Nobody gets easier treatment from the liberal media than....the liberal media. CBS, which sees itself as a Watergate legend, is automatically going to honor The Washington Post as a fellow Watergate legend...and they'll show movie clips to glamorize it. A clip from All The President's Men is mandatory.
On Sunday Morning, CBS reporter Robert Costa tossed a bucket of softballs at an old boss of his, former Executive Editor Martin Baron, who was selling his new liberal-pleasing book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post.
It all led off with a movie clip -- from the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight, where Baron and The Boston Globe eviscerated the local Catholic diocese on sexually abusive priests early in the 2000s. Liev Schreiber played Baron, rallying his reporters to go after the "institution," not individuals.
WashPost’s @CostaReports: “What did that searing experience of covering the Catholic church in Boston do to inform you when it came time to cover Trump?” Marty Baron: “Well, it informed me that we always have to confront power, we always have to hold power to account.” @CBSSunday pic.twitter.com/khcrrmzgEC
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 (@BrentHBaker) October 1, 2023
"Always"? Not when it's Democrats. Don't ask Baron how brutal they were on Ted Kennedy or John Kerry.
Costa wasn't going to ask Baron how he and the Post performed on, say, the Hunter Biden laptop. Did they hold Joe Biden to account before the 2020 election? Or course not. The New York Post did that, and the Washington Post wouldn't get around to admitting it was real until 2022. Baron left in 2021.
One juicy unknown detail in the new book is that Trump met with Bezos and Baron and other Post leaders in June 2017 at the National Press Club to complain about the paper's coverage. Baron claimed "he was trying to be charming, but I felt that it was a superficial charm. I felt that he would use the occasion to lean on Bezos. That was my fear all along." Obviously, nothing notable changed in the Post's crusading Democrat style.
Costa played up all the usual blather about how Baron's motto was "We're not at war, we're at work." Baron trashed the rest of the media for giving Trump a platform for his rallies, "no commentary in between, no contradiction of the falsehoods and lies that he was saying during those rallies. That was a real mistake. It was free advertising for -- it was free advertising for Trump."
ROBERT COSTA: Once Trump won the presidency, Baron`s message to the newsroom was, "We`re not at war; we`re at work."Trump didn`t buy it, and began to call Baron to lash out. [To Baron] I keep coming back in your book to that final conversation you have on the phone with then-President Trump.
MARTY BARON: He was very critical of our coverage. And he said, "You`re doing this because of Amazon. You`re doing this because of Bezos." So, I told him that it was just completely false. I said, "It`s false and you know it`s false." And, well, then he broke out on a bunch of profanities.
COSTA: He shouted at you.
BARON: He shouted at me. He used profanities.
COSTA: He said to you, in one of his final phrases, "Everything The Post is doing is a big, fat lie."
BARON: Right. Yeah. That`s true. That`s what he said. And, of course, that, too, is not true. We were doing our job honestly and honorably. We had an absolute obligation to hold politicians to account, including the president of the United States. It`s our highest obligation.
Again, point and laugh at the man who implies they're nonpartisan with their Accountability Machine. Costa had no time for say, Russian collusion and the Steele dossier. The segment ended with more posturing about how journalists should cover the 2024 presidential campaign:
BARON: We should talk to everybody. We should listen to all people. We should be generous in listening to them, hear everything they have to say. We should look at all of the evidence, and do a rigorous job of reporting, and then tell people what we`ve actually learned. Fairness also means being fair to the public. And that means telling them what we have found to be true.
Cut to commercial. But wait, this segment was a commercial. You can't really tell the difference.
