On election night, Chris Matthews said out loud what many liberals in the media were thinking…
I’m so glad we had that storm last week because I think the storm was one of those things. No, politically I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.
What the storm brought was the ability of the media to laud the president for doing basically nothing other than looking presidential. There’s no proof that FEMA handled the Hurricane Sandy disaster any better than it handled the Hurricane Katrina disaster, yet the press lauded the president for his “leadership” and mocked Romney for his work to organize a disaster response from the public. I guess you have to be liberal before you get respect for being a community organizer.
But conservatives have long known about the left-tilt of the mainstream media. Liberals dominate most areas of the media, and they’re not afraid to peddle their worldview for all to see.
That said, it’s helpful to offer definitive evidence of this, which the Pew Research Center did this week when it released data showing that, in the last week of the election, media coverage turned largely positive for the president. At the same time, media coverage of Romney stayed largely negative, with the media twice as likely to run negative stories about Romney as positive. This is what conservative candidates have long had to endure, constant negative press which makes it that much harder for them to win elections.
The 2012 campaign, however, was epic in this sense. We’ve long known Chris Matthews, with his out-of-the-closet man crush on Obama, to be the King of Liberal Media Bias. But the Queen of Liberal Media Bias was newly crowned in 2012. Her name is Candy Crowley and she actively interrupted Romney during the second debate to defend the president on a point where she and the president were both incorrect. Never before in the history of presidential debates has a moderator joined the debate to defend a candidate. Now that this precedent has been set, I’m sure future Republican presidential candidates will have to deal with similar tactics.
But the Hurricane Sandy disaster was an excuse by many in the media to not only laud the president for doing what any president should do, but also to largely ignore Romney. Which, of course, is why you have Matthews saying in a moment of clarity what most liberals in the mainstream press had been thinking for a week; “thank goodness Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast and gave us a chance to make Obama look good for a change.” Of course the storm “brought in possibilities for good politics.” It brought the possibility of undoing the momentum that Romney had built up for himself in October. And the mainstream press was thrilled to have the opportunity. To millions, Hurricane Sandy was a disaster they may never fully recover from. To media liberals, it was a Godsend!
There is a silver lining is all of this. Fortunately for conservatives, Romney will not be inheriting the mess President Obama left for him. This time, Obama inherits his own mess.
November 20th, 2012 at 2:39 am
Luckily the liberal “media” is going out of business fast. Can’t wait until the last newspaper closes and the network news goes dark.
November 20th, 2012 at 5:44 am
George Soros will keep on funding the Liberal Media.
November 20th, 2012 at 7:40 am
I, for one, already miss a fat Sunday paper that took hours to read and lament the death of print media.
Do you prefer that the media only “agrees”.
That seems like a boring prospect.
I would, however, like to see the demise of the more outspoken commentators as they only serve to polarize our country.
Everything is exaggerated and no matter what the government does, it is divisive.
They are in it for ratings, so they turn up the rhetoric with no regard for the fallout.
People mistake this nonense for “news”.
Everyday “we are on the precipice of disaster”.
What if we had multiple cable networks and talk radio and Internet sites in 1939?
November 20th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Buzz,
I agree with many of your points regarding the media’s need for constant drama. The media never wants a one-sided election because that doesn’t sell well. And bad news sells better generally than good news.
At the same time, I don’t want media to agree. Personally, I enjoy shows where you see various sides debating. I listen pretty exclusively to the Michael Medved radio show because he favors disagreeing callers, and on Thursdays has a segment where you can only call if you disagree. So you get three hours of debate day, which I find to be enlightening.
I just think the media should be up front about where they stand. People scoff because Fox News calls itself “Fair and Balanced,” but they’re not trying to say they are perfectly balanced in every respect. They lean to the right and they want you to know it because that is the niche they are pursuing in the market. What they try to do, and I think do fairly well, is give all sides time to make their points.
For all I know, Murdoch might be a liberal, but he saw an underserved market for conservative-leaning commentary and he designed Fox News to meet that demand. MSNBC saw an opportunity to serve very left-leaning customers and designed it’s approach to meet that demand. That’s fine, we know where they both stand.
