>> it's time now for hits and misses of the week. colin, first to you. >> paul, this is a hit to veteran washington post journalist bob woodward for basically standing up to the obama administration this week. you know, mr. woodward basically has criticized the white house for trying to blame the budget stalemate on republicans and saying they were jeopardizing national security. he says the kind of behavior he would seek from the administration is madness and he hadn't seen anything like it in a while and he should know since he covered president nixon. so this is a hit to him for refusing to be bullied. >> paul: he's being excommunicated from the beltway press corps. all right, joe. >> paul, you remember dennis rodman, former basketball star, cross-dresser, used to date celebrities and now he's taken up with little kim, a miss this week for rodman who is in north korea, amid the

gulags called kim jong uchn a friend for life. i think there's a reason they called him "the worm." . >> i can't top that. and to johnny manziel and they've created what is the most popular online video among the teenagers in my neighborhood. basically a good clean fun where they're throwing footballs from the top of the a & m football stadium and going through basketball hoops. and there's so much garbage on the internet i want to applaud these guys for creating nice entertainment. >> paul: you're letting your boys watch it. >>, yeah, not a lot out there. >> paul: if you have your own hit or miss, please send to jer@foxnews.com, and on twitter. and that's it for the show, thanks to my panel and all of

you watching. i'm paul gigot, we hope to see you here next week. >> jon: a jam-packed week of news. >> this is going to be a hit on the economy. >> jon: the president takes the sequester doom and gloom show on the road and playing the same old tune for the people as the press. a media icon called mr. obama shall the sequestration source and gets pummelled by his so-called liberal media pals. pope benedict is pope no more. abc news edits out the first lady's error on guns. a former obama spin man admits to misleading the press. the one year anniversary of the trevayvon martin shooting gives the media another shot at the shooter. and one admits to a bias in his work, which story made our list now on fox news watch. on the panel this week, writer and fox news contributor judy miller, syndicated columnist

cal thomas, jim pinkerton contributing editor the american conservative magazine, and ellen ratner, bureau chief of talk radio news service, i'm jon scott. fox news watch is on right now. president obama on friday, a surprise appearance in front of the white house press corps, after his meeting with congressional leaders over the sequestration. it ended a week of more doom and gloom forecasts. mr. obama claims will be a result of the automatic spending cuts, the theme parroted by the press, members of congress and members of the president's cabinet. >> well, some of this stuff happens earlier, some happens this fall and what it does, it creates tremendous instability and there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, notices that can't come back this fall. >> jon: well, that statement was totally wrong. in fact, "the washington post"

gave the education secretary four pinochios for the phony claim. jim, the media has been pushing the doom and gloom theme all week. we heard about, let's see, obamageddon and barack-alypse. and friday came and went and the world is still turning. >> actually i think the white house had the template of the 1995-96 shutdown with gingrich and president clinton back then and they might have kind of gotten ahead of their skis in terms of pushing out arne duncan education secretary, and janet napolitano and letting the prisoners go and so on like that. but i believe the alternative media, conservative media did a pretty good job setting it up. jim garrity national review writes a thing, and this thing will be 2% shorter because of this and then proceeded to under hashtag sequester tales,

funny tweets including one from jonah goldberg, joking, it wasn't until i ate my neighbor's pancreas that the-- >> is that why the president decided to appear before the press corps. i think so, when the white house calls this the media treatment of this the fiscal equivalent of clubbing a baby seal, you know you've perhaps a bit of -- a lot of as president, he has basically said i'm going to blame the republicans for this and they are going to take the political heat and that's going to help me in 2014. i think what i haven't seen enough of is media writing about the political repercussions of this. we know about the fiscal repercussions and not who is going to win and lose. >> peggy noonan wrote in the wall street journal that the president, whom you adore, is taking a real risk here, that

this thing is going to blow back on him, despite his attempts to-- >> i think he's taking a risk and i think actually what went around the talk media circuit as well as some of the conservatives, is that he was -- he was for the sequestration before he was against it. was sort of the l that i heard repeated throughout the week through soch some of the, as jim says, alternative media. >> he said talking to our television audience let me explain what the continuing resolution is. he clearly new he had the megaphone. >> he did, but if you listened to some of the questions, some of the typical sick could ycoph questions. >> and mr. president why can't you invite the republicans down and put them in the room and win this issue, what is that. >> he says well i'm not a dictator. well, he's certainly behaving like one. the media continue to be in the tank and as richard benedetto wrote, a white house correspondent for usa today,

