What Media Bias? Part 194

Geesh:

ABC is defending its decision to edit out an apparently erroneous claim by Michelle Obama in its broadcast of the first lady’s interview on Good Morning America today, saying it made the changes “solely” for the sake of time.

As The Washington Examiner reported this morning, the first lady claimed during an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts that 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in Chicago shortly after performing during the President’s Inauguration, was shot because “some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need.”

In fact, Chicago Police reported Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with a handgun before fleeing in a waiting car,” according to the Associated Press…

Yeah, for the sake of time.  Now, any time President Bush inadvertently mangled English, the MSM always had plenty of time to show it – over and over and over again.  Now here’s the First Lady making a flat out false statement and all of a sudden, “oh, we’re so pressed for time, can’t even show it once!”.

You believe that, then I’ve got a bridge for sale in Brooklyn…

What Media Bias? Part 193

Walter Russel Mead lays it out:

…The news from Afghanistan is grim. With the latest round of deaths, we pass a milestone: 2,000 US combatants have died in what is now the longest war in American history. The milestone has been reached just as the surge in troops has come to an end without achieving the goals of pacifying the country or even launching peace talks with the Taliban. Our Afghan “allies” remain as corrupt and ineffectual as ever, with the added wrinkle that the most dangerous place in Afghanistan for US troops these days seems to be the neighborhood of US-armed and trained Afghan forces, who are shooting and blowing up their nominal allies faster than the Taliban can do it.

This is all bad news and very disturbing, but there is a crumb of comfort to be had. Because these failures happened on President Obama’s watch, the mainstream press isn’t particularly interested in relentless, non-stop scrutiny of the unpleasant news. If George W. Bush were president now, and had ordered the surge and was responsible for the strategic decisions taken and not taken in Afghanistan over the last four years, the mainstream press would be rubbing our noses in his miserable failures and inexcusable blunders 24/7…

And every last one of you reading this – especially your liberals – knows this is true.  You can say all you want that the war started on Bush’s watch; you can say this, that and the other thing to excuse Obama – but you all know darn well that if a Republican were President right now, the stories about the collapse in Afghanistan would lead the news day after day after day.  Just think for a moment what it would be like if McCain had won in 2008 and Obama was just now taking his second shot at the Presidency.  The MSM would never let this pass, not for a second…and we’d have days of news reports marking the 2,000th American death in Afghanistan.

I really do think I have to retire the title of this post – as you can see, its been going on for a long time.  But a more correct title these days would be “What Venal and Corrupt Press?”.  Because this has gone beyond bias.  This is far more than just a willingness to soften the blows for liberals and turn up the heat on conservatives – this is a disgusting failure to do the very basics of journalism:  at least attempt to bring the truth to the people.

Obama’s Failure, Media Attacks Romney

Here are some of the things we have learned in the past day.

Obama has apparently skipped intelligence briefings for the past week. A rather bizarre thing for the days leading up to the anniversary of September 11th.

Despite threats, the U.S. consulate in Libya was not guarded by U.S. Military.

The attacks appeared to be well coordinated and planned for the 9/11 anniversary.

Yet, somehow, the media has tried to turn this situation into a negative for Romney. Their efforts to do so turned to be as well coordinated as the attacks in Egypt and Cairo appeared to be.

Amazing isn’t it? Since Obama’s convention we’ve had an abysmal jobs report come out, a teachers’ strike in Obama’s hometown of Chicago and now this. Obama has had a rather terrible week, resulting from his bad policies, lack of leadership, inexperience and incompetence, and the media does everything it can to not hold him accountable.v

What Media Bias? Part 192

Though this might be “What Attacks on Mormonism?, Part 1″, depending on how you look at it – from Warner Todd Huston over at Breitbart:

As the race for the White House heats up, Reuters suddenly realized that the massive Mormon Church has a lot of money in its bank accounts. The news service went on to needle the Church, saying if it were a business “wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.”

Reuters took the if-it-were-a-business theme even farther in its opening paragraphs.

“It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth — the Mormons’ return on investment.”

Of course, a religion is not a “business” proposition. A religion does not operate like a company does, it has far different goals. But assessing a religion wasn’t Reuters’ goal here. Making Mormons out to be “rich” elitists that act suspiciously and are pushing a snobbish presidential candidate on the nation was Reuters’ goal…

This from the same MSM which essentially went all “Reverend Wright, who?” in 2008.  I don’t recall any stories about how Wright’s organization was financed – and that leaves aside anything more than a glance at the fact that Obama attended a racist, anti-American church for 20 years.

One might want to think that there would be only one trip in to the gutter for our Democrats and their lapdog MSM in 2012 – forget it; they’ll troll in every gutter there is.  They will attack Romney because he’s rich.  They’ll attack him because he’s white.  They’ll attack him because he’s Mormon.  They’ll attack him as a war monger and they’ll attack him because he had college and missionary deferments during the Vietnam War.  They will lie.  They will launch whispering campaigns claiming all sorts of horrors about Romney’s past.  They will attack his wife.  They will attack his children.  They will attack his friends.  They will try to intimidate people in the right blogosphere who are favorable to Romney.  This will be the dirtiest political campaign in human history and the MSM will be right there in the trenches with the DNC, doing what they can to help Obama.

