rally around the flag effect? >> i think how it plays out. that's it for this week's edition of the journal editorial report to my panel and especially you for watching. happy new year, we hope to see you here next week for our new hampshire primary preview. >> jon: on fox news watch. 2011, a busy year of news, a busy year for the media. and a banner year for media bias. the u.s. economy, taxes and jobs, who did the media blame for the bad news and gridlock? >> i hope i am the tim tebow of the iowa caucuses. >> a spy drone brought down, he says pretty please? a foreign policy based on pretty please? you've got to be kidding. >> i'm a serious candidate for president of the united states. >> anybody up here could probably beat obama. >> i'm very concerned without appearing to be zany.

>> and g.o.p. hopefuls picks for 2012. how were they treated by the political press? >> and protesters around the world and around the block, taking a stand or making news. did the media know the difference. >> bin laden dead thanks to seal team six. a tragic shooting in tucson six dead and a congresswoman clipping to life. >> duh, winning. >> from the bizarre to bombastic. >> thank you for helping us preserve freedom of news. the sheltdowns and meltdowns in the media world. >> writer on fox news contributor, judy miller, and cal thomas, jim pinkerton and kirsten power. i'm jon scott and fox news watch is on right now.

>> . >> jamie: the politics aside, put aside issues where there are fundamental disagreements and come together on something we agree on. and let's not play brinksmanship. the american people are weary of it. they're tired of it. they expect better. >> how it's up to the president to show real leadership. he said that he won't leave town for the holidays until this bill is done. and the next step is clear. i think president obama needs to call on senate democrats to go back into session, move to a conference and sit down and resolve this bill as soon as possible. >> the year 2011 ends pretty much as it started with gridlock in washington and this time a standoff between both parties over extending the payroll tax cut and continuing long-term

unemployment benefits. the economy, jobs and taxes the most covered story in 2011. according to a project for excellence in journalism report and coverage of the economy received 20% of news time and space dedicated to it. and in print, online, tv news and radio, that's up from 14% in 2010. and the obvious question, jim, why was this the most covered story? >> the obvious answer, it's the biggest story, however, i did notice a distinct trend in 2011 and that's the media upbeat. oh, the economy is coming back and abc news in particular leaves with good news, good news, turned the corner and-- >> you think there's political? >> i actually did and having been around for recessions in the reagan white house, when i was there and in the bush 41 white house, i can tell you when the media decide they don't like the president and they want to blame him for the recession, they have a way of knowing every night as in herbert hoover lives.

>> is there a blame game? >> the economy is turning around very, very slowly. if they're reporting that, that's accurate. if they weren't, they wouldn't bens who. you know, i can't remember those being covered. unfortunately, in other administrations, but, but i think if they do did that, that wouldn't justification for doing it now. >> i think that cal can remember those. >> thank you very much. as abraham lincoln once told me (laughter) there's a template in this. anybody who looks at the media coverage. this is the way it works. if the economy starts to turn around in a republican administration, the editorials, well, it could have been better and sluggish and interview people who blame bush. this, they say, obama's policies must be working and things are better and the media feed this approval among people 0 who don't pay a lot of attention for the news and

when the polls come out. obama is up to 49% approval. >> i want today show you a symbol of what you might see as media bias from the new jersey star ledger, it was an article about the gridlock in congress, but the headline caught our eye. gridlock in congress defines boehner era. you could have said it defines the reed era or the obama era, but they chose the republican speaker, one guy who leads a republican dominated branch of government why? >> because it's a fair interpretation, whether or not you agree with it. look, i really disagree with this and i agree with kirsten and that is that, the economy is turning around and i hate to see what the media did try and do, perhaps not successfully, is highlight the p fragility of the recovery and they do it again and again and so much they were looking at the eu and the european

union's fragility and the public can't care. >> one thing, the house is where the gridlock is mostly happening and they're the ones who have bb been front and center in the entire debate so i think to -- they naturally draw attention to them because the house is the center of the-- >> why is it at the center? >> because that's where-- >> because there's also a president -- look, the president, the media could have been saying president obama is adamant in-- >> they're talking congressional. >> a job creating energy independence and creating things and this is day 77 of obama's roadblocking of this xl pipeline. strangely enough, except for human events. you never saw the headline. >> let's look at the way it works. when the republican are trying to hold up what a democratic president wants to do it's gridlock. when the roles are reversed it's different from the media perspective. >> no, no, democrats are much more likely to work with republican presidents.