the media megaphone distorts the budget cut battle. they won't get into the specifics of what is being reduced in the level of spending. they only get into the battle. that's what they're more interested in. >> most of-- most of the real careful an analysis was from like national journal, but only on their paid content. so if you wanted something that was a little more in depth, you had to pay for the content. >> there was the blame game amplyfied this week when bob woodward, the famous journalist who was involved in uncovering the watergate scandal, wrote a column last week claiming that the sequestration plan was the president's, charging that the president actually moved the goal post in asking for more revenue as part of the sequestration. now, that article led to call by the president's economic czar, gene sperling, first screaming at woodward and then sending an e-mail apologizing for the warning, i think you

will regret staking out that claim. woodward talked about it earlier this week. >> the problem i have with the gene sperling memo and e-mail, and this comes after a shouting match. now, lots of people shout at me, and he says i'm going to regret, you know, that's -- that's -- that goes into the coded, you know, you better watch out. the problem is, there are all kinds of reporters who are much less experienced, who are younger, and if they're going to get roughed up in this way and i'm flooded with e-mails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the white house works. they try to control and they don't want to be challenged for crossed. >> jon: fair to say, jim,

every white house tries to control, and if someone is working on a piece they don't like, they pummel the messenger. >> i worked in two white house and i've heard pretty big screaming matches with reporters and you know, gene sperling is not an aggressive, nasty guy at all. what -- but woodward obviously referring to was the way the media react today him. it wasn't the white house reaction, it was the media reaction. john nolte at breitbart did a long list of new york times, politico, cnbc, slate, gawker, andrew sullivan wrote a headline bob woodward quote, did he m demonstratable liar. >> and when he said he interpreted the white house words as a threat, it's whether he was write when he reported that the president isn't telling the truth about his role in the sequester and behaving badly as his national

on the national security show. america is still waiting for the white house press corps to take up that story. >> right, the well, the issue whether or not woodward was right, inserting that tax revenues were never on the part of the original sequester, is really very, very important. and we've seen all too little discussion of that in the media and much too much about whether or not the threat was a kind of karl rovion you're going to be story because you're wrong or whether or not it was a, here is a horse head in the bed kind of threat, as in a joe pesci movie. that's what the press focused on not what was actually said. >> jon: and next, controversy over an edit at abc. >> michelle obama pushes gun control in an interview on abc delivering wrong facts. but abc rescued her image by editing out the error. is that good journalism? find out next on news watch.

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>> she was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grew up, where our house is, and she was caught in the line of fire. i just don't want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. i want them to know that we put them first. >> jon: first lady, michelle obama, discussing the need for new gun control, as she sees it, during the interview on good morning america this week, however, that clip was edited. here is what she actually said. >> she was standing out there in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grew up, where our house is. sheet just taken a chemistry test. and she was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn't need. i just don't want to keep disappointing kids in this country. i want them to know that we put them first. yes, the mention of automatic

weapons was cut out of the clip that aired. automatic weapons were not used. they are and always have been illegal. abc claims the edit was made for time. so, does that pass the smell test, ellen? >> well, it does and it doesn't. first of all, abc should have never claimed it was done for time, but we have all made mistakes on the air, doing either live reads or giving opinions or whatever and all of us have, if we've been in charge of our editing before the piece goes on the air, we edit it out. i don't have a problem with that. i have a problem with abc saying it was cut for time. >> jon: would they have done the same thing if would have been laura bush? >> of course not. >> they should. >> this is apparently a virus going through the networks. nbc and msnbc edited a tape in the case of john mccain look good or a democrat look good. editorial decision based on a political point of view and

that makes it outrageous and in violation of whatever journalistic ethics that remain. >> jon: and abc did put the actual text on the news website, but that doesn't exactly have the same impact. >> this doesn't. it's a close call and left it in, half the people said, oh, had an automatic weapon and we should be banning those like the president says. sort of like 60 minutes with the tape of the president on the benghazi going back a few months where they did it on one version on the air and another version on the website. and scott whitlock of media research pointed out. 8 1/2 minute cycle. ellen was right, it's liquidation to call it a time choice. it's not noticeable, however, just to clean up the show and if they had to do a correction saying automatic weapons and didn't mean it. i don't blame them for leaving it out on the air. >> jon: and she also appeared on the oscar naming the best

picture winner, and opening the envelope. critics claim it was wrong and illustrates this coziness between hollywood and the white house. your take, judy. >> i agree with the boston globe, it demonstrated a kind of tone deafness on the part of the white house. this is a woman who doesn't not lack for air time, face time with the american people on air and the fact that she was quote, promoting the white house's care about the arts. and that just doesn't muster and i particularly dislike the use of soldiers as props in the background. if she wants to give them the envelope to open, at least they'd have a speaking part. >> would we have had a hollywood person announcing the election results? it just didn't work. >> i think it simply ratifies the synergistic relationship between hollywood and the washington, they're both phony entities. >> and it would be difficult a thrill of a lifetime for the military aides to in effect wave to their families and i

don't think it was that bad. >> you're going soft, jim. >> listen, i'm an obama-- i'm an obama person and i don't think it was appropriate. so what can i say? >> there were some who thought it looked a little creepy. >> i mean, they're handsome people and look nice in their uniforms and sort of-- i mean, i-- >> she was rattled enough. >> there's an adversarial culture to say whatever the obama administration does it's bad and sometimes troops on the air not a crime. >> i don't have a problem with the troops. do we have the first lady of the united states announcing the oscars, or an actor announcing the election. >> i think it's all phony. >> jon: all right, next on news watch, a former white house spokesman reveals a secret. >> former obama spokesman gibbs gives it up, admitting he was told not to talk about our drone program, ordered not to tell the press or the

