the message seemed to be received loud and clear. President Obama finally came face-to-face with the press in the first scheduled news conference in ten months, attempting to convince Americans he is not standing on the sidelines.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: My job is to get this fixed. And in case any of you wonders, in any of your reporting, in case you’re wondering who is responsible, I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away or the way I’d like it to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make mistakes. But there shouldn’t be any confusion here. The federal government is fully engaged and I’m fully engaged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Jim, the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is famous for saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Is it curious to you that in the middle of this oil crisis, all of a sudden, the president decides to hold this first news conference in ten months?

PINKERTON: And he said very explicitly, I’m holding this news conference to let everybody know that I’m holding this news conference. I mean, it — it was right up there with Bush 41 saying, message, I care, 20 years ago. Look, this is — including calling out the daughter for the little anecdote about, “Dad, you’re going to get this fixed, aren’t you”? It reminded me of Jimmy Carter citing his daughter in the 1980 presidential debate about nuclear war. It didn’t work out too well for Carter. We’ll see how it works out for Obama.

SCOTT: Ellis, you’re from the Gulf coast. You had to be right there with James Carville talking — you know, listening to the impassioned plea to his fellow Democratic, fellow Democrat president, get us some help down there.

ELLIS HENICAN, COLUMNIST, NEWSDAY: Yes, and I like the fact, Jon, that there’s finally someone on television who doesn’t have an accent.

(LAUGHTER)

There’s a lot of anger down there. Now, I don’t know that quite as much of it is directed at Barack Obama as maybe Jim would think. What I hear from my friends and relatives down there is an awful lot of anger at B.P. and some of the other companies. But the administration has clearly failed in a symbolic and a P.R. way. And those things matter in the political media.

SCOTT: So was the president ill advised, I guess, to go out in front of the media, Judy, and say, I’ll take responsibility, I’m going to —

JUDY MILLER, WRITER & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, it was very bold. It was the courageous thing to do, not to say mistakes have been made, but I am wrong, I made mistakes, I’m going to accept responsibility. The problem is that cool diffident style and the fact that he shows up so far into this crisis.

Charles Blow, with the New York Times, said a very interesting thing. He said, when you see the pictures of that planning group down — the emergency planning group down there on the coast, there’s not a single face that people know and recognize as being a political leader, and that’s the problem. They appear to have ignored it, even if there is a limited number of things they could have gotten.

SCOTT: Let’s listen to the president in that news conference, another piece of sound from him. He was responding to a question about whether or not this crisis is tantamount to his own version of Hurricane Katrina. Here is his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT: Can you respond to all the Katrina comparisons people are making about this with yourself?

OBAMA: Well, I’ll take your second question first. I’ll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons and make — and make judgments on it because — because what I’m spending my time thinking about is, how do we solve the problem. When the problem is solved and people look back and do an assessment of all the various decisions that were made, I think that people can make a historical judgment. And I’m…

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: All right, Cal, what do you think about that, historical judgment?

CAL THOMAS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Look, you don’t have to go back that far in history. If the mess would go back and reexamine what Senator Barack Obama said for George W. Bush during the Katrina thing, he was all over him and his failure to act supposedly more quickly with Katrina.

But here is where the bloom is off the rose, Jon. If you listen to the first clip from the press conference at the introduction of the program today, you’ll hear that one reporter, who got up and said to the president, how can you say that. The whole idea that Barack Obama may not be forthcoming is a new revelation to the media. And if this rose begins to wilt, as I see it, the media are going to be all over it.

PINKERTON: But it did take a long time.

THOMAS: A long time.

PINKERTON: As the Media Research Center pointed out, for the first month, we like six weeks into this thing now, but for the first month, the coverage, 95 percent of all the coverage on network news didn’t mention the Obama administration. It just treated it as Ellis would like it to, only BP, BP, BP, and not mentioning the failure of the cleanup operation. Now that’s changing, but only in the second month of the disaster.

HENICAN: But we’re still, on the coverage, lack of separation of two things that are very different from each other. The symbolic things that a president and political leaders at all levels need to do at time of disaster.

THOMAS: That’s what…

(CROSSTALK)

HENICAN: And — and the actual cleaning up. And I’m afraid, in some of the coverage, particularly on the conservatively slanted coverage, really has tried to merge those things unfairly together.

PINKERTON: And also missing is the technical issues of how do you clean this stuff up. All these investors and scientists have come forward and said, look, we’ve cleaned up something similar to this in another country. Why aren’t those people front and center?

