The Amazing Consistency Of Our Left-Wing Media
March 4, 2013 14 Comments
It’s been remarkable to watch the consistency of the mainstream press over the past few months. They seem to take the same position and follow the same line of questioning almost across the board no matter the issue. We know there are left-wing email groups out there coordinating the news, they’ve been exposed in the past. The mainstream press has tried to distance themselves from those groups but their consistency in asking the same questions and taking the same positions might lead one to believe they coordinate. In the alternative they all come from the same left-wing place and just happen to all think alike.
Bob Schieffer claims “extreme” Republicans are responsible for sequester. He asked liberal GOP Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain whether the extreme ends of the GOP are holding the party hostage. He later declared to Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin that it is beyond arguing who is responsible for getting us to sequester. Obviously it’s those extreme Republicans. Never mind that sequester came from the White House and was signed into law by the President. Little details like that are to be ignored, after all Obama said if we don’t reverse sequester the whole world would come to an end.
The other Sunday talking head shows more or less followed Schieffer’s position and line of questioning. Stephanopoulos is getting all the publicity today because of his interview with lunatic former basketball player Dennis Rodman who visited North Korea and thinks Kim Jong Un is a cool dude. In discussions of sequester though ABC and NBC both blamed Republicans for the impasse. In order to do that of course you have to ignore the fact that Obama proposed and signed sequester into law. He even went further in November 2011 when he said he would veto any attempt to overturn sequestration. One journalist asking poor questions is one thing, all of them on the Sunday talking head shows suggests something much different.
Count me as surprised the media circled the wagons against Bob Woodward last week. I thought for sure they would defend one of their own. Instead, they attacked him in the same manner the White House attacked him. He’s old, senile, crazy. Andrew Sullivan, David Plouffe and a whole host of other journalists and Obama insiders had exactly the same thing to say about Woodward. They allege he exaggerated his claim even though the email in question says Woodward would regret going forward with his story. The email was apologetic, suggesting that Woodward was telling the truth when he said the President’s advisor yelled at him on the phone.
Nevertheless, the media and Obama insiders all say Woodward is crazy, senile and should retire. Other media members have acknowledged that they have received similar threatening emails but they don’t think it’s that big a deal. It’s amazing that the media suddenly thinks it’s no big deal for the government to threaten them. Make no mistake, Gene Spurling represents the government of President Obama. He threatened Bob Woodward, the rest of the press acknowledges these threats are a regular occurence. Yet none of them seem to have a problem with it. Why?
The media is part of the progressive movement that Obama leads. That’s why they don’t question this administration about much of anything. It’s why a reporter asked the President last week why he couldn’t force Boehner and McConnell to negotiate, as though Obama was King Charles I. They’re only focused on the ends, they’re uninterested in the means Obama uses to get to those ends. It’s why they ignore Fast and Furious, it’s why they ignore the truth about sequestration and it’s why they never question the President in any significant way. Whether it’s all coordinated by the media or not doesn’t really matter. They all come from the same political philosophy and they ask the same or similar questions. Then they wonder why they’re accused of bias. It’s incredible to watch.
About Steven
There is a reason that there is a liberal media “bias,” and that reason is the invisible hand of the market.
There are plenty of uber-rich conservatives with the means to buy television networks and make them representative of the political right, but they don’t—because they know an inferior product is a bad investment.
If you want to complain about media, maybe you should direct your frustration at Fox News, who has either monopolized conservative media in America, or damaged the product so badly, that no one else wants to get into the market.
The conservative news market is woefully underserved, especially on television. All three mainline networks are hard left, especially NBC which has direct links to the Obama White House. Viewership of these network news shows is down substantially since the 80′s, the bulk leaving after the internet boom in the late 90′s. You would think one of them would try to save themselves by moving to the right but the newsroom is ideological and so are the people running the networks. They view news as a money pit and don’t see any potential in shifting focus.
As for Fox News, its success suggests there is an untapped conservative news market out there. Fox pulls in 3 million a night for its largely conservative, populist commentary shows. CNN and MSNBC barely hit 1 million for their liberal shows. Apparently Glenn Beck tried to buy Al Gore’s Current TV but Gore refused to sell to a conservative, opting to sell to Al Jazzera instead. (apparently the Qater state tv network is more ideologically aligned with Gore). I hear Beck is trying to get his internet network placed on cable. I have no idea how successful he’ll be at that, I’m guessing moderately successful.
The problem with news is that there is a limited amount of money to be made in it, which is why we don’t see many new cable news networks make it. I don’t think Fox has cornered the conservative market but they’re big enough to scare off competition. The mainstream networks are losing viewers big time, it makes you wonder why they stick to a failed liberal formula.
If the media networks where controlled by the invisible hand of the market they would all be conservative based. Look at ratings, conservative information sources vastly out perform liberal.
Current vs Blaze? not even close.
MSNBC vs FOXnews? Easy to spot the winner.
Liberal Talk Radio vs Conservative Talk Radio? What liberal talk radio, I can’t find one in my market because they all have failed.
The informed public is a conservitive one.
Even in a free market not all businesses maximize their profits. We can see this at NBC, ABC and CBS, which have been losing viewers for years but refuse to change anything about their news coverage.
The problem with using the alphabet channels as an example is that we are not in a free market. Those channels get subsidized buy the government to maintain their failed programming.
“The informed public is a conservitive one”
That literally made me LOL. Thanks!
And you just proved my point ELTV, thank you.
How so?
Again, how so?
Because if you do not recognize that the best selling political books, most watched poltical “news” shows and most listend polticial talk radio is conservative based then you are an example of the lowinfo left.
Anyone who says the mainstream media isn’t biased to the liberal side of the issues is either blind or deaf. All one has to do is compare the media’s coverage of the Bush administration and the Obama administration. A prime example would be the differences between the coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The bias is clearly there.
The people who believe there isn’t media bias are liberals who think the bias is correct and thus don’t care that it exists. The media was outraged over Bush holding terrorists without trial, they say nothing when Obama does the same thing. They attacked Bush for drone strikes but say nothing when Obama doubles and triples drone strikes. The media blamed Bush for Katrina, people are still suffering from Sandy and yet there hasn’t been any media coverage of it. A negative dip in the economy was evidence that a recession was on the way when Bush was President, when the same happens when Obama is President the media ignores the negative number and focuses on supposedly positive economic indicators.
Bah. I can trot out just as many perceived slights from the other side: “wanna have a beer with him” versus “serial exaggerator”; too little outrage over extraordinary rendition and torture; continuing to give time to birthers and climate change deniers; a complete lack of willingness to put actual economists in the mix and stop with the ‘he said, she said’; under reporting of gerrymandering and efforts to allocate electoral votes by congressional district; on and on.
So, “The people who believe there is media bias are conservatives who think the bias is incorrect and thus care that it exists” is just as valid as your assertion.
Quantify it with empirical data cause anecdotes ain’t cutting it.
“Is there a left tilt to the media’s coverage of the news? If there is, can it be proven? And if it can be proven, can the consequences be quantified in a meaningful way? Acclaimed UCLA Professor of Political Science and Economics, Tim Groseclose, has the startling answers in this new Prager University course. Whatever you do, don’t miss his final conclusion.”
http://www.prageruniversity.com/documents/Proving-Media-Bias.pdf
I know, UCLA is a hot bed of conservative teaching (read with sarcasm on).