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>> when i went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the things, one of the first things they told me was, you're not even to acknowledge the drone program. air not even to discuss that it exists. >> jon: well, that's robert gibbs, a former white house press secretary who now works for msnbc, telling the world that he was instructed to dodge questions from reporters about the drone program. the program that allows the president to kill enemies of america that he deems are combatan combatants, so the question here, anybody here surprised at his admission?

>> very. >> jon: you are? >> and i'll tell you why, did he-- people told me when he left the white house he was very, he very close to the president. is this a scott mcclellan former secretary to president bush reveal all. is there something going on about the relationship that we don't know about? >> this was the man the first press spokesman for the most transparent administration in history, jim. >> right, it's interesting to see the reaction to it beyond a few, you know, clucks here and there, but i remember my former colleague in the reagan administration larry speaks, who resigned from the white house in good graces in 1987 went to a big job at merrill-lynch up at wall street and then wrote a book the following here 1988 says he fabricated the grand total of two quotes. and no one knew he was going to publish the book and fired within a week of his big job on wall street because of two quotes. seems as if robert gibbs was

at least fabricating the truth for lack of a better phrase, for two years. >> i don't think he was fabricating, he just didn't tell all the truth. maybe they were saving the-- >> now he gave it away now by saying he was told not to do it. >> maybe they were saving the secrets to be leaked to the new york times or wikileaks. >> well, the issue is now they tell us. now he tells us that he's gone over to the other side, i'm not going to call it the dark side, but you kn, this is a guy who's joined msnbc and he wants to make some news and demonstrate his distance from the white house, so the way you do this is to say something that was obvious, that is that he was not going to talk about it. >> what is the benefit of him saying that? i mean, msnbc is still going to employ him no matter what. i don't understand, there must be something going on which i don't think the press explored about his relationship with this white house or i don't think he would have said it. >> there's no benefit to this white house if you're trying to portray yourself as the

most open and transparent in history. we have to move on. patrick packston is the now former ombudsman for "the washington post." he delivered his final column, taking on a readers concern that the post has a strong pro gay bias. and he used access for the mail, and minimized the conservative view and unnamed reporter at the post, the reporter, the reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it's a civil rights issue of our time. journalism at its core is about justice and fairness and that's the view of the world that we espouse. therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that's still in the treated equally under the the law. the readers writes, contrary to what you say the mission of journalism is not justice, defining justice is a political matter not journalistic. journalism should be about accuracy and fairness and good journalism also means not

demeaning conservatives as haters. what do you think about those points? >> that was a pretty good discussion back and forth and i think you've got a window into the soul of much of the mainstream media that says our purpose here is not so much the truth as justice and fairness, a distinction to be made and this report-- this reader who ought to be a reporter, too, of course never get an offer, called it the way the first amendment intended which is to tell the truth. >> can you have justice and fairness without truth? >> well, it helps when they go together. look, i thought that the exchange was illuminating for the reasons that jim said, but also because i think it's good when a reporter gets a chance to express what motivates and what motive him or her, to talk about their reporting. readsers know there's an agenda there, but they want to know what it is. >> jon: ellen. >> depends where you come down on this and i think this is a civil rights issue of our time. in the 1960's we wouldn't put the other side in "the

washington post," not me, i wasn't hired by them, but is there another side to this? i'm not sure there is. >> well, african-americans including among the preachers recent this being compared to a civil rights issue and i think the ombudsman was absolutely correct. there is another point of view and it doesn't get the kind of fairness it deserves. >> jon: next on news watch. one last shot at the new york times. only gaviscon® forms a protective barrier that helps block stomach acid from splashing up- relieving the pain quickly. try fast, long lasting gaviscon®. to help protect your eye health as you age... would you take it? well, there is. [ male announcer ] it's called ocuvite. a vitamin totally dedicated to your eyes, from the eye care experts at bausch + lomb. as you age, eyes can lose vital nutrients. ocuvite helps replenish key eye nutrients. ocuvite has a unique formula not found in your multivitamin to help protect your eye health. now that's a pill worth taking.

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