The fact is, however, that most of the mainstream media leans left. And in the past two presidential cycles, the media has gone out of its way to help elect and re-elect Obama. So be it. I much prefer this to some kind of forced fairness. It is just ironic to me that Fox News is villified by liberals when the balance of media power lies squarely within their domain of influence.
November 20th, 2012 at 10:17 am
I think I should add that, in the past, the mainstream media enjoyed a broad, left-leaning consensus. The liberal worldview was reflected consistently in the media with very little dissension. That consensus is fading with the growing influence of conservative voices in the media. To me, that’s all to the good.
November 20th, 2012 at 11:03 am
I think most of the “left lean” of the mainstream media is mostly inadvertent.
Do they skew left? Sure, but I don’t know how much is purposeful. It is certainly less due to Bernie Goldberg’s expose.
Most of the staff went to Northeast colleges that certainly have a liberal curriculum. Heck, college in general is liberal. There is certainly a chicken or the egg argument to be made, but if someone is educated at Brown or Cornell or very commonly, Syracuse, they will, at the very least, be unconsciously liberal.
Regarding Murdoch, while I think Murdoch is certainly fulfilling a need for the sake of money, his tweets of the last week certainly added to his reputation as being right wing (and oddly lacking in public relations wisdom). I think he has since removed them, but they were both Anti-Semitic and Pro-Israel all at the same time. (I will at some point rehash the odd defense of Murdoch by commenter’s on this site at the time of the phone hacking scandal as if he is some esteemed American statesman, when he is not American, a statesmen or even deserving of esteem)
So is the mainstream media (which is, by the way, a terrible term as it encompasses a wide array of outlets) left-leaning? Sure, but is it on purpose?
Either way, the sheer magnitude of “commentary” does serve as a catalyst for an “us vs. them” mentality in politics.
The electorate is thus polarized and the result is they demand a no compromise candidate and then insist on bipartisanship.
The exit polls overwhelmingly suggested they want bipartisanship, but if they do engage in such a practice they are “Dick Lugared”.
Tough situation.
November 20th, 2012 at 11:21 am
The reason I mention 1939 is because of comments my 87 year old (extremely right wing) father has made.
I previously commented about this on this site regarding the whole “the world is ending” nature of present-day rhetoric.
He finds it amusing and also another example of the “me” generation’s fixation on their own self importance.
The whole “it is the worst it has ever been” mentality, in his opinion, is rife with hubris and arrogance.
As he states about every situation, “This too shall pass” and “relax”, things have been worse and everything will be fine. As with many of his generation he is incredibly confident in the resilience of the United States to solve any situation although I have convinced him that it is not a foregone conclusion that the United States will remain as the sole superpower. Empires age and ours was a quick ascent and could dissipate quite quickly. The unique system and natural resource advantage we enjoyed at the beginning of the 20th century staked us to a more than substantial lead before others emulated and adopted our “build a better mousetrap” version of capitalism.
I could literally write a screenplay about 1939 or the immediate years thereafter with full 24 hour cable news as a component. If Sadaam watched the invasion unfold on CNN, imagine a certain anal-retentive German dictator with a small mustache in the news everyday.
Heck, he is still studied in speech classes for his oratory skills in addition to the examination of his propaganda machine. He would have either been quickly “done-in” or have become the darling of media in a time of economic difficulty.
Interesting to ponder.
November 20th, 2012 at 11:27 am
BUZZ;
“Everything is exaggerated and no matter what the government does, it is divisive.
They are in it for ratings, so they turn up the rhetoric with no regard for the fallout.
People mistake this nonense for “news”.
Everyday “we are on the precipice of disaster”.”
The majority of our media is operated by liberals.
Would the majority of the blame for this behavior lie with liberal media ?
In the 7 years that I’ve been blogging I’ve learned more history and politics than in all my school years up until leaving college.
I may sound a bit like a dictator but maybe blogging or on line debate should be required courses in our Ed,. System ?
Most of us have to do some research before opening our yaps and as a result, along the way, learn more than we actually bargained for.
