Category: Media Bias

Conservatism 101:
Never Let Your Enemies Tell You Who Your Friends Should Be

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Conservative Republicans seeking political advice should not take it from a liberal Democrat like Jonathan Chait:

You don’t have to love Sue Lowden to understand that a 90% chance of Lowden winning is better than a 20% chance of Sharron Angle winning. Nor is there any recognition on the right that conservatives paved the way for health care reform by driving Specter out. In conservative lore, the Pat Toomey primary challenge remains a glorious triumph, when in fact it’s a disaster of historic proportions.

You can read the whole thing, but not without minding this important caveat: Jonathan Chait doesn’t want Republicans to win.

If Lowden had won the Nevada GOP primary, Chait would be busy-beavering arguments intended to help Harry Reid defeat Lowden. If Specter had stayed in the GOP and defeated Toomey in the primary, Chait would now be offering arguments to help Joe Sestak defeat Specter in November (as, in fact, the New Republic did throughout the Democratic primary).

Long ago — in February 2009, when the Tea Party movement was just being born — I explained this fundamental issue:

Among the ill effects of liberal bias in the media is that much political “news” amounts to thinly disguised DNC talking-points. The conservative must learn to think critically about news and politics, to filter out that which is misleading, or else he will internalize the funhouse-mirror distortions of reality that define the liberal weltanschauung. . . .
[O]ne of the major problems of the Republican Party, that so many of its supporters have unwittingly accepted liberal beliefs as political truths. . . .

The GIGO principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out) is as applicable to political discourse as to any other information system. If you let liberals like Chait tell you which Republican candidates you should support, you will never support any Republican candidate — except in a GOP primary, when liberals will invariably tell you to support the most liberal candidate on the ballot. As soon as the primary is over, however, your liberal friends will then return to their usual arguments of why you should vote Democrat. Sic semper hoc.

It may well be, as a source tells Ben Smith, that the Nevada GOP primary was a “total f*** up by the state and national Republicans” — Never underestimate the incompetence of the Republican establishment being another basic lesson of Conservatism 101 — but that is neither here nor there as to the task at hand, namely, defeating Harry Reid.

Chait and his friends are trying to do what liberals in the media always do, shape Conventional Wisdom to their own advantage.

“Sharron Angle Can’t Win” is the Meme-O’-Th’-Day, and liberals are going to pound it as hard and as long as they can. Why? Because they know that a lot of Republicans base their political decisions on Conventional Wisdom so that, by promoting this Angle-Is-Doomed message, liberals will erode support for Harry Reid’s opponent — especially from the Dumb and Rich Coalition who comprise the GOP’s big-money donors.

Sharron Angle can win, and should win, and will win, so long as the conservative grassroots don’t allow themselves to be bamboozled into believing the liberal Conventional Wisdom. 

Obviously, you can’t expect the Dumb and Rich to write any fat checks to make that happen, so it’s up to the grassroots to give those small donations — $10, $20, $50 — that will add up to match the millions Harry Reid gets from his Democratic fat-cat friends.

SHARRON ANGLE for U.S. SENATE

Media Matters: Arbiters of Legitimacy?

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Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has bulldogged the Ground Zero mosque story from Day One, helping organize and promote opposition to the Islamicization of Lower Manhattan. So how does the Left respond?

Memo to media: Pamela Geller does
not belong on national television

Media Matters is telling TV producers not to give airtime to the woman who is arguably the most effective activist on this issue. So if the producers don’t book the attractive, informed, impassioned Geller, who will be on TV to present the case against the Ground Zero mosque? Either someone less knowledgeable and persuasive or no one at all.

In other words, Media Matter is trying to suppress dissent. And the smear of Geller is not an isolated example. Consider this headline:

When does Fox News’ ugly
race-baiting become the story?