when you look at when bush was presidents they voted for his war and the patriot act and would work more with them than the republicans. >> you see a lot of media headlines that say basically obama can't lead, come on. >> and there's the race to replace the president in 2012. i thought maybe the biggest story of the year might be the republican debates, but the 2011 was the year of republican debates, was it? >> well, i mean, it was, yeah, it-- i think this probably more than any other presidential election i've seen was defined by the debates. we'd be hard pressed to name an ad that anybody had that had confidence to it, but we know that rick perry and the 53 second brain freeze and so on. >> orr uz becky becky becky. >> i think the media now-- >> what's wrong with the debates, they're not real debates in the classical sense

and they look like jeopardy contestants, and the answer is. why do the politicians allow the media to call the game on this. okay, we'll do one or two, but then do something like gingrich proposed, lincoln douglas. >> and did one with huntsman and no coverage at all. >> that's the media's fault. >> we'll argue about this during the break. if you'd like to keep up on the media stories during the week, check our our website and the daily bash, and there's judy doing one. >> around the world, protests got attention. >> protests from wisconsin to egypt, libya, syria, england, russia and wall street. how were the stories covered and did the media take sides? >> and the shooting in tucson. how did the media fail in reporting that story? the answers next on news watch.

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>> more top stories and landmark events. the death of osama bin laden and the death of muammar gaddafi and the protests that brought the arab spring, as well as occupy wall street. so, time magazine distilled all of this into one cover photo and said the protester is their person of the year and i guess that that photograph actually was taken from an occupy wall street, the photograph on the cover was occupy wall street photograph. >> well, here, i'm going to be in the minority again, but i defend the selection of the person, quote, person in the year that resulted in a 30% increase in attention to foreign news, hurray at long last. >> i'm all for that. you know, unfortunately, time magazine, hardly anybody reads it anymore, look, the whole

thing about the arab spring was a joke. anybody who knows anything about the history, the modern history of the middle east and gets the jews and christians and infidels, it was never going to be an american revolution, constitutional rights were going to be enshrined. i wrote about that and it doesn't take a prophet to know this is going to happen. the media totally bought it as 1776 for america. >> and i think they said something big is going on with mubarak and the guy in tune mischa and the libya get overthrown and most say we don't know what's going to happen next. >> and then they were blind because it was obvious, look, the muslim brotherhood is behind this and they've been simmering for years and most of the media are ignorant about things religious. >> i'm sorry, cal, i was there and that wasn't the way it was covered and it isn't what

happened. the people in tahri r square were mostly-- >> and you wouldn't have had to conjure them up. >> they were behind the scenes ready to move in, they were behind the scenes. >> we've covered it since then and i think the media pretty much acquitted themselves well on story, stayed with it, which is more than you can say for the attention deficit disorder of a lot of others. >> i agree with that. >> jon: what about the occupy wall street protests in this country though. that thing broke out and spread from lower manhattan to other cities and the media seemed to jump on board and sort of keep the faith. >> what the media did, wills, say, we had the arab spring in its liberal phase, the facebook phase of the spring and summer and oh, even better, occupy wall street and occupy oakland and so on and the media fell in love with that and that's when they really did seem like pilgrims

to the soviet union in the 30's thinking they'd gone stalin and worship at the feet of somebody living in a tent, defecating on a police car and that was a great moment of shame for the media. >> and see-- >> follow the defecating of a police car and what you have to say about this. >> and the criticism, the take of the people and trying to make it out. if that's what it was. i don't think that the occupy wall street equivalent to what's happening in the arab countries and they shouldn't equate it and that's silly and i'll just say, i actually agree with cal on the coverage at least in the egypt situation, that they were cheerleading for this and it was not, it has not been a good outcome. >> i have said publicly i think the biggest story of the year was the death of osama bin laden. this is a guy about whom one, maybe two wars was launched.

in seal target geronimo, a book about the raid, chuck harris says president obama's quick acknowledgment of the raid was a craven political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered in the compound useless. >> i think that's harsh, i think the white house did say something they subsequently regretted. >> it was a great moment for the white house and are we happy that osama bin laden is not with us. >> and here is the damned if you do and don't. the guy is absolutely right degrading intelligence. on the other hand how would you keep something like that secret in an age of twitter and so on. >> you don't think they could have done it for 24 hours, 48 hours. >> no. >> well, it would have been nice to see if the president at that announcement would have given at least some credit to previous president, namely george w. bush, who

said a lot of this-- and dick cheney, whether you like their policies or not. they set this hunt for bin laden in motion. the cia, a lot of people were involved in this, but obama seemed to take the credit all himself. >> and confirmed the conspiracy theory that cheney ran the-- >> time for another break, if you see something that you think shows evidence of media bias, e-mail us at news watch@foxnews.com. up next, a tragic shooting and now the media reaction. >> a mass shooting near tucson. 19 people shot. six people died. congresswoman gabby giffords one of the victims. the answer stream media views this as a tragedy to blame the right which ended up wrong. from shakeups to meltdowns, some big media stories from 2011 all next on news watch. so we earned a holiday trip to the big apple twice as fast! nner! [ garth ] we get double miles every time we use our card.