THOMAS: Well, we have pictures of the president Friday picking up tar balls on the beach. What more can you ask for?

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: That was kind of an after odd picture. If you want to show a president who is engaged and involved and really, you know, driving this train, why do you put him in such a sort of a passive activity of picking up tar balls on the beach?

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: Well, what do you want him to do, don a wet suit and jump into the water and start…

(LAUGHTER)

Look, there may not be a lot he can do, but what about the disconnect in the press conference when he was asked about whether or not the head of the minerals agency was fired, and he says, well, I don’t know about that?

And this is a guy who supposedly is in charge of this crisis and he chooses not to tell us whether or not he fired the woman who was supposedly overseeing the oil industry that, of course, is regulated by the oil industry? This is a very sorry…

HENICAN: Yes, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t complain that he’s doing too few symbols and not enough P.R. stunts and then object when he’s bending over and picking up a tar ball. That’s not going to clean up anything, but aren’t those the kind of symbols that you guys have been demanding for the last month?

SCOTT: Well, whether this thing has been adequately covered in the press or not, it does seem to be taking a toll on the poll numbers. Americans were asked, how do they think Mr. Obama is doing compared with last month. CBS News shows his poll numbers are slightly down in a poll that they took. 47 percent approve of the job he’s doing. 43 percent disapprove. Last month, he was at 51 percent approval. 39 percent disapproval.

Time for a break.

But first, you can go to our website after the show and see and hear what happens on the set after the break. Go to Foxnews.com/Foxnewswatch.

And up next, why did former President Bill Clinton make a job offer to Congressman Joe Sestak? Is it the kind of thing that happens all time in Washington? And do the media care?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Did the White House offer you a job to not get in the primary?

SESTAK: And I answered that yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Accusations of a White House bribe raises some media attention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He never really explained what the conversation was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Is the press digging deeper or ready to sweep this away?

And the New York Times spills the beans on military ops in the Mideast. Has that put Americans in danger? Details next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SESTAK: I was asked a direct question yesterday and I answered it, answered it honestly. There’s nothing more to go into. I’m in this race now.

BAIER: Did the White House offer you a job to not get in the primary?

SESTAK: And I answered that yes. And I answered it honestly, but to go beyond that, Bret, doesn’t serve any purpose.

BAIER: Was it Navy secretary?

SESTAK: As I said, there’s nothing to be gained on focusing on this politics stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Last Tuesday, you told us — I don’t have the update with me on Sestak. But things have happened since then.

GIBBS: Yes, I don’t have, if any…

(CROSSTALK)

NEWS CORRESPONDENT: …letters the White House Council.

GIBBS: I don’t have anything additional on that.

NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Are you ever going to have anything additional on that?

GIBBS: I don’t have anything today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID GREGORY, MODERATOR, MEET THE PRESS: Yes or no, straight-forward question, were you offered a job and what was the job?

SESTAK: I was offered a job and I answered that.

BAIER: You said, no, you wouldn’t take the job. Was it secretary of the Navy?

(CROSSTALK)

BAIER: Was it the secretary of the Navy job?

SESTAK: Anything that goes beyond that is for others to talk about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GIBBS: I’m not a lawyer, but lawyers in the White House and others have looked into conversations that were had with Congressman Sestak, and nothing — nothing inappropriate happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Well, that is some flap erupted after Democratic Senate Nominee Joe Sestak, of Pennsylvania, claimed the White House wanted him to drop out for a race for a U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania. That race pitted him against fellow Democrat, Arlen Specter. And the Obama White House admits it did not want to see that contest take place. Sestak says he was offered another job, in essence, to get out of the race, an offer he turned down.

And the president responded to a question raised by Fox’s Major Garrett on Thursday about the job offer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I can assure the public that nothing improper took place. But as I said, there will be a response shortly on that issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: Well, shortly is right. The next day, on Friday, the White House counsel released a report revealing former President Bill Clinton spoke to Sestak about a possible unpaid job as a White House adviser. The White House also said the Navy secretary job was not the one that was proffered.

What are the questions the media should be asking here, Jim? You worked in the White House.

(LAUGHTER)

Is this the kind of stuff that happens all the time or is it going over the line?

JIM PINKERTON, FELLOW, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: I think this stuff does happen fairly often.

SCOTT: Shocking.

(LAUGHTER)

PINKERTON: Shocking, shocking, shocking.

