Fox News Watch Slams Mainstream Media ‘Hypocrisy’ On Rand Paul’s Filibuster, Obama’s Drone Program
Jon Scott and his Fox News Watch guests delved into the media reaction to Sen. Rand Paul‘s filibuster Saturday afternoon, arguing that if it had been a Democratic senator standing up to President George W. Bush, the press would not have dismissed Paul so easily.
Contributor Judith Miller, who said she’s “not opposed” to the drone program, still wanted to know why more Americans “standing up there with Rand Paul asking these questions.”
National Review editor Rich Lowry said that that coverage of Paul has been “generally sympathetic,” but he did fault the media for not going after the Obama administration harder. Referring to the author of the Justice Department’s memo justifying killing Americans abroad, Lowry said “if he or she were in the Bush administration they would be hunted down as a war criminal. But you don’t see that reaction whatsoever.”
Jon Scott added that we saw the media “erupt over Abu Ghraib and electronic spying,” but when it comes to killing Americans with drones, there “didn’t seem to be much fuss.”
And Fox contributor Kirsten Powers piled on the “hypocrisy” theme, asking why the media seems to be satisfied with Attorney General Eric Holder‘s extremely concise letter to Rand Paul, but hammered Scooter Libby on leaks from the “imperial” Bush White House.
Finally, conservative columnist Jim Pinkerton name-dropped Mediaite’s own Noah Rothman, who recently wrote a column titled “Rand Paul Shatters Democratic Monopoly On Romance And Captures The Hearts Of The Young Voter.” According to Pinkerton, “that’s a message the mainstream media does not want to repeat.”
While it may be true that some media outlets are not covering Paul’s filibuster as enthusiastically as they would had he been a Democrat standing up to President Bush, at least a few members of “mainstream media” over at MSNBC have been hitting the Obama administration from the left on the drone program. Chris Hayes, went after the drones memos early last month for rationalizing a “permanent state of war,” and Rachel Maddow grilled former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs on the secrecy surrounding the program last week.
Watch video below, via Fox News:
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