Posted on 08/07/2016 10:55:44 AM PDT by VitacoreVision
Liberal media bias has long been an open secret. But now it’s so bad that even a liberal mainstream newspaper notes that, in an effort to destroy Donald Trump, the media have jumped the shark.
In a Los Angeles Times piece, columnist Justin Raimondo writes that to “fight Trump, journalists have dispensed with objectivity”; he then asks, “Why are the rules of journalism being rewritten this election year?” He also theorizes that the pro-Hillary Clinton bias has become so blatant it may actually backfire on the media.
As his first example, Raimondo cites how the media present out of context Trump’s statement that the Russians should release Clinton’s 30,000 “lost” e-mails, portraying an obvious joke as dangerous encouragement of foreign espionage. On this count Raimondo makes a good point, though: If the e-mails are all “personal,” as Clinton has maintained, how could they threaten national security?
Nonetheless, the media casts Trump as “a kind of Manchurian candidate,” as Raimondo puts it, “in what was once called red-baiting.” Yet this smacks of projection. Consider that former Bill Clinton political hit man Larry Nichols revealed in 2015 that the first time he met Hillary, she was wearing a medal around her neck stating, “Proud member of the American Communist Party” (video here; forward to 6:07). Also note, the Clinton Foundation has received millions of dollars from Russian sources, and many allege that these monies essentially were bribes in exchange for access to American technological secrets and for a huge portion of the United States' uranium stockpile. This, not to mention that our country is in many respects now more “red” than Russia — largely due to the machinations of Clinton and her fellow travelers.
Even more strikingly, the media have engaged in outright collusion with Democrat operatives. As Raimondo reports:
DNC emails, published by Wikileaks, reveal a stunning level of collaboration between important media outlets and the Democrats. Former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz sought to silence NBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who had found fault with the DNC’s role in the primaries. The emails have headings like “This must stop.” Incredibly, NBC’s Chuck Todd agreed to act as a go-between, even arranging a call between Wasserman Schultz and Brzezinski. Which raises the question: Why was a major media figure taking his marching orders from the Democratic party chair — and how did this affect his network’s coverage of the Trump campaign?
The DNC emails also show that Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel sent his copy for a story on Clinton’s fundraising operation to the DNC’s national press secretary, Mark Paustenbach, prior to publication. Politico has since apologized, but Vogel has his defenders. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple said Vogel’s “prepublication generosity” was meant to give “the people you’re writing about … the opportunity to rebut all relevant claims in a story.” One wonders if the Washington Post does this for the Trump campaign. Somehow I doubt it.
Yet it must be pointed out that, contrary to Raimondo’s assertion, media rules aren’t being rewritten; written long ago, they’re just more devoutly embraced with each succeeding media degeneration. For example:
• In 2004, famed newsman Dan Rather’s career was ended when it was discovered that he had peddled forged documents purporting to show that President George W. Bush had shirked his Texas Air National Guard duties in the 1960s and 1970s.
• In 2010, there was the JournoList Scandal, involving an online meeting place in which journalists would conspire to slant the news; this proved that not all media bias was unintentional.
• The media happily reported the claim that WWII-era pontiff Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope.” Yet they just as happily ignored an even bigger story: the 2007 revelation that the allegation was a malicious fabrication promoted by a Soviet disinformation campaign.
• While the media can’t let go of the Catholic Church sex scandal, they ignore the child sex abuse in government schools, a phenomenon a federally funded study found was 100 times the magnitude of the church scandal. In fact, the researchers evaluated a certain time period and discovered that California’s 61 biggest newspapers ran 2,000 stories about the church scandal but only four about the school scandal.
• The media gratuitously report stories of police shootings of black criminal suspects, despite these occurrences having declined 75 percent during the last few decades. Yet while the police not only shoot more whites but, according to studies, are actually more likely to do so, such events are never widely publicized. This lends the illusion that blacks are under assault, creates racial unrest, and has led to the “retaliatory” murder of cops.
• In 2012, NBC heavily doctored George Zimmerman’s 911 call in a manner many describe as malicious, as it did a cut-and-paste job that made him appear bigoted.
The above is, of course, just a short list. In addition, there’s also the “everyday” bias, such as calling statist politicians with anti-immigration policies (e.g., France’s Marine Le Pen) “right-wing” while refusing to call socialists such as Francois Hollande left-wing; branding semi-automatic rifles “assault weapons”; and labeling pro-life people “anti-abortion” and pro-abortion people “pro-choice.” And then there’s social-media bias, which is just as profound and which I reported on here and here.
And this bias has a devastating effect. The media are the people’s conduit of information, and how can Americans make the right decisions regarding politicians and policies if they’re given misinformation? As with a computer, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
And what is the nature of the political litterbugs? In his 2011 book Left Turn, UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose quotes “a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent,” writes U.S. News. The site continues:
As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. "Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass — a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."