That’s about the Black Panthers voter-intimidation case, which was dropped by the Justice Department amid accusations from a department whistle-blower that Attorney General Eric Holder had intervened on behalf of the nightstick-wielding Panthers. Endeavoring to dismiss the story as insignificant, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters spews a string of pejoratives:

. . . right-wing race baiting and fear mongering . . . hysterical far-right cries . . . right-wing wrath . . . Obama’s right-wing critics were leveling astonishing, race-baiting charges . . . uncontrollable race baiting . . . the very ugly context and the very ugly rhetoric that’s being pumped out by Fox News and other far-right commentators. . . . more right-wing furor . . .  the GOP Noise Machine and its ability to make life miserable for journalists who tell the truth about the far-right conservative movement in America today . . . radical and offensive rhetoric they employed against Obama  . . . the hysterical, relentless race-baiting  . . . dark, hateful comments . . .

This is a style of rhetoric we might call Argument by Assertion: Repetitively employing terms like “far-right” and “race-baiting” as if saying the same thing over and over made it so.

Sensationalism, Inc.

Let us stipulate that Fox’s coverage of the New Black Panther Party may be making a mountain out of a molehill, sensationally exaggerating a story beyond its legitimate significance. Let us also agree, however, that the news media do such things routinely.

How significant was Natalie Holloway’s disappearance? What were the national implications of the Caylee Anthony case?

And if we wish to isolate politically-motivated sensationalism, why did the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd get such saturation coverage? The Shepard case became a cause célèbre for the gay-rights movement, while Byrd’s death was touted as proof that a certain Republican governor of Texas was indifferent or hostile to black civil rights.

Surely Eric Boehlert never criticized networks for covering those stories in that context, yet unleashes a torrent of epithets — ugly rhetoric! hateful comments! — at Fox News for its coverage of the Panther case.

Is it only the “far right” that finds the Panther case troubling? Or are there legitimate reasons to worry that the dismissal of the case is, as many conservatives contend, significant of an unwillingness of the Obama administration to pursue accusations of discrimination that don’t fit the liberal agenda?

Was “race-baiting” the only motive for Fox News’ coverage of the story? Or could it be that the Panther story has an intrinsic audience appeal — a sort of man-bites-dog angle on civil rights — that makes for good TV?

Eric Boehlert wants to rule such questions out of bounds, asserting that anyone who suspects the Obama administration of racial unfairness can be peremptorily dismissed as engaged in hysterical far-right race-baiting: Nothing to see here. Move along.

Messages and Messengers

As with the attack on Geller, by accusing Fox of racial demagoguery, Media Matters is attempting to discredit the messenger, so that the mainstream media has a ready-make excuse to ignore any message that Eric Boehlert doesn’t like.

And notice how this works: If Fox covers a story that other networks ignore, the attack is directed at the network. However, if MSNBC books a guest (Geller) to discuss a story that it had otherwise ignored (the Ground Zero mosque), Media Matters screams bloody murder that this one guest is unacceptable.

Media Matters is attempting to exercise the power of an arbiter, to arrogate to itself the authority to decide which stories are newsworthy and which sources are credible, and it does so through intimidation. The message to news producers and editors couldn’t be clearer: Give serious coverage to a story we don’t like, and we’ll unleash these attacks against you.

Remember Liz Mair’s theory that David Weigel’s Journolist e-mails were made public because Weigel had dared to dispute the Left’s narrative that portrayed Rand Paul as a racist. Weigel wasn’t toeing the line. He hadn’t cooperated in the Meme-O’-th’-Day agenda and, by speaking out, had helped kill the meme that Democrats were employing to tremendous advantage. Was that why he became the Luca Brasi of MSM reporters?

Hey, I’m just askin’ questions . . .

Other than class warfare — the GOP as “party of the rich” — no message has been more electorally productive for Democrats than the “R is for Racist” meme (which seems to be shaping up as the MSM’s pre-emptive explanation for any Republican success  in November). By furiously attacking stories that disrupt or distract from that message, Media Matters is shaping the political battlefield to favor Democrats.

Don’t wait for the network news exposé of this partisan project operating under the guise of a tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profit, unless you’re prepared to wait until hell freezes over.

Bill Press Is Correct: We Are Spoiled

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by Smitty (h/t Fausta)

She has a couple of other reactions to this clip, too:
After a fascinating Triple Lindy at the Obama apologist diving competition, Press arrives at a correct conclusion about Obama’s tanking popularity:

I think this says more about the American people than it does about President Obama. I think it just shows once again that the American people are spoiled. Basically, spoiled– as a people,. . .

