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.
On Tuesday, conservative artist and meme creator Carpe Donktum launched a new meme repository site called MemeWorld.com. After the announcement, in a private group chat on Facebook Messenger, I tried to share the site and received an error message that stated, “You can’t share this link: memeworld.com.” That means that beyond banning conservative content on its public-facing site, Facebook is banning you from sharing content it finds objectionable with your friends in private messages.
On Wednesday, a Facebook spokesman responded to Blaze Media’s request for comment by linking to the company’s “Community Standards Enforcement Report” and said more information on the particular case would be forthcoming. The report lists categories that content can be banned for. It includes things such as terrorist activities and the ubiquitous catch-all term hate speech.
Moments after Facebook’s initial response to Blaze Media, MemeWorld.com was able to be shared on its platform. Facebook confirmed that “site was blocked in error.” A spokesman was unable to confirm what caused the error and said the company is looking into “what caused the error.”
While that’s an encouraging sign, it doesn’t change the fact that sharing the site was banned not only on Facebook’s public-facing platform, but in a private message in the first place.
It has been a tough week for narratives concerning conservatives, and those on the right, which are pumped by leftists and the media. A group of conservatives went into a black community to help with cleanup efforts, the White House honored shooting victims by flying the flag at half-mast, and Republicans are even considering some gun-control legislation.
In the latest accusation-busting move President Trump came out with comments about Colin Kaepernick, and they do not exactly line up with the years of accusations of him supposedly treating the NFL in a racist fashion.
President Trump on Colin Kapernick getting another NFL opportunity: "I'd like to see it. Frankly, I'd love see Kaepernick come in if he's good enough." https://t.co/rX5zxg6nYapic.twitter.com/vPoWA4aWRN
Well now, how could this be?! Trump was blatantly racist when he criticized Kaepernick, right? Or, just maybe, he was actually criticizing the act of kneeling by the former quarterback during the anthem, and it was not specific to his race in any way???
Trump only wants Kaepernick back in the NFL because he Trump knows Colin will continue to protest by taking a knee and he wants to use that as election tactic, not because he really thinks Kaepernick should play.
Conservative activist Scott Presler saw the same videos the rest of us did of Baltimore neighborhoods covered in garbage, and that inspired him to put together a team of 200 volunteers who picked up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours.
“Some people were believing that the people of Baltimore just don’t care or they want to live that way.
And that’s just not true. They don’t want to live that way. I think they just needed somebody to show love and that’s what we did.” –@ScottPreslerhttps://t.co/8uHQ2tfwDQ
However, The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board decided to trash Presler in the form of an op-ed. You see, “Whatever he says his motives were, Scott Presler’s presence in Baltimore reinforces the tired image that the poor people in this city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods”:
We also hope Mr. Presler keeps his promise to return to Baltimore once a month. It would definitely give his motives more credibility. It might also give him better perspective about the city’s problems than any single visit can provide. Maybe it could even lead him and his followers to advocate for federal housing, health care, transportation, education, criminal justice, civil rights and anti-poverty policies aimed at urban communities.
Twitter philanthropist Bill Pulte obviously got word of the editorial board’s hit piece and pledged $100,000 toward clean up efforts if the Sun retracts its article trashing Presler.
