A true "watchdog press would be all over" President Obama's "moving the goalposts" on the federal budget, NewsBusters senior editor Rich Noyes told Fox Business Network's Stuart Varney on Monday's Varney & Co.
Instead, the media are falling down on the job, failing to note how the president has broken promise after promise on federal spending, both from his 2008 campaign and subsequently as president:
STUART VARNEY, host: Are you saying that the establishment media is just ignoring the debt and what the President and Speaker Boehner have to say about it? To me and our viewers, this debt s a huge problem? It's a crisis that's coming at some point, we know it's coming. Are you saying that the media are just flat-out ignoring this thing?
RICH NOYES: Well, pretty much. ABC covered it because they had the interview with the president, and so it was included in the snippets they showed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. But then, no comment Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. CBS and NBC didn't touch it at all on those days. It got some traction on the Sunday political junkie shows including Speaker Boehner's response. The Speaker said we may have one or two or three years, but we should act.
The president has seemed to suggest this is a problem that's already pretty much solved. We're sustainable for the next ten years. I'm not sure how many people would agree with that. This would be highly controversial for a Republican president said something like that. You know, a problem that everyone seems to admit we have. Eighty-three percent of the public says we have a spending crisis. The Republican president said, no, we don't, it would be huge news. They'd ask where his mind was at. This president, a Democratic president says that, and it's not news.
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NOYES: The media have given this president a pass on the debt for years. In 2008, he said George Bush's deficits were unpatriotic, they were a fraction of what these are. In 2009, he said he'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. That promise was essentially ignored in 2012 when he ran for reelection, and it failed to do that. It was mentioned one time in the three evening newscasts all year. And then in 2012, he told MSNBC that cutting, taking care of the deficit would be his first order of business. This week, or last week he said, no, it's something we're not going to get a balanced budget for the sake of balance, and we're sustainable for the next 10 years. I think he is clearly moving the goalposts. A watchdog press would be all over this, but this press seems to be ignoring it.