What is rare though is that somebody who gets an offer like that goes public with it. Because it is, in fact, a felony.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: And I don’t think he intended to go public.

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT: And he just happened to mention — no, he just happened to — talking to Larry Cane, a legendary Pennsylvania news man, and he asked the question and he said yes. That’s all it was.

HENICAN: Jon, back when I was a reporter in Albany, New York, and Covington, Kentucky, and a few other places, I wish I knew this stuff was a crime. I would have won three or four Pulitzers by this time.

(LAUGHTER)

This is a standard practice in every single political jurisdiction in the world. Run for this, hang on, your time will come in four years. We’ll take care of you in the county clerk’s office. That’s politics.

PINKERTON: Ellis — right, it is politics, but it’s also felony. And it is — what is so interesting, with the exception of a few journalists, like Byron York, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, the mainstream media was uninterested in this felony. And I think it would have been different if it had been a Bush administration…

(CROSSTALK)

HENICAN: But, let’s indict — let’s indict every member of Congress and every state legislator and everyone else.

(CROSSTALK)

THOMAS: All different scandals begin with, I did not have — it was not — it was not inappropriate, and it was a third-rate burglary. They all start that way.

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: You know, but this is an inside-the-beltway felony. This is the kind of thing that politicians themselves care deeply about and, yes, it’s the law, but with everything going on in this country, this week…

THOMAS: Like immigration, who cares what the law is.

MILLER: Please, please, please, let’s get a grip. It’s not an impeachable offense.

SCOTT: And is anyone on the panel surprised that Bill Clinton is somehow involved?

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, here we have six degrees of separation.

PINKERTON: The original question about this, three is about a hundred million questions to come out of it. All these timelines and so on. And again, Bill Clinton is a legendary Democratic politico. He’s something of a magnet for curiosity and scandal.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: And his credibility as to exactly what happened, shall we say, is not completely perfect.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: But if we were genuinely outraged at this, and I don’t know really, but if we were genuinely, let’s broaden it and let’s indict the entire political system.

THOMAS: If that’s the only way we can get term limits, I’m for it.

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: But do you think that the — you think the media ought to just drop this, Ellis?

HENICAN: Pursue it, it’s a fine story. Go get him. He’s running for office. Everything is fair game. His opponent’s hitting, he should hit back.

PINKERTON: But, Ellis, don’t you think that the media would have been much more eager to pursue this if it was the Bush administration? Admit it.

HENICAN: It…

(CROSSTALK)

THOMAS: Come on, admit it. It’s just between us.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: It ain’t — it ain’t — it ain’t that great to start with him. Boy, I remember some county executives back in Kentucky that I could go after.

THOMAS: Oh, yes, but they’re not the president.

MILLER: I think that having Bill Clinton involved gives it, if we can use the term, a little sex appeal.

THOMAS: That’s good.

SCOTT: And you might hear Ellis’ admission during the break, Foxnews.com/foxnewswatch.

(LAUGHTER)

We’ll see what he has to say.

Time for another break.

Up next, a disgraced politician lost, or is caught, I should say, breaking some of the very laws he was supposed to enforce, paying prostitutes to sleep with him. Cost him his governor’s job. Should that disqualify him from a new post as a cable TV host? At least one channel seems to want him.

ANNOUNCER: Defamed New York Governor Eliot Spitzer moving from his prostitution ring scandal to prime time, but who wants him?

And the New York Times reveals a U.S. military plan in the Mideast. Whose side are they on? All next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCOTT: The New York Times published an article on Tuesday, saying the head of U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, had signed a secret directive last September authorizing U.S. Special Operations troops to be sent to both friendly and hostile nations in the Mideast. The question, should that article have been published at all.

Judy, you worked at the New York Times. Explain to us a little bit about what happened here? That report was leaked for a reason. Somebody had an agenda? What do you think it was?

MILLER: It’s always hard to figure out what the motive is. Usually, when it’s an order that’s leaked of this nature, it’s because one intelligence agency is angry at another. And because this empowers the Pentagon to do what the CIA normally does, the normal assumption that people made was, well, the CIA is angry. But the story that Mark Mazzetti wrote said, no, actually, the CIA is not angry. They’re perfectly happy with this, which raises a bunch of other questions about the impact of this on our friendly countries, like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, where we’re going to be doing the spying. About whether or not the spies, what kind of punishment they can receive, if they’re caught. And whether or not the CIA or anyone tried to stop this story by going to the New York Times and saying, please don’t publish this, because it could jeopardize national security.

