Fox 31 report uncritically repeated conservative talking point that Obama's voting record is "the most liberal in the U.S. Senate"

Summary: KDVR Fox 31's News at Nine O'Clock uncritically reported the assertion, apparently stemming from National Journal's 2007 vote ratings, that Sen. Barack Obama has the "most liberal" voting record in the U.S. Senate. Fox 31's report, which echoed a frequently repeated conservative talking point, did not mention that a respected vote study contradicts the National Journal's findings and failed to cite any criticism of the ratings.

In a report on the June 3 broadcast of KDVR Fox 31's News at Nine O'Clock, Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron echoed a conservative talking point when he predicted that during the upcoming presidential race, Sen. John McCain will attack Sen. Barack Obama "for bad judgment and a short voting record that's already the most liberal in the U.S. Senate." As Media Matters for America has noted, the claim that Obama has the "most liberal" voting record in the U.S. Senate apparently stems from the National Journal's 2007 rating, which was based on "99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale." Cameron failed to mention that McCain "did not vote frequently enough" in 2007 to receive a rating from the National Journal, nor did he mention a separate study by political science professors Keith Poole and Jeff Lewis that was based on all 388 non-unanimous Senate votes during 2007 and ranked Obama as tied with Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) as the 10th "most liberal" senator.

Among the votes Obama cast that purportedly earned him the National Journal's "most liberal senator" label were those to implement the bipartisan 9-11 Commission's homeland security recommendations, provide more children with health insurance, expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and maintain a federal minimum wage, as Media Matters has documented (here, here, here, here, and here).

Furthermore, when asked by Politico editor-in-chief John F. Harris about the National Journal's 2007 vote ratings during a February 11 Politico/WJLA-TV interview, Obama himself criticized its methodology by noting that it considered "liberal" his vote for "an office of public integrity that stood outside of the Senate, and outside of Congress, to make sure that you've got an impartial eye on ethics problems inside of Congress." American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman J. Ornstein has also criticized the National Journal's rating of Obama as the "most liberal senator," calling it "pretty ridiculous."

Media Matters also has noted that the National Journal admitted to having used flawed methodology in the publication's previous rating of then-Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. John Kerry (MA) as the "most liberal senator" in 2003.

From the June 3 broadcast of KDVR Fox 31's News at Nine O'Clock:

CAMERON: McCain will need to convince voters he has a solid economic and domestic policy in the face of millions of dollars in attack ads from Obama and Democrats saying that McCain offers nothing more but four more years of failed Bush policies. Both campaigns plan about a month to hone their offensive and defensive strategies. Republican Chip Saltzman ran Mike Huckabee's campaign.

SALTZMAN [video clip]: -- that is, after they spend a few weeks shootin' a lot of different bullets, they're gonna figure out which ones of those bullets were effective, and then you're gonna start seein' it hammerin' home.

CAMERON: Obama will need to persuade general election voters that he's not too inexperienced on national security while McCain and the GOP hammer him for bad judgment and a short voting record that's already the most liberal in the U.S. Senate. Obama also has some fence-building with key constituencies. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

MELLMAN [video clip]: One is, he needs to deepen his relationship with those, we call those white, working-class voters. Second, he's got to develop a relationship, a stronger relationship, to the Latino community.

CAMERON: Republicans know that the national political environment is still very tough for the GOP because of the war and the president's record unpopularity. McCain, a 71-year-old cancer survivor, will also have to deal with concerns about his health and his age. With Obama, the nation's first black presumptive presidential nominee, race will be a constant. And there are 154 days to the election. In Washington, Carl Cameron, Fox News.

—C.H.