There’s more hypocrisy in journalism now than there is in politics.
On today’s show we talk about the anger from liberal journalists about being held to the standards they hold everyone else to. Also, a one-term, backbench former Congressman turned failed radio host is challenging President Trump for the Republican nomination, CNN’s Brain “the human potato” Stelter thinks Trump is mentally unfit for office while Joe Biden continues to show he might not be.
Rather than a serious campaign kick-off with a crowd of supporters, former Congressman Joe Walsh went on “This Week” to announce his candidacy. It was welcome news in liberal newsrooms, while the American people who heard about it had one question on their lips: Who? We have the audio and explain why there was no formal campaign event (he likely couldn’t gather a crowd).
The New York Times is very upset that conservatives are searching social media posts of liberal journalists and digging up past racist/sexist/anti-Semitic/embarrassing things their employees have said. In essence, liberals do not want to be treated the way they’ve treated every conservative, both public and private citizens, for the last decade. We get into all of it.
Brian Stelter, AKA the human potato, had a psychiatrist on his show who thinks calling Donald Trump crazy is an insult to crazy people and the President could be responsible for more deaths and Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. Stelter offered no rebuttal of follow-up question, claiming he wasn’t able to hear the comments. That doesn’t explain why no one who works on the show told him either at the time or during a commercial break.
Stelter also thinks his idea that the President is mentally unfit for office is something the media needs to focus on more. To make his case, he relies on comments from noted Trump haters. Seems Stelter’s “analysis” is as unbiased as his employer’s reporting.
Mainstream news coverage does not reflect the political make-up of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Mainstream media is exceedingly likely to cover news through a partisan filter. So it’s no surprise that liberals and conservatives are polarized when it comes to news sources they trust and utilize.
In 2019, Media Research Center analyzed 540 hours of news coverage on CNN and MSNBC over three randomly-selected weeks. The two networks conducted nearly the same number of interviews with members of Congress. In total, they interviewed 284 Democratic members of congress compared to just 40 Republican. MSNBC leaned even more to the left, as they interviewed 148 Democrats and only 11 republicans.
Both networks gave opposing questions to the Republicans but gave friendly questions to the Democrats. Meaning, they focused on Democratic talking points and agendas.
It’s common practice to ask a political interviewee to give an answer to the argument of the opposite side, but consistently asking Republicans to answer to Democratic talking points, while hardly ever asking Democrats to do the same thing, speaks to the fact that the networks are actually choosing sides.
Eric Merkley, a contributor to the American Politics and Policy website who specializes in public opinion and political communication, recently studied 400,000 news stories on economics published over three decades and found that the mainstream portrayed liberal politicians in a better light than their conservative colleagues.
The news stories were on unemployment and inflation between 1985 and 2013 from the Associated Press and a variety of mainstream newspapers, including the New York Times, USA Today, and those with histories of backing the Republican Party, such as the Dallas Morning News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
He found that the tenor on economic news is more favorable during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican. He also found that only Republican administrations are treated with more negative coverage in response to short-term increases in unemployment or the inflation rate.
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