Well yes: yes, it does say that. If the majority of voters weren’t a pack of spoiled, spoon-fed, incurious, historically illiterate brats, BHO should not have been elected in the first place.

. . .we are too critical. We are quick to rush to judgment, we are too negative, we are too impatient. Especially impatient.

Not so fast. Insufficient numbers of those spoiled people are criticizing the economically suicidal notions and motions under which BHO feigns governing. That two in five still support these joker policies belies your point, Press.

The American people have, if anything, been too patient. Good nature and the Golden Rule have been interpreted as weakness by Press, his fellow travelers, and other sycophants.

This ain’t no spoiled tantrum, Press: this is your crappy bluff being called. Stand and deliver. You and your ilk have got nothing but snake oil and debt.

Press, you insulted the Tea Parties concerning Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor event last night. I’m willing to be proven wrong on the point, but, based upon the two fragments of your fulminating I’ve seen, you have no honor. This blog dares your scrawny butt, if it possesses hair #1, to attend Beck’s event next month and offer your audience an honest, propaganda-free report on what you see.

It ain’t Breitbart’s 100 large, but the truth is worth far more than that, Press.

Rachel Maddow and the Politics of Stupid

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Why hasn’t the American public completely repudiated the policies of the Obama administration? At a time when the unemployment rate has been hovering near 10 percent for nearly a year, Obama’s job approval numbers are very near dead even, and Republicans are just barely leading on the generic ballot.

Why isn’t the administration’s abject failure on economic issues more apparent? The reason, I suspect, is that many independent voters are still willing to blame Republicans for these problem. The GOP has still not figured out how to undo Bush-era “brand damage” and Democrats continue to point the finger at Republicans (and those convenient proxy villains, Big Business and The Rich) for the nation’s economic woes.

It is only in this context of the GOP’s lack of credibility that Democrats can get away with advocating policies that obviously aren’t working and, really, don’t even clear a minimal threshold of common sense. Consider Rachel Maddow’s statements on Sunday’s “Meet the Press”:

Well, you end, you end up with the situation which again you’re back to choice vs. referendum because Republicans . . . can argue about how it’s all about spending, it’s all about debt. But it’s not just talking about the past to say, “When Republicans have had the reins, this is what they’ve done: two wars not paid for, prescription drug benefit not paid for, two tax cuts that mostly benefited the rich not paid for.” They put all that stuff on the deficit, $1.3 trillion sitting there as — in a deficit when Obama took over, after the previous Democratic president had handed him a surplus. If you talk about — if Republicans want to run as this fiscally responsible party, it’s neat, but it’s novel. It’s not how they’ve actually governed. . . .
I think that, I think that most Americans also, though, understand the basic arithmetic that when you’re talking about pushing tax cuts that do mostly benefit the wealthy and you’re simultaneously talking about getting tough on the deficit, you’re talking about a world in which math doesn’t work the way most people think it works. . . .
Tax cuts hurt the deficit. . . .
If you really want, if you really want a stimulus, do what we — what’s proven to work in stimulus, which is things like extending unemployment benefits, which is something that Republicans are completely blocking. . . .
It’s the most stimulative thing you can do.

What Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters notices here is the similarity between Maddow’s statement about unemployment-as-stimulus and Nancy Pelosi’s recent remarks. What I notice, however, is a message that cleverly muddles the policy picture in such a way as to make it appear that Republicans are actually worse than Democrats in terms of economics.

When Maddow says that various Bush-era policies were “not paid for,” she means only one thing: Taxes weren’t raised.

Notice how Maddow hammers on the idea that tax cuts are bad policy which increase the deficit and benefit the rich. I’d be interested to see how that kind of message plays with a focus group of independent voters, because I think it resonates much deeper than most Republicans understand. Conservatives are always talking about how we’ve “won the war of ideas,” but the fact that Democrats still believe they can win with such economic themes — utterly ignoring the supply-side revolution — means that the war of ideas is a long way from being won.

Of course, as the Obama/Pelosi/Reid “stimulus” spree illustrates, there is no such thing as a liberal “deficit hawk.” Like other liberals, Maddow talks about deficits only as an argument to raise taxes or reduce military spending. Domestic entitlement programs are sacred and cannot be subjected to any budgetary discipline, and certainly no liberal expressed any deficit-related concerns about ObamaCare.

