The Double Standard At Work

On Tuesday, Media Research Center posted an article about how the American media is reporting on the baby formula shortage in America.

The article reports:

The Biden administration continued to unravel last week, spiraling into the 30s in several approval polls. But the network evening newscasts are doing their best to protect the President from responsibility when it comes to the many crises threatening his presidency. The latest example is the baby formula shortage with which millions of parents across the country are facing. 

Media Research Center NewsBusters analysts looked at every baby formula shortage story on the evening newscasts from when they started covering it regularly. (For ABC and NBC, that was May 9. For CBS, it was May 10.) 

Do the thirty percent who actually support President Biden buy food or gasoline?

The article continues:

According to our analysis, out of the 54 evening newscast stories on the formula crisis, only 10 featured mentions of culpability or blame for the Biden administration. The other 44 did not.

ABC’s World News Tonight offered the most stories: 22 total. Of those, however, 17 had no suggestions of blame for Biden and only three hinted that the President could have some responsibility. The CBS Evening News produced 17 total stories. Fourteen had no mention of blame compared to just three that did. Finally, Nightly News managed 15 stories on the shortage. Eleven with no mention of blame and four that dared to suggest that Biden may be responsible for things happening in the country. 

Instead, ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News projected Biden as proactive, taking decisive action to solve the spiraling crisis. On the May 18 NBC Nightly News, Lester Holt trumpeted, “Breaking news tonight, the major move by President Biden to tackle the nationwide baby formula shortage.” This is despite the fact that Biden’s FDA didn’t move to increase foreign imports of baby formula from abroad until mid-May.

As USA Today noted on May 26, “The problem was apparent months ago, long before the White House appeared to kick into high gear to respond to the crisis.” 

The article concludes:

Whether one thinks it’s fair to blame the Biden administration for the shortage, we know that the Trump administration (and Republican presidents in general) don’t get the benefit of the doubt on things like this. Also, as I explained in a May 24, 2022 study for NewsBusters, journalists had no interest in assigning blame on Biden for the skyrocketing gas prices. 

Afghanistan, inflation, gas prices, the baby formula shortage. When it comes to network reporting, nothing seems to be Joe Biden’s fault. The American public clearly don’t agree with this assessment, but the press is doing its best to cover for the President. 

Can you imagine what President Trump could have accomplished if he had had this kind of media coverage?

The Plot That Was Ignored

On Monday, The Independent Journal Review posted an article about the media silence about the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The article reports:

It has not even been a week since an armed man was arrested after allegedly aborting an attempt to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and yet the story appears to have largely disappeared from the headlines.

Kevin Tober of the conservative Media Research Center’s NewsBusters tracked the amount of time major news outlets’ Sunday shows spent on the incident.

According to Tober, ABC News spent zero minutes on the Kavanaugh story and 19 minutes and eleven seconds on the Jan. 6 committee hearings.

It may well be that the mainstream media is reluctant to report on the attempted murder of Justice Kavanaugh because too many Americans will remember the following statement by Senator Schumer (source of quote here):

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer shouted. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”

There was a time when that statement would have at least resulted in censure by the Senate, but in the current political paradigm, the statement was barely noted. Senator Schumer did not cause the planned attack on Justice Kavanaugh, but he certainly set the political climate for the attack.

The Role Of The Media In The 2020 Presidential Election

Yesterday The Washington Times (the link is to the article posted on outline, as I don’t have a subscription to The Washington Times) posted an article about the role of the media in the 2020 Presidential election.

The article reports:

A new post-election poll conducted by the Media Research Center reveals that 36% of voters who chose presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden were not aware of the evidence linking him “to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter Biden,” noted an analysis of the findings released Monday.

“Thirteen percent of these voters (or 4.6% of Biden’s total vote) say that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for the former Vice President. Such a shift away from Biden would have meant President Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes,” the conservative press watchdog noted.

The greater implication: Press coverage was at fault.