With this I’m pretty sure more people would take mainstream news with a grain of salt.
Just a thought.
==========
“What if we had multiple cable networks and talk radio and Internet sites in 1939?”
Land lines and TVs would be obsolete.
Print and 35mm p0rn would of never taken off.
Bill Gates would be one of the middle class.
Someone would of built a nuke in their living room by now.
The technology preceding this 1939 media would of made the depression non existent ?
November 20th, 2012 at 11:58 am
” majority of our media is operated by liberals.Would the majority of the blame for this behavior lie with liberal media ?”
Well, I was in no way trying to “debate” the subject, but I was specifically referring to commentators, not newsreaders, and I don’t think either side is immune. Face it, news alone garners no ratings.
However, I would imagine the sheer volume of news has the effect of “depressing” most people (let’s face it, good news doesn’t sell).
I grew up in a two (or, no, three) newspaper town with a half an hour of Huntley-Brinkley or Cronkite.
That was it. So, 90 minutes a day of news at most?
The world was no less complicated, buy the sky wasn’t falling everyday. The news was delivered pretty straight, very little salacious content and the people reading the news most likely wrote it.
God, I’m old.
You would think that more news would result in a better world, but instead, I believe it simply paralyzes our process and makes everyone think we are in the midst of a doomsday scenario every few days.
November 20th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
“Well, I was in no way trying to “debate” the subject, but I was specifically referring to commentators, not newsreaders, and I don’t think either side is immune. Face it, news alone garners no ratings.”
Yeah, I’m not interested in this squabble all over again but I cant help thinking its an honest question.
If we omit newspapers and radio that still leaves the left leaning media as the significant majority.
This is made obvious by the left complaining only of FOX while we hardly hear them complain about MSNBC and on down the other monster networks.
Yes, I remember well watching the news in black n white on only one of the three channels to chose from and the anchors smoking up the whole stage. God knows the coffee cups might of been full of whisky.
The other side of this coin is that people today in general are less ignorant, exposed to far more points of view and usable information.
I’m gonna give the general population the benefit of the doubt and credit them with being able to dissect the assumptive and presumptive crap from the root of what substance there is.
My biggest beef is not with the sensationalism and hype as it is with blatant omissions of vital components to the story that can leave you completely clueless and contemptuous.
For example.
Suppose someone as of yesterday decided they wanted to be more engaged and informed of the beef between Israel and Hamas/Palestinians and they were watching CBS last night.
In short, they would come away hating Israels guts due to CBS not mentioning that the Palestinian casualties were due in large part to Hamas placing their arsenals in schools and hospitals. Or that they were the first launch indiscriminate missiles into civilian populations.
The introduction to the piece began with clips of Palestinian casualties, bloody children, craters where apartments once stood, and then moved on to the few Israeli casualties and the Israeli defense systems 50% success rate.
Thankfully, today, we have much more access to other media be it TV or the internet that can give us a more informative view
If it werent for the internet more liberals would sound like Helen Thomas and more conservatives would sound like Hannity.
I think most folks are able to realize who they’re watching on the tube today has some sort of agenda.
Then again, I’ve gotten in trouble before by giving the masses too much credit.
And no matter how informed you are, debates on Israel and or the middle east always boil down to whos God is best.
November 20th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
“You would think that more news would result in a better world, but instead, I believe it simply paralyzes our process and makes everyone think we are in the midst of a doomsday scenario every few days.”
My wife only gets her news from the TV,and blends it with Christian prophecy.
Every other day I have to explain to her why the sky is not falling…yet.
November 21st, 2012 at 6:53 am
David – Republican Chris Christie lauded the president’s, and “big government” FEMA’s, response and it was reported by the media. The media didn’t “laud” Obama. Christie did. So let’s get that straight.
And considering Christie’s “lauding” of FEMA’s response (FEDERAL AID), it didn’t look too good that Romney had advocated eliminating FEMA in earlier this year. With that knowledge, I’m sure Mitt’s people preferred he kept a low media profile in Sandy’s wake.
It’s not like Mitt could cheer on the recovery efforts of an agency he wanted to eliminate.