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>> many tragedies were covered by the media this year. a 9.0 in japan followed by a devastating tsunami. the death toll just under 16,000 in addition to the loss of life and tsunami caused three reactors to nearly melt down and a nuclear power

facility. in may, ef 5 multiple tornado, in joplin, missouri. and the imams absolutely heart breaking and 160 people lost their lives. in july. a 32-year-old. norwegian, set off a car bomb in oslo. and 69 people were killed. most of them children. but one tragedy that got the most coverage, the mass shooting near tucson. arizona eight days into 2011. 6 people were killed. 13 injured. including congress woman gabrielle giffords. the shooter, 22-year-old jared love ner, i still so clearly, judy, remember that day. npr reported that the congresswoman was dead and a number of media outlets. >> you don't--

cnn reuters, many many news organizations got it wrong and i think, john, this heaighlights the danger and pressure in social, media, journalism. you're out there ahead of the story and seconds ahead and it doesn't matter you whether or not you get it right. it's hard to resist and wow, i'm going to check this out. >> and npr says they confirmed it with two sources which usually would be enough. so, you know, i don't know if the other organizations were going off of npr or doing it on their own, but sometimes people do just make legitimate mistakes, you have to be very, very careful, obviously, but they did confirm it with-- >>, but the other error, jim. the mainstream media almost immediately were assigning blame to these right wingers and-- >> and the tax cuts. >> yeah, exactly. all of those things were piled on loefner, and none of them, the they think with reagan and

jim brady you can make an excuse for that. they had plenty of time to decide, yes, of course, this guy must be a right winger and why they did it. they did it with full forethought. one person we didn't mention in that list, was sarah palin, there were liberals who tied the attack to an ad that sarah palin had taken out for her political campaign. >> we've been through this issue before with her. regardless whether you like her as a politician or not. the kind of stuff that sarah palin has been put through, ought to outrage every feminist in the world. she's been trashed for her children, for her husband, for her looks, for her hair, for her shoes, for everything, and for the most part with a few notable exceptions, most of feminist america has been silent on this, showing there is a double standard. >> and the president gave a speech calling for unity after the tragedy, he said we can be

better and he got very good reviews after that. but it seems like the message, you know, is out the door, with 2011. >> well, yeah, it was never-- it was a great idea, but it was nothing that anybody was really interested in and it really has just been, just complete gridlock from the beginning to the end just the way you started the show. the way we started it the end. >> and the other thing he didn't do in that speech, that the left of his base wanted him to do was to call for some serious improvements on gun control laws, he didn't do it. he woos criticized a little, but mostly people loved the speech and it didn't help. >> judy, are you saying that obama is all teleprompter and no substance? >> i think you said that. [laughte [laughter]. >> jon: we have to take one more break. and when we come back, some of the big media stories of 2011. is it because taking a step represents hope?

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... >> duh, winning, it's not convincing anybody, and guys,

i'm right there. 62 movies and a ton of success, i mean, come on, bro, i won best picture at 20. >> jon: we couldn't have a year ending without this. charlie sheen dumped from his starring role in two and a half men for being a playboy, red meat. and keith olbermann adding to the networks he's no longer welcomed and the countdown host which is too bad for us, because keith gave news watch so much material with which to work and now he's working for al gore on some channel we can't even find. and also out at msnbc, this guy named chen wiegar, and we wonder if he'll be next.

and eliot spitzer shamed new york governor involved in a prostitution ring turned tv anchor and axed by that cable network, due to audience interest meaning nobody was watching. and speaking of low ratings and under the what were they thinking category, katie couric leaving the anchor desk and supposed to be hosting a talk show and much richer. oprah winfrey said goodbye to her duly show, moving on to start the oprah winfrey network, is anyone watching that and glenn beck started gbtv and also heard on his radio show every and every day. so, some of the big media stories of the year and there was the phone hacking scandal in principle, a bigger story overseas than it was here and you said you were watching it.

>> some of the hearings were fascinating. nobody will forget watching it live. the wife of rupert murdoch, the chairman of newscorp, got up and defended her husband go ens this pie throwing maniac in there and one of the headlines i loved, said crouching wendy, hidden tiger, that was new york post stuff. that's good. >> jon: with an about the wikileaks, julian asange putting out thousands and thousands of military secrets. >> welcome to the new world of media, online you can post everything and it gets out. whatever we think of asange, tht the future. >> and we're writing stories based on the cables and by the way i think a lot of the cables made the u.s. state department look much better than most of us thought they would. >> a net positive that it got

out? >> positive and negative. the problem are the sources indirectly identified or directly identified who may have stopped talking to the yoo it's. >> i know kirsten, you had a favorite from pointers list of media errors you'd like to bring up. >> i didn't know i'd get to read that. >> yeah, it was the new york times, and they-- >> the newspaper of record? >> they had to put this correction out. an article on january 16th about drilling for oil off the coast of angola erroneously reported a story of cows falling from planes, a risk to any engineer-- in that engineering endeavor, no cows, smugged or otherwise ever fell from a plane into a japanese fishing rig. the story is an urban legend. >> and that's-- (laughter) >> remember that as you read your local newspaper this year. and that's a wrap on news