“It is an indisputable fact that the media stole the election. The American electorate was intentionally kept in the dark. During the height of the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, the media and the big tech companies did everything in their power to cover it up. Twitter and Facebook limited sharing of the New York Post’s reports, and the liberal media omitted it from their coverage or dismissed it as Russian disinformation,” says Brent Bozell, founder of the center.

Remember that The New York Post was shut out of Twitter for posting an article about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Any articles dealing with Biden family corruption are immediately fact-checked by Facebook. My right wing granny group on Facebook has been charged with sharing false information (anyone can join, please do). There is a mass exodus from Facebook right now. I am not sure how permanent it will be. As much as it is nice to communicate with old friends, it is not so nice to be brainwashed. Actions have consequences, and Facebook may be facing those consequences.

Wouldn’t You?

If you had a person in your life that was constantly spreading gossip about you that was not true, would you allow that person to remain in your life? That is roughly the situation between President Trump and Bloomberg News.

In 2017, The Washington Examiner reporting the following:

How negative was press coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office? Far more than that of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, according to a new report from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

The Harvard scholars analyzed the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the main newscasts (not talk shows) of CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC during Trump’s initial time in office. They found, to no one’s surprise, that Trump absolutely dominated news coverage in the first 100 days. And then they found that news coverage was solidly negative — 80 percent negative among those outlets studied, versus 20 percent positive.

The numbers for previous presidents: Barack Obama, 41 percent negative, 59 percent positive; George W. Bush, 57 percent negative, 43 percent positive; and Bill Clinton, 60 percent negative, 40 percent positive.

Things have not changed–on November 13, 2019, CNS News reported the following:

On Tuesday, nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Levin demonstrated how corrupt and bias network news has become, by quoting extensively from a new Media Research Center (MRC) study documenting the overwhelmingly negative coverage of President Donald Trump.

Levin used the opening segment of his show to explore the findings of a study by NewBusters, a division of MRC (as is CNSNews.com):

“Media Research Center: now, that’s a solid organization, come hell or high water. Pressure or no pressure. Because, (MRC President) Brent Bozell is a patriot, as are the people who work with him and for him. And, they stay on it. They will not be deterred.

“And, in a fantastic piece today: ‘Impeachment Frenzy: TV Networks Blast Trump with 96% Negative News’ – That should be the headline right there.”

How can a President be expected to run a country with that kind of news coverage?

At any rate, yesterday Hot Air reported the following:

Bloomberg News decided that it would grant Bloomy’s primary opponents an exemption from investigative coverage but couldn’t grant that sort of exemption to a sitting president, setting up a double standard in which Democratic candidates get a free pass while the Republican nominee is scrutinized. That’s the sort of unworkable ethical nightmare Mike Bloomberg created for his own news agency by choosing to run despite having no realistic path to the nomination. Today the Trump campaign struck back, saying that if Bloomberg News can’t investigate — or won’t investigate — all candidates equally then they’ll no longer be credentialed for Trump campaign events.

The only difference between Bloomberg and the rest of the mainstream media is that Bloomberg is at least being honest about what they are doing. Wouldn’t you kick them off the bus?

There Is A Certain Amount Of Irony In This

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a statement made by Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe editorial page.

The article reports:

We are not the enemy of the people,’’ said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe editorial page.

…The Boston Globe‘s effort calls on participating editorial boards to coordinate criticisms of Trump’s critiques of news media outlets. Approximately 70 publications have committed to the effort so far.

Pritchard described the president’s criticisms of various news media outlets and figures as an undermining of the First Amendment.

Now wait a minute. It seems to me that a coordinated effort by the media to coordinate criticism be the problem–not the solution.

The article also quotes Jim Acosta:

In April 2017, CNN’s Jim Acosta similarly framed Trump’s criticisms of his employer as a subversion of the First Amendment:

As much as people wanna beat up on CNN and go after CNN and “CNN sucks” and that sort of thing, what [Breitbart News] does, I was with Steve Bannon the other day where he referred to us as the opposition party, once again. We’re not the opposition party. We are just trying to get at the truth.