THOMAS: Now, that’s what I want to know.

MILLER: We need to know the answers to those questions.

THOMAS: Yes, that’s what I want to know. Who does it benefit? It can only benefit the terrorists. I mean, this is just — this is unbelievable in the middle of a war. And not just the New York Times. The Washington Post, according to News Busters, is guilty of this. This Yemeni cleric, who was an influence of the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, the Ft. Hood shooter has said that a Washington Post story, revealing how he was being tracked, caused him to change his behavior. At some point, you’ve got to ask, who side is the media on.

SCOTT: So, should the Times have published this thing if they got the memo dropped in their lap?

PINKERTON: Well, I think the granddaddy of all the stories was the 2005 revelation that the Bush administration was using surveillance on telephones. Which was quite a scandal. And Gabriel Schoenfeld, of commentary, wrote a whole book in which he said the New York Times had violated the Espionage Act of 1917.

This thing, the incident seems more perhaps, perhaps, benign to me. It could be that probably, you know, Petraeus leaked it himself.

(LAUGHTER)

HENICAN: And let’s give Mazzetti credit. I mean, the story turns out to be right, so far, at least. Nobody is raising — outside of this table, nobody is raising objections to it. And you know what, we do have a right to know what’s being done in our name in hostile and friendly foreign countries.

MILLER: I’m not raising objections. I’m simply saying it raises questions that the media need to address.

HENICAN: They’re complex issues that need to be addressed.

MILLER: And they’re complex issues.

HENICAN: But I don’t think we have any indications that this is causing any particular damage.

MILLER: No. No.

THOMAS: This didn’t happen during World War II. We didn’t print our strategies against Hitler and Japan.

HENICAN: It’s a more open world today, a more open world.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: Only The Nation magazine has called for congressional investigations immediately into this, “power grab by Petraeus.” nobody else is outraged or seems to be.

SCOTT: All right, let’s move on to the next big cable news star, or maybe not.

(LAUGHTER)

Ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in 2008 in complete disgrace after being caught in a prostitution scandal, well, he’s been rethinking his career. Spitzer has been making guest appearances on some cable networks. Is he host material for CNN?

Would people watch that, Jim?

(LAUGHTER)

PINKERTON: I don’t think — you know, like the cliche about certain hosts is they’re train wrecks waiting to happen. You can’t wait to see what they do next in terms of meltdown or blow up or, in Spitzer’s case, who knows what? It’s desperation, but maybe they’re in that situation now.

HENICAN: That is a terrible idea. Ashley Dupre should be getting her own show on CNN.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMAS: Have her be the co-host.

HENICAN: Do you know who she is, Cal?

THOMAS: Absolutely. Yes, thank you.

SCOTT: Well, she actually is a columnist for the New York Post, and her 15 minutes have been extended at least by an hour.

THOMAS: Clearly, CNN is going after the adultery demographic.

MILLER: Now that they’ve lost Lou Dobbs, they need something, someone.

HENICAN: Some more sexy people?

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: Someone who is going to get people to watch, because they’ve lost half their audience in the past two years. If I were CNN, I’d be worried, too.

SCOTT: Eliot Spitzer, cable host.

We have to take one more break.

When we come back, are new graduates ready for a career as journalists in this new media era?

ANNOUNCER: Want to be a modern journalist? Got what it takes? Find out next, on “News Watch.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCOTT: It is graduation time. Thousands of fresh, young faces looking to break into this coveted field of journalism, full of glamour and reward.

Right, Cal?

THOMAS: Absolutely.

SCOTT: So what skills should the new journalism graduate possess to beat out the competition? In 1969, English writer, Nicholas Tomalin wrote, “The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.”

In this era of new media, a few more qualities might be useful — good camera skills; knowledge of Quark, Excel, World, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro; ability to work between a MAC and PC; copies of Rosetta Stone; know what CMS means. That’s content management system. Be grammatically correct without using an AP stylebook, dictionary or thesaurus; and willing to work 24/7, including holidays; also, the ability to operate a copy maker. Of course, good news judgment doesn’t hurt either.

That is a wrap on “News Watch” for this week.

Thanks Judy Miller, Jim Pinkerton, Cal Thomas and Ellis Henican.

I’m Jon Scott. See you next week.

E-mail ellis@henican.com. Follow him at twitter.com/henican