Bush Snr: 'Media hates my son'
2007-01-27 08:50
Washington - United States President George W Bush's father has accused the news media of "personal animosity" toward his son and says he finds the criticism so unrelenting that he sometimes talks back to his television set.
"It's one thing to have an adversarial ... relationship - hard-hitting journalism - it's another when the journalists' rhetoric goes beyond scepticism and goes over the line into overt, unrelenting hostility and personal animosity," said former president George Bush.
The elder Bush, the 41st US president, had a relatively collegial relationship with the press until things turned sour in his losing 1992 re-election campaign.
He got so fed up with media coverage that supporters at the time circulated hats with the slogan "Annoy the Media - Re-Elect Bush".
"I won't get too personal here - but this antipathy got worse after the 43rd president took office," said the former president.
He was speaking at a reception for a journalism scholarship awarded in honour of the late Hugh Sidey, White House correspondent for Time magazine.
"And so bad, in fact, that I found myself doing what I never should have done - I talk back to the television set. And I said things that my mother wouldn't necessarily approve of," said Bush's father.
The current President Bush's approval ratings have slumped to the lowest level of his presidency - about 33% - amid anger over the Iraq war and opposition to his plan to increase troop levels in Iraq.
In an election widely seen as a referendum on Bush, Democrats captured both houses of the US congress in November.