BILL O'REILLY (HOST): We did not make very much of President Obama going to a baseball game in Cuba directly after the terror attacks in Belgium. As stated, I believe Mr. Obama simply accepts the fact that there will be terror deaths around the world, thus his reaction to them is muted. But what about the national media? How did they cover it? How did they process the president's game day decision? Joining us now from Miami, the purveyor of BernardGoldberg.com, Mr. Goldberg. So what did you find out for us?
BERNARD GOLDBERG: The hard news media, Bill, generally was fair and reasonable. They reported that he was at the game despite Brussels, and they reported his reason for staying there, which was basically that he wasn't going to let terrorists disrupt his life or our lives. You could either accept that or not accept it. Reasonable people may disagree. I'm not getting involved in that. As far as the media is concerned, what was interesting is that more than a few liberals on television who normally support Barack Obama said this didn't look good. This was not a good idea. This and the dancing in Buenos Aires were not serious. And I thought Chris Matthews, reliably liberal Chris Matthews, was very good on this. He was talking to a liberal opinion writer for The Washington Post, a fellow named Jonathan Capehart. And Capehart said, “Republicans constantly kick the president for not doing something they think he should do.” And Matthews responded by saying, “there might be another sin involved, to defend the president on every front.” Good for Chris, because what he was saying is too often liberals in the media defend Barack Obama no matter what, and I will add from the other side that too often conservatives on radio and television wouldn't give Barack Obama credit if he found a cure for cancer. Look, we need honest analysis, and too often what we're getting is not honest opinion journalism.
O'REILLY: Yeah, it's partisan-driven and that's a growing problem.
GOLDBERG: Hyper-partisan ideology, and that's not good.
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GOLDBERG: Here's the part that bothers me the most. You talked about how liberals would defend certain things that frankly were indefensible. I did a little checking into history here. In 1983, the Russians shot down a 747 commercial airliner, Korean Airlines flight 007. It left New York City, it made a stop in Anchorage, AL. It had a lot of Americans on-board, and then the Russians shot it down. It was an accident supposedly, but they shot it down. President Ronald Reagan was on vacation in California riding horses and all that.
O'REILLY: Yeah, he didn't do much.
GOLDBERG: He wasn't on a state trip to Cuba or any place else. It took him four days, and only after prodding by his advisors, to go back to Washington and make a speech about what happened. And my point here, Bill, is that the very same conservatives who are bashing Barack Obama for not leaving a baseball game are the ones who would be defending Ronald Reagan, the sainted Ronald Reagan.