He adds: "That bias makes us more liberal, which makes us less able to detect the bias, which allows the media to get away with more bias, which makes us even more liberal."
And this sways elections. As Groseclose also wrote, "Media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election. I find, for instance, that if media bias didn't exist, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama 56 percent to 42 percent [in 2008], instead of losing 53-46."
I’ve often quipped that the Democrats have the world’s most effective public-relations team: the U.S. media. And what of Raimondo’s theory that their now bare-naked bias may inspire a backlash that elects Trump? Such a phenomenon would likely just diminish, but not completely negate, the Democrat-buttressing effects of media manipulation. With only six percent of Americans approving of the media, though, Trump would be wise to portray himself as the opponent of this fourth estate-cum-fifth column. It’s morally fitting, too, to run against a group that is running against America.
It’s the citizens, represented by Trump vs the Ministry of Propaganda and the establishments of both parties and most of the economic interests in the country.
Last chance to escape the New World Order
It’s really amazing that any Republican gets elected at all!
This election year?? This has been going on non stop since the election of 1992.
Great article. The New American always has well researched articles.
Credit where it is due: I’ve seen CNN asking questions about deleted emails and lies about same when the GOP was off chasing its own tail.
He is dead wrong here. Our country is not the least bit communistic, nor is it especially socialist. We have become the most entrenched example of crony capitalism that has ever existed (after all we have greater wealth to exploit in this way). The posturing and pandering to justify a small number ripping off the country and its people may sound communistic, but communists they certainly are not.
Which one's? Most are RINO unipartiests or become such immediately after election.
“Most are RINO unipartiests or become such immediately after election.”
True enough!
We are at a point in America that people don’t give a flying leap if the beast lies, cheats, kill or destroys this country! We are in a serious serious flatline condition and it has to do with the majority diehard liberals and their BFF illegals who have been allowed in our nation and brainwashed to believe the dangerous liberal agenda! Right now America stands 52 % patriots to 48% anti-American populace! That is very scary! That means he has to get at least 60% of the American people on board to win! And frankly, I don’t think he has that % voter block in the pocket! He does not have the money to hit the airwaves 24/7 like the vomit from hell!...he just can’t do it! If they sell him air time they’ll offer him the blackout timeframe...which is dead airtime! Sometimes I have to do a double look to see if we are not Russia, Venezuela or worse China!!
Before that. You should have seen what they did to Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater.
“They not only changed their formula, to put Hillary ahead. They went back and changed the results, for a week of results where Trump was ahead, and then they turned those into Hillary leads,” said Caddell. “They also erased all the former polling off the site. They didn’t tweak their procedure – they cooked it.”
“Never in my life have I seen a news organization, and a supposedly reputable poll, do something so dishonest,” Caddell continued. “What they have done is, they decided the people who said, ‘oh, I’m never for someone’ – oh, those must be Hillary votes. They used to be Trump voters.”
Caddell found encouraging signs that “the American people are clued in” about media corruption, citing research conducted by his colleague, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, that the momentum of the 2016 race favors Trump, in part because of deep alienation against the existing political system, across the political spectrum.
“This election, right now, it’s hanging in the balance. Trump is the independent variable. If he can learn to hit big ground, and understand they’re going to go after him on everything, and discipline himself, he is the man to beat in this election,” Caddell declared, adding that Clinton “doesn’t have anywhere to go in this election, unless Trump blows himself up.”
“It’s really amazing that any Republican gets elected at all!”
It’s a ruse. They remain helpless, powerless victims. I couldn’t live with myself if I was told I had to submit to Pelosi & Reid after the voters had made themselves clear. Twice. It’s a game to them with the GOPe merely pretending to be the party of oposition. I pray Trump will win by an undeniable landslide and won’t play the same old game. I do believe it to be our last chance for generations.
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas JeffersonIn 2016, "the People," having watched their elected so-called "conservative" Republican leaders fail miserably at even slowing the oppressive "progressive" "train" of "wretchedness and oppression."
"The People" whom Justice Story called "the only KEEPERS of the Constitution" see the so-called "conservatives" they elected betray them, and they have responded with an outright rejection, county by county, in most of the states won by Trump.
It is time now for those GOP leaders the voters rejected in the Primaries to decide whether they will turn over the Executive Branch to a self-described "progressive" who promises to double down on the Obama agenda,
Yup, yup, and yup!
Mail, email, message and tweet it! Take them on. We’ve got to.
Find the sponsors. Complain to them. Explain you cannot in good conscience buy their products.
Let’s not forget that FOX is coming under new management with the young Murdoch brothers. It’s likely to be 100% united media soon.
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