Maddow and Democrats clearly believe that voters are too stupid  to notice these inconsistencies, and are counting on Republicans being too stupid to point them out. And I fear that they may be right on both counts.

‘The Unfortunately Named Contessa’

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That’s how Andrew Breitbart always refers to MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer, who complained in an interview with Media Bistro about how hard it is to interviewing guests who “come on and they are prepared to be challenging and to be difficult.”

In another segment from the same interview, Brewer says it makes her “crazy” when blogs point out her on-air gaffes, such as the occasion in 2009 when she introduced Jess Jackson as Al Sharpton:

(Via Kyle Drennen at Newsbusters — Part I and Part II.) Brewer typifies why people hate the media: The adversarial stance of some TV personalities who seem to think their job is to orchestrate on-air “gotcha” moments. A similar attitude prevails among a lot of younger print journalists, who have been raised on this kind of stuff.

This “gotcha” dynamic is a function of television, in which the reporter is also a performer and, especially in a live interview, the idea is to push the subject into an on-air conflict. Brewer routinely did this to Republican guests, and so is hated by conservatives, but I’ve seen Sean Hannity do the same thing to hostile guests on Fox, badgering and interrupting them. It’s one of those Marshall McLuhan the-medium-is-the-message aspects of television: It’s show business.

As a print journalist, I’ve never sought that kind of television-style “gotcha” confrontation, because it tends to be counter-productive to the work I’m trying to do. Even if you’re dealing with a hostile source, it’s better to be perceived as harmless or sympathetic than to act like an attack dog.

With a print reporter, sources will just clam up or not return phone calls if you get hostile, whereas most people can’t resist an opportunity to be on TV and once they’re on camera, they usually feel the need to answer even the rudest  questions. So people like Contessa Brewer get used to treating people like crap — and getting away with it, simply because they have the enormous prestige of a network news organization behind them.

“The unfortunately named Contessa” is a creature of TV and epitomizes the values of that medium.

Gulf Cleanup Pussy Just Pluckered Out

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by Smitty (via HotAir)

We heard Anderson Cooper’s tale of woe regarding the mostly opaque level of transparency set by the Hopium and Changeeba Administration.

Reacting quickly, and noting that the 65′ First Amendment FTW zone applies to humans, we dispached Sissypuss the Blog Kitty. Sissypuss, we discovered, had been hanging around Philadelphia, thinking to pick up a billet in the New Black Panthers, not realizing there was a slight species issue holding up matters.

An oil-soaked Sissypuss collapses in exhaustion

Sissypuss’s report is shocking:

These jokers just keep on pluckin’ that chicken, seagull, and albatross. If they could but operationalize the leadership vacuum, they could grab all the oil from the plume lickety split. They’re between stages 3 & 4 on the standard project continuum. The guilty, of course, are long gone, and the bag holders know this is the ecological equivalent of an inoperable tumor. So we’re basically going through a ride-it-out ritual. Look for lots of retirements and disappearances from the org chart over the next few weeks.

The certain knowledge that even the stupidest segment of the electorate isn’t going to buy the ‘blame Bush’ shtick is sinking into the remaining apparatchiks. Reality, unlike people, yields poorly to propaganda. If only watching Anderson Cooper’s slow realization that he has sold his soul to Cthulhu could provide some belly laughs.

The US has had enough. The question to play out is whether the current Administration can successfully kneecap the country’s energy production, or whether the Administration is replaced with an organization capable of balancing economic and environmental concerns in a non-suicidal manner.

For a good roundup, see Obi’s Sister.

Update: Whoops! Neglected to link my cat photo source.

Elena Kagan Confirmation Hearings Resume; Media Failure Continues; UPDATE: Yoest Calls for Investigation UPDATE II: Yoest Video Added

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UPDATE 8:55 p.m.: Video of Charmaine Yoest’s testimony:

She was introduced — and subsequently cut off at the 5-minute mark — by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-EadBabies).