Really. On July 29, Townhall reported:

President Donald J. Trump unloaded today on the mainstream media for contributing to the dilapidated state of trust in America’s institutions and his administration, saying that 90% of the coverage was negative, which has put the lives of many at risk.

…The 90% figure is corroborated by two studies, one taken in 2017 and one taken in 2018, conducted by the Media Research Center which “studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the President from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative — precisely the same hostile tone we documented in 2017.” 

Somehow I don’t think those numbers indicate that the media is simply trying to get to the truth.

I Robbed A Bank, But That Was Okay Since It Helped Them Improve Their Security Measures

The Media Research Center posted a startling article yesterday about a media outlet in America and their attitude toward truth.

The article reports:

ABC openly admitted Sunday to having published “fake news” – their words, not mine – about the Trump administration “losing” 1,500 migrant children, a debunked story that quickly caught fire and spawned countless hashtag campaigns and anti-ICE protests across the country. (Here’s MSNBC’s Chris Hayes boo-hooing over the whole nonsensical thing about a month ago.)

Now, well after the myth has been permanently ensconced as fact in the brains of millions of rapid anti-Trumpers nationwide, ABC’s admitting the entire thing was false – but, in a stunning feat of mental gymnastics, they claim the bogus story ended up being a good thing.

In an article actually entitled, “A fake news story helps expose a real crisis,” author Lauren Pearle admits the Trump administration was unfairly accused of having “lost” 1,500 kids who’d crossed the southwest U.S. border illegally – a claim I’d disputed in a video roughly four weeks ago, only to be accused of Nazism by radical progressives.

But by ABC’s own admission (and as I’d pointed out), the administration didn’t “lose” anyone; they’d simply placed these kids with sponsors, usually a family member, who didn’t respond when the government tried to check up on the child.

Wow. So it’s okay to report news that is false as long as you believe it serves a higher purpose. Does that mean it’s okay for your child to tell you a lie if that serves a higher purpose? Is it okay for your government to lie to you if that serves a higher purpose? Whatever happened to the concept of integrity.

The article explains what actually happened at the border:

Pearle doesn’t point out, of course, that the Obama administration also had a policy of temporarily separating families at the border (a fact MSNBC finally and begrudgingly admitted after weeks of slamming Trump), albeit to a lesser extent given the administration’s policy of simply releasing illegal aliens into the country without so much as a slap on the wrist. In fact, the policy of family separation was first launched after the Obama administration was sued for holding migrant children in detention facilities with their parents for extended periods of time – a court case that ended when the Ninth Circuit ruled these kids couldn’t be held for more than 20 days.

When the Trump administration reversed the previous policy of simply letting illegal alien families go free, that Obama-era court decision resulted in temporary family separations.

Is it okay to lie because you have an agenda to push and then claim it was done for higher purposes? Evidently the mainstream media thinks so.

Why Americans Are Not Listening To The Mainstream Media

The Daily Caller posted an article today that totally explains why Americans have tuned out the mainstream media.

The article reminds us:

Taiwanese company Foxconn is bringing thousands of jobs to Wisconsin, but you wouldn’t hear more than 40 seconds about it on any broadcast network Wednesday night.

ABC, CBS, and NBC spent so much time covering the controversies of the Trump administration, that they had hardly any time to talk about its successes, according to a new study by the Media Research Center.

…All networks ignored the fact that the Dow Jones’ Industrial Average hit another all-time high Wednesday.

…The networks also ignored the arrest of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT aide while he was attempting to flee the country, a story The Daily Caller has been covering for months.

A free press is one of the foundations of a representative republic. Our foundation has forgotten its job.

How Media Bias Works

Media bias is reflected in the slant of stories. It is also reflected by the stories the media promotes and the stories the media ignores.

On Friday The Washington Examiner posted an article that illustrates what media bias looks like.

The article states:

The House voted to pass two immigration measures on Thursday, but both ABC and CBS completely omitted that information from their nightly news programs.