So, just get ready for it – it will get nauseating but the payoff will be the crestfallen looks on MSM faces on November 6th.

 

 

Johnny Depp-Gate?

Could it be true? A lavish Halloween party kept secret for two years?

In someways it was hardly a secret, as there appears to have been enough opportunity for a media that would do its job to report on it.

Newt Did NOT Agree With Mitt on Health Care

As far as misleading headlines go in this primary campaign season, this one from ABC News certainly ranks up there as one the most egregious:

Gingrich ’06 Memo: “Agree Entirely With Gov. Romney” on Health Care

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard links to the actual memo, which reveals, quite clearly, that Newt did not “agree entirely” with Mitt on health care, and certainly did not “love” the Massachusetts health care plan, as was suggested in the story.

It’s unfortunate that the Drudge Report linked to the ABC News story, as if the headline and the claim were legitimate. The only question I have is this, who in the GOP field is ABC News trying to help? Ron Paul?

Shocking News: The MSM Didn’t Do its Job!

Just a bit flabbergasted by this from Rex Murphy at the National Post:

As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue. American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since…

…The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency…

This is, I guess, all a bit of a surprise for Murphy – but, for me, the surprise is that in 2011 anyone could still be shocked by the MSM liberal bias.  I mean, come on:  let’s review:

1.  The MSM covered up relentlessly for the Clinton’s when Bill was in office.  No real questions about the massive, illegal fundraising (it is actually illegal for Al Gore to have collected a bag of foreign cash from a Buddhist monastery).  No real attempt to investigate just why the Congressional GOP decided to impeach (honestly, it really is illegal for a President to lie under oath and suborn perjury…even if it is “just about sex”).

2.  Hillary was allowed to coast to the Senate in New York without the MSM ever asking just why a first lady of no discernible gifts or experience should be allowed to carpetbag her way in to the Senate.

3.  Al Gore was puffed up like no tomorrow in spite  of his part in illegal fund raising and his definite lack of intellectual heft, executive experience or leadership ability.

4.  John Kerry got a complete pass on how badly he lied about American soldiers in Vietnam and was allowed to present himself in the MSM as a war hero, rather than being correct portrayed as a back-stabber who threw his war comrades under the bus in order to ride anti-war, liberal sentiment in to high office.

5.  And then comes Barry – the fifth in the series.  And someone is surprised that the MSM carried his water?  Covered up for him?  Slandered his opponents?  This isn’t about a love affair with Obama; it is the MSM determination that whomever opposes a Republican will get good press.  Sure, there was probably an added zest to MSM lies and cover-ups as they were thrilled that they got to do it for a black man (convinced, as they are, that we’re all racists, this was just another way for them to stick it to us, in their minds)…but had Hillary got the nomination, they would have been just as sycophantic to her, just as slanderous against McCain (and Palin) and just as determined to re-elect her as they are, today, to re-elect Obama (stories of the MSM turning on Obama are false…one or two MSMers with a shred of honor might, but most of them will never stray from the party line).

This is what the MSM does – and I was delighted the other day to hear Rush refer to an AP reporter as the “stenographer” of the report…that is pretty much it:  whatever comes out of the DNC and the Obama campaign will be slavishly retailed to the American people.  A few oddities will creep in – the MSM does like to be able to refer to those few instances where they spoke the truth (usually on page 3 or later and always outweighed many times by the lies and cover-ups)…but the basic thrust of MSM reporting will be the burnish Obama and his Democrats and slander the Republicans.  And if the GOP wins next year, the MSM won’t learn their lesson, at all…they’ll just keep slandering the Republicans and wait for the next liberal messiah (which will be fun for us, because it will probably be governor Cuomo of New York).

It doesn’t matter how stupid a Democrat is:  the MSM will say they’re smart.  It doesn’t matter how corrupt a Democrat is:  the MSM will always say that the GOP is more corrupt.  It doesn’t matter how incompetent a Democrat is:  the MSM will just say he has an unusual leadership style.  Short of murdering someone on live television, there is nothing a Democrat can do to break MSM support…they will always find some justification for him; some excuse for failure; some slander to hit back at the GOP with.  In a real sense it has gone beyond bias and turned in to slavish devotion…that the MSMers feel any dissent from the Democrats is treason to all that is good and beautiful in the world.

And, so, don’t anyone act surprised…but, also, don’t anyone act concerned.  The people have tuned out the MSM – automatically discounting any bit of nonsense they put up and learning to read between the lines, just as citizens of totalitarian nations are required to do.  By filling in the gaps with what is not reported, but is obvious, the truth is made clear…and made doubly so by the increasing number of people relying on the New Media for the full story.

What Media Bias? Part 191

Brietbart catches MSNBC clearly editing a Perry speech in order to make it seem like Perry is making a racist comment about Obama.

Just get ready for it, good people…there will be no gutter un-trolled by the left in their efforts to get Obama re-elected.