UPDATE 7:45 p.m.: From the testimony of Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life:

First, I urge this Committee to officially investigate the discrepancies that have arisen this week between Ms. Kagan’s testimony and the written record about her actions related to lobbying the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists during her tenure in the Clinton White House. The questions surrounding this period are troubling and call into question Ms. Kagan’s ability to adopt an impartial judicial temperament. . . .
We are asking this committee to investigate Ms. Kagan’s record related to her interaction with both the AMA and ACOG during her tenure as a policy advisor to President Clinton.
I’d like to focus attention tonight on her apparent efforts to influence and distort the record on the medical science related to partial-birth abortion. In a December 14, 1996 memo, Kagan addressed the pending release of a proposed statement by ACOG that partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary. The release of such a statement, she argued, “. . .would be a disaster . . .”
In response, White House documents show that Kagan drafted an amendment to ACOG’s statement, dramatically altering their language, which stated that partial-birth abortion: “may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” ACOG subsequently adopted Ms. Kagan’s handwritten change into their final statement.
Kagan claimed before this Committee that she was simply a scribe for changes coming from ACOG. But Kagan’s response raises more questions than it answers.
And this was not an isolated case. We have further evidence that she pursued this same strategy with the AMA.
Similar to ACOG’s original position, the AMA issued a policy stating that no situations had been identified where partial-birth abortion was the only appropriate method of abortion and that ethical concerns surrounded it.
In a White House email dated June 1, 1997, Ms. Kagan wrote that she just came from a meeting which focused on “whether the AMA policy can be reversed at its convention on June 23.”
Kagan then concluded: “We agreed to do a bit of thinking about whether we …could contribute to that effort.”
Elena Kagan was so opposed to the passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion that she appears to have advocated for ACOG and the AMA to suppress or modify their view. She made a deliberate decision to advocate for partial-birth abortion, even to the point of working to deceive the American public about the medical science related to the procedure.

Whole thing here. Earlier today, Yoest sent an e-mail to a quarter-million pro-lifers asking them to contact their senators and call for an investigation.

PREVIOUSLY: Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan resumed today at 4 p.m. ET, but unless you’ve got C-SPAN 3, you can’t watch the testimony from witnesses. PBS, which covered the first three days of hearings live, won’t be carrying today’s testimony. And if you’re relying on network news . . . well, let’s let Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters explain:

Wednesday’s evening news shows and Thursday’s morning programs continued to minimize or leave out important moments of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings. . . .
The New York Times on July 1 reported the intense questioning by Senator Orrin Hatch on an abortion memo written by then-Clinton White House Counsel Kagan.
Hatch demanded, “Did you write that memo?…But did you write it? Is it your memo?”
Kagan’s memo worried that a American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) report on abortion could be a “disaster” for the Clinton administration.
None of the morning shows on Thursday mentioned the exchange between Hatch and Kagan. On Wednesday, only CBS’s Evening News raised the subject.

It’s pretty sad when the New York Times does a better job of reporting than any of the Big Three networks, which lost a combined 1 million viewers in the past three months. Maybe these two phenomena are related?

UPDATE: More on the MSM failure:

What was the big story in Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan? According to the New York Times, it was “Republicans Press Kagan on Social Issues,” while the Washington Post focused on how Kagan “charmed her critics.”

And look: Democrats use Kagan hearings for fund-raising!

How to Lose $56 Million a Year

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Hire Jon Meacham as editor of your magazine:

The auction of Newsweek looks to be heading to some sort of ending.
Final bids for the troubled weekly are expected by 5 pm Thursday at investment bank Allen & Co., according to the New York Post. There are five parties in the running, including Newsmax Media, OpenGate Capital, Thane Ritchie, Sidney Harmon and Fred Drasner, the one-time partner of Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman.
Much has been made about the financial state of Newsweek, the legendary weekly that produced $56 million in operating losses in 2009 and an $11 million loss in first quarter. . . .  “The amount of money they lost is shocking,” said one buyout executive who saw the Newsweek books but passed. “It’s a classic old world publishing business that did nothing to adjust to the new world reality.”

Yeah. A one-year subscription to Newsweek is $40. You can read this blog for free, but if you want a “Certified Tip Jar Hitter” mug, I think we’d consider $40 in the tip jar as an acceptable mimimum, although $56 million would be OK, too.

(Hat-tip: Ben Domenech.)