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.
The liberal elite moaned and groaned and whined and whinnied.
The New York Times changed its headline.
If you were looking for proof — real, solid proof — that the once-great New York Times takes its marching orders from the liberal elite in the Democratic Party, look no further.
After two mass shootings within hours left 32 dead and 52 wounded, President Trump delivered a somber statement from the White House on Monday. He laid out several avenues as potential solutions, called for unity and bipartisanship, soothed Americans as the comforter-in-chief and loudly denounced racism and white supremacy.
“Together, we lock arms to shoulder the grief, we ask God in Heaven to ease the anguish of those who suffer, and we vow to act with urgent resolve,” he said.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America,” he said.
“Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside — so destructive — and find the courage to answer hatred with unity, devotion, and love,” he said.
The New York Times captured the essence of the president’s speech with a headline for its first print edition that read: “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM.” The headline carried no bias for either Left or Right, simply summing up the expansive message Trump had delivered.
But the Left went nuts — absolutely nuts. How dare The Times not bash Trump as a racist?!
So (are you sitting down?) the New York Times CHANGED ITS HEADLINE.
The lapdog MSM has continued to give Obama a pass on most of his assault on the press. If they’d shown anywhere near the outrage they show now towards President Trump’s words for Obama’s actions, maybe they could be taken seriously.
On Thursday, the Columbia Journalism Review reported on the results of a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Obama Justice Department’s attempts to crack down on leaks to reporters which reveal that the Obama administration’s actions against the press “were broader than previously known.”
CJR’s report, authored by Ramya Krishnan and Trevor Timm, is based on a highly redacted 59-page report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility completed Dec. 9, 2014 and obtained via FOIA request by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (where Krishnan and Timm work, respectively).
“In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom, issuing sweeping subpoenas for the phone records of the Associated Press and several of its reporters and editors as part of a leak investigation,” the authors report. While those subpoenas have long been understood as “a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations,” they note, the recently unearthed 2014 report reveals that the subpoenas targeting AP “told only part of the story.”
The Office of Professional Responsibility’s report on the Obama Justice Department’s subpoenas of AP phone records reveals that “the DOJ’s actions against the AP were broader than previously known, and that the DOJ considered subpoenaing the phone records of other news organizations, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC News,” the authors explain. The report also reveals “how narrowly the DOJ interprets the Media Guidelines, the agency’s internal rules for obtaining reporters’ data.”