On “NBC Nightly News,” anchor Lester Holt dedicated just 26 seconds to the story after leading his program with a three minute segment on President Trump‘s tweets about Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, according to a survey of the coverage conducted by the conservative Media Research Center.

One of the immigration reform bills voted on by the House, Kate’s Law, passed with bipartisan support, a newsworthy development amid heightened partisanship in Washington. The bill also touches a topic about which people have very strong feelings. Although it’s unlikely the legislation will survive a vote in the Senate, the decision by two of the three major networks simply to blow it off is somewhat remarkable. The law passed more than an hour before either broadcast aired, a development that had been widely anticipated all week.

Kate’s Law increases the penalties for deported aliens who try to return to the United States. It passed by a vote of 257 to 157, with one Republican voting no and 24 Democrats voting yes. A bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives should be news–it hasn’t happened a lot lately.

Why was the media concentrating on President Trump’s tweets instead of the passage of Kate’s Law? There are many people on both sides of the political spectrum who didn’t like what President Trump tweeted. When you ignore the constant attacks on President Trump and his family by Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough (as the media coverage generally did), President Trump was being rude. However, when you look at the tweet in the context of the constant attacks on President Trump and his family, why would you expect him not to fight back? The media used to respect the privacy of children of presidents. Under the Trump Administration, that no longer holds true. I think the attention and the slant the mainstream media is giving President Trump’s tweets while ignoring a major news story explains why no one believes them or depends on them for honest news.

Generally Missed In The Major Media

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about the March for Life in Washington Friday.

The article reports:

Despite the cold and an incoming blizzard, tens of thousands of Americans gathered together from across the country Friday to speak out for the nearly 60 million babies destroyed by abortion.

…There were fewer participants than years past, but tens of thousands still attended the march, according to March for Life organizers – as visible in the video.

“We were extremely pleased with what appeared to be tens of thousands of Americans who came together to celebrate life today despite the weather conditions,” said Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, in a statement to MRC Culture. “Today we proved our commitment to this cause, and protecting all life, especially for the unborn.”

…The broadcast networks and news outlets have long misrepresented the March for Life. In response, the Media Research Center, along with other organizations, recently formed an Alliance for Fair Coverage of Life Issues to hold the media accountable.

 

The pro-life movement is growing as many young people who have a scientific background begin to realize what an abortion is–the taking of an unborn life. Someone with a very wry sense of humor has also mentioned that those who are in favor of abortion are already born. We need to find an alternative to abortion. That alternative may include adoption, bringing back the idea of morality to our children, and encouraging them to focus on career goals when they are young. The number of unborn babies that are killed in America in a given year is frightening. Abortion (other than to save the life of the mother) needs to stop.

 

 

The Money Behind ‘Net Neutrality’

The Washington Examiner posted a story today about the funding behind the support for net neutrality. Net neutrality is the politically correct expression used to describe the federal government’s takeover of the internet.

The article reports:

“The Ford Foundation, which claims to be the second-largest private foundation in the U.S., and Open Society Foundations, founded by far-left billionaire George Soros, have given more than $196 million to pro-net neutrality groups between 2000 and 2013,” said the report, authored by Media Research Center’s Joseph Rossell, and provided to Secrets.

“These left-wing groups not only impacted the public debate and funded top liberal think tanks from the Center for American Progress to Free Press. They also have direct ties to the White House and regulatory agencies. At least five individuals from these groups have ascended to key positions at the White House and FCC,” said the report which included funding details to pro-net neutrality advocates.

This is a government takeover of the internet. It is also unconstitutional–Congress has not passed this law–it was passed by the Federal Communications Commission.

Yesterday The Examiner posted a story about the lack of cooperation between the FCC and Congress regarding this law.

The Examiner reported:

On the eve of the highly controversial attempt by Barack Obama and the Democrats to seize the Internet, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler flat-out refused to appear before Congress for questioning. Wheeler has also refused to provide information to Congress about the government takeover, demanding that Congress approve the proposal for the federal government to seize the Internet — deceptively called “Internet neutrality” — without knowing a thing about what they are approving.

