The GOP's Secret Weapon . . .

The Weekly Standard ^ | 11/25/2002 | Bruce Bartlett

[anniegetyourgun]

"Another way liberal bias hurts liberals is that it causes reporters to underplay, overlook, and often completely ignore important political trends."

There's a whole lotta misunderestimatin' going on out there.....

[Inyokern]

One way media bias hurts liberals is by giving them a false sense of security.

Excellent analysis!

I think a great example of this was the 1988 election. I have always felt that the liberal press killed Michael Dukakis with kindness. He never realized how unpopular his stand on the Pledge of Allegiance and the release of Willy Horton would prove to be because the liberal press never told him.

[Free the USA]

fyi

[berned]

There is a lot of common sense and truth in this article.

Also, there's the "cry wolf" factor.

After decades and decades of media liberals predicting that any Repub victory will GUARANTEE that old people will be starved and thrown out of their homes, blacks lynched in the streets, and women enslaved in sweatshops, blah blah blah, then none of it ever happens, eventually even the dumbest of voters may have that golden "hey wait a minute!" epiphany.

[jocon307]

"I have always felt that the liberal press killed Michael Dukakis with kindness"

Maybe it was intended as a kindness, but it was the "squirrel-head in the tank" photo that did him in. LOL, well I remember hubby when the photo was first published showing it to me and saying "They should have offered the photographer $500 to destroy this roll of film". And we were a lot younger then and not political at all. Yet already any casual observer could clearly see the dem's fecklessness and fakery.

[ODDITHER]

The writer could have boiled this down into one paragraph.

The media has become a group of elitists. They believe that the voters are too stupid to understand the issues without them withholding half of the story. Being part of the elite they have enormous egos and appetites. They party with those that they should be writing stories about. The story has become about them rather than those they cover. They truly believe that without them, the masses would be misled and brain washed.

[FollowingTheGrace]

The result is a blind spot for the media. They miss a lot of what is going on in society because they just don't see it. Newsrooms today are echo chambers, where reporters and editors hear the same liberal conventional wisdom over and over again.

Just this week a local, relatively conservative radio talk show did a program on media bias. One of the guests was a professor from the journalism department of the university here in town. She was genuinely puzzled about the whole issue of media bias. She kept saying that no professional journalist would ever go after a story deliberately intending to present a biased view.

While I would disagree that no professional journalist would do that--I think they often do--but most often I believe the problem is exactly this 'blind spot'. Journalists simply cannot imagine that there is another viewpoint.

[WarrenC]

And we were a lot younger then and not political at all.

At the risk of being nosy, I'm curious about what caused your and your husband's political development. Was it just the gradual 'growing up' associated with the assumption of adult responsibility or was a particular event or person involved?

[Cicero]

It cuts both ways. And, I'm afraid, mostly the other way. Clinton could never have been elected to office, gotten re-elected, or escaped impeachment if the news media had been honest.

Worse the news media's habit of twisting and distorting the news is its habit of suppressing the news. Many of the crimes that Dems commit simply never get reported.

So, sure, maybe the media pimps make the Dems overconfident. But for the most part, they have good reason to be confident. Because they can commit any kind of election fraud, raise money from the Chinese by selling them nuclear secrets, even kill off inconvenient White House aides and cabinet secretaries, and no one will ever call them to account.

[WOSG]

GOOD POINT!! The people are getting tired of Democrap lies. Case in point was Dennis Miller on Jay Leno (check the FR articles from last week) he's a former liberal who now likes Bush, and he sees through the Liberal lies .. he wants Bush to kick saddam's butt. He mentioned something striking: every time he'd go to NYC his liberal friends would complain about Guliani being a 'fascist' etc., but the main thing he noticed was that New York City kept getting cleaner and safer. Now, post 9/11, nobody calls Guliani a fascist.

I think 9/11 also put the lie about Democrat fears in stark contrast. REAL bad guys showed up and suddenly the idea of scaring women with another Scalia on the court or scaring old people that Republicans might actually reform Social Security seems ... well, seems as hollow, hyperventilated and false as it really is.

[hflynn]

There's a whole lotta misunderestimatin' going on out there.....

You got that right. Bruce doesn't get it anymore than the DNC. The GOP's Secret Weapon in the next election will be the Democratic Party nominee, Al Gore.

[anniegetyourgun]

From your lips to God's ears....

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Just for the heck of it:

[CyberAnt]

I agree with you - and if we just stand back and watch, we will see this happening with Pelosi. She will get nothing but the best of press, while the public in general will be totally opposed to her stand on issues, and her attacks on the President.

She can possibly (along with Daschle) ... totally destroy the dems/liberals chances of gaining any ground in the election of 2004.

OTOH, DeLay will be vilified in the press - while he continues to be very popular with the conservative public.

[Lancey Howard]

"Newsrooms today are echo chambers, where reporters and editors hear the same liberal conventional wisdom over and over again."

All of this hurts Democrats far more than they know. To the extent that they pay attention to their media coverage, they are cut off from the mainstream of society without even realizing it, implicitly believing that Peoria thinks like the New York Times. Indeed, since the Times has become a virtual newsletter for the Democratic party, it surely deserves some of the blame for the Democrats' 25-year trend from dominant political party to what looks like long-term minority status.

Excellent column. Good post.

[Inyokern]

I agree with you - and if we just stand back and watch, we will see this happening with Pelosi. She will get nothing but the best of press, while the public in general will be totally opposed to her stand on issues, and her attacks on the President.

Absolutely.

There have been MANY examples of this in the past. The liberal press was caught by surprise by the popularity of Oliver North at the Iran-Contra hearings. It also initially missed the public revulsion over the Wellstone funeral-rally.

[Dan Day]

I think 9/11 also put the lie about Democrat fears in stark contrast. REAL bad guys showed up and suddenly the idea of scaring women with another Scalia on the court or scaring old people that Republicans might actually reform Social Security seems ... well, seems as hollow, hyperventilated and false as it really is.

Similarly, it showed the Democrats' age-old derision of Republican concern about the military and national defense to be incredibly naive and downright dangerous.

[Dan Day]

I agree with you - and if we just stand back and watch, we will see this happening with Pelosi. She will get nothing but the best of press, while the public in general will be totally opposed to her stand on issues, and her attacks on the President. She can possibly (along with Daschle) ... totally destroy the dems/liberals chances of gaining any ground in the election of 2004.

Or:

[Paleo Conservative]

Also, Bruce Bartlett forgot to mention the concentration of news organizations in large cities on the East and West coasts. In the past news organizations could shape perceptions of the news due to the asymmetry in the information. News could be quickly distributed from New York or Washington to the rest of the country, but news from Kansas would not be covered nationally unless it fit the agendas of the New York press. Now with the internet it is possible for anyone to follow news from just about any location in the world without the fitering of large east coast news agencies.