…Supporters of so called net neutrality have a hidden agenda they wish to implement. Under the new rules the FCC would have the power to intrude upon and regulate free speech and freedom of the press. Collectivists have long decried the power of the people when the Internet is used to jettison their dependence on government-approved “news,” such as that which is provided by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Government elitists fear the truth in the hands of the people, and the Internet has allowed the people to do their own independent research and news gathering. Hillary Clinton, for example, has complained about having “too many news sources.” She further stated that the “net neutrality” regulations would give collectivists a “foot in the door” in the gradual move to totally control the Internet. Hillary once stated in 1998 that Internet news “needs a rethink.”

Regardless of the motives and long-term goals of the FCC, it has become obvious in recent years that more federal regulation is never a good thing. The only good news in this is that net neutrality will be tied up in the courts for years.

Quote Of The Week

From a Brent Bozell column at NewsBusters on September 22:

“One satirist put this hyperbole in perspective. Fouad Ajami recounted a mock Twitter statement by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, presently butchering his Muslim subjects.“Wow, it’s good that I’ve been killing women and children. It’s good I’ve been shelling mosques,” said the fake tweet. “Imagine what would have happened had I made an anti-Muslim video. They would have really come after me.””

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Why The Internet Media Is Important

On Tuesday, Newsbusters posted a story about the mainstream media‘s recent praise for the successful government bailout of General Motors.

The article cited some of the facts given in the mainstream reports and the things that were not mentioned:

 Not mentioned was the auto bailout will lose us about $30 billion

General Motors (NYSE:GM) Cheers to Reports US Sales Surges 16%

General Motors (NYSE:GM) Beats Analysts Sales Forecasts

GM Sees Highest Sales Since September

Almost all of this $30 billion Taxpayer loss was in fact a gi-normous payoff of the Obama-Democrat stalwart United Autoworkers Union.

GM Races Higher on Sales Report

GM Sales Rise 16%

GM June US Sales Rose 16%

The Blaze is reporting today:

As it turns out, there’s a big reason GM experienced an increase in sales last month: “government purchases of GM vehicles rose a whopping 79% in June,” according to the National Legal and Policy Center’s Mark Modica.

The article at Newsbusters made a wonderful comparison:

That’s like you setting up a lemonade stand for your kids.  You buy them the lemons, sugar, cups and pitchers – and then buy most of the lemonade yourself.

Except you are President Obama.  Your kids are the United Autoworkers Union.  And the lemonade cost $50 billion.

At least you get to tax your neighbors for the $50 billion.

When you hear President Obama listing the saving of General Motors as one of his accomplishments, understand that you are still paying for that accomplishment, that senior citizens and others who held preferred stock in the company got the shaft, and that it really was not so much of an accomplishment.

Another reason I proudly drive my Ford Mustang!

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Unfortunate, But Necessary

Newsbusters is reporting tonight that the producer who created the altered recording of George Zimmerman’s 911 call has been fired. The network is refusing to name the producer, but has fired him.

The article reports:

The editing of the segment was initially noticed by NewsBusters, an arm of the Media Research Center, a conservative media monitoring group. On March 31, NBC told The Washington Post that it would investigate. […]

The people with direct knowledge of the firing characterized the misleading edit as a mistake, not a purposeful act.

I have no way of knowing whether the editing was done on purpose or whether it was accidental. I do know that it painted Mr. Zimmerman as a racist when there was no actual evidence to support that charge. Because of the way the tape was edited, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other professional racial complainers got involved in something that was totally the result of editing a tape in a way that was thoroughly misleading. Thank God for the fact that NewsBusters caught on to what was done and spoke up.

This story is another example of why we need the Internet. All media needs to be held accountable (even the Internet). Generally it is the Internet that holds the mainstream media accountable, but I am sure there are examples of the reverse.

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