Another example of the "nonexistent" media bias

• jhay78

  

  I know, I know, there is no such thing as a Mainstream Liberal Media Bias. Then I considered the recent events of the past week or so. For daring to question the freight train of reckless spending and endless debt, Tea Partiers have been called "terrorists", the "Hezbollah faction" of the Republican party, etc etc. All of this even though some in our government refused to use the word "terrorist" when referring to violent factions of extreme religious groups who seek to blow us to pieces.
  
  One man's opinion:
  
  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/273444/hell-you-people-jonah-goldberg
  

  Look, I am past exhausted talking about liberal media bias. It’s real, we all know it, and people who deny it aren’t even fooling themselves. But some things just have to be pointed out. This morning I watched the first 15 minutes of the Today Show. I don’t particularly love or even like the program, but I find it useful to see what the producers think is the big news of the day. And sometimes Chuck Todd is on, and I like him. If I sound defensive about watching the show it’s only because I am.
  
  Anyway, the first ten minutes was about Gabby Giffords’ return to the House yesterday. I’m not sure it merited the full ten minutes or trumped the hard news that later followed, but it’s a great story and everyone is rooting for the lady, so I’m fine with it.
  
  But think about this for a second. The Giffords shooting sent the media elite in this country into a bout of St. Vitus’s dance that would have warranted an army of exorcists in previous ages. Sarah Palin’s Facebook map was an evil totem that forced some guy to go on a shooting spree. The New York Times, the Washington Post, all three broadcast networks — particularly NBC whose senior foreign affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, devotes, by my rough reckoning, ten times as much air time to whining about Sarah Palin as she does about anything having to do with foreign affairs — flooded the zone with “Have you no shame” finger wagging. A memo went forth demanding that everyone at MSNBC get their dresses over their heads about the evil “tone” from the right. Media Matters went into overdrive working the interns 24/7 to “prove” that Republicans deliberately foment violence with their evil targets on their evil congressional maps.
  
  Everyone “knew” the shooter was a tea partier. Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a conservative. He was a sick, demented, nutball. And it still didn’t matter! More bleating and caterwauling about the “tone” followed. More chin stroking and tut-tutting from Meet the Press roundtables and “very special segments” on the Today Show. More pizzas were ordered for the Media Matters galley slaves.
  
  Finally, president Obama, our national-healer, gives a speech. It was a good speech. Indeed it was one of the first speeches in a long while that got anything like bipartisan support. Civility. New tone. No more martial metaphors. These were the takeaways.
  
  So flashforward to this week. Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.
  
  Then last night, on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack seven months ago, the vice president of the United States calls the Republican party a bunch of terrorists.
  
  No one cares. I hate the “if this were Bush” game so we’re in luck. Instead imagine if this was Dick Cheney calling the Progressive Caucus (or whatever they’re called) a “bunch of terrorists” on the day Giffords returned to the Congress. Would the mainstream media notice or care? Would Meet the Press debate whether this raises “troubling questions” about the White House’s sensitivity? Would Andrea Mitchell find some way to blame Sarah Palin for Dick Cheney’s viciousness? Would Keith Olbermann explode like a mouse subjected to the Ramone’s music in Rock and Roll High School? Something inside me hidden away shouts, “Hell yes they would!”
  
  The Today Show even had Debbie Wasserman Schultz on this morning for five minutes talking about Giffords. No one thought to ask her what she thought of Biden’s comments? It’s not like she’s the Democratic party’s national spokesperson or anything. Oh, wait. She is!
  
  Instead, after the full ten minutes on Giffords, we get an update about the debt-limit situation (which is supposedly an Armageddon-level issue) and Kelly O’Donnell basically carries water for Biden on the issue by completely muddying whether he said anything of the sort at all. (His office says, no, no the vice president didn’t call them terrorists, he just politely agreed with all the Democratic congressmen in the room that they “acted like terrorists.” Ah, this is a distinction a team of a million Jesuits working around the clock would have a hard time slicing).
  
  And yet you know the next time there’s the slightest, remotely exploitable tragedy or hint of violence, the same reporters, editors, producers and politicians are going to insist that blood was spilled because of the right wing’s rhetoric.
  
  Well, go to Hell. All of you.

• fish82

  

  I watched that little shrew on TV chattering about Giffords as well. As far as I'm concerned, the more often she's in front of a TV camera the better. You can't write material that good.
• cruiser_96

  

  That last line made me laugh.
• BGFalcons82

  

  Nora O'Donnell - "We got nothing". Umm...Whom is "we", Nora???
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Eewr2BsbXM
• QuakerOats

  Not only has every single economic metric worsened under the obama regime, so has the tone and divisiveness and hypocrisy, all courtesy of the annointed one himself.
  
  Me thinks we are headed for real trouble.
• BGFalcons82

  

  QuakerOats;849878 wrote:Not only has every single economic metric worsened under the obama regime, so has the tone and diviseness and hypocrisy, all courtesy of the annointed one himself.
  
  Me thinks we are headed for real trouble.

  
  The Dow, which was supposed to rise today like helium based on the "bipartisanship compromise" to not default, dropped 266 points today. Not that the NYSE is the grand metric, but people vote with their money and their money is leaving business and headin for safer investments. Note to Socialists - Investments in the stock market aren't anything like the "investments" Barry supports.
• believer

  

  BGFalcons82;849885 wrote:The Dow, which was supposed to rise today like helium based on the "bipartisanship compromise" to not default, dropped 266 points today. Not that the NYSE is the grand metric, but people vote with their money and their money is leaving business and headin for safer investments. Note to Socialists - Investments in the stock market aren't anything like the "investments" Barry supports.

  The Dow dropped because those eeeeeeevil greedy Wall Streeters can see that the Repubs capitulated and helped the Dems kick the massive debt can down the road. They see the inevitable even if the clowns in DC refuse to have the courage to do the right thing.
  
  This nation's leadership is an outright embarrassment. We shoiuld be ashamed of ourselves.
• jhay78

  

  believer;849892 wrote:The Dow dropped because those eeeeeeevil greedy Wall Streeters can see that the Repubs capitulated and helped the Dems kick the massive debt can down the road. They see the inevitable even if the clowns in DC refuse to have the courage to do the right thing.
  
  This nation's leadership is an outright embarrassment. We shoiuld be ashamed of ourselves.

  
  But I thought Wall Street owned our government- both parties. Guess I got my information from the wrong place . . .
• believer

  

  jhay78;849959 wrote:But I thought Wall Street owned our government- both parties. Guess I got my information from the wrong place . . .

  You did. It had to have been from the professional journalists in our MSM.
• gut

  BGFalcons82;849885 wrote: Note to Socialists - Investments in the stock market aren't anything like the "investments" Barry supports.

  
  All part of Obama's master plan to increase the effective tax rate on the rich. You see, when he scares the beejesus out of them to pull money out of the market and stuff it under a mattress, they end-up recognizing ordinary income as opposed to capital gains, and thus see their marginal rate go from 15% to 39%. Really a very cunning, shrewd move. I take back that I ever said he didn't know anything about economics.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  The hypocrisy of this administration has gotten to the point you have to laugh -- or slit your wrists (I'd much rather laugh).
  
  Obama vows he will lead the way to less harsh rhetoric -- and his ass crazy VP calls regular, hard-working Americans terrorists because they simply want to force Congress to live within its means.
  
  And the media ignores it all...as usual.
• majorspark

  

  Writerbuckeye;850232 wrote:The hypocrisy of this administration has gotten to the point you have to laugh -- or slit your wrists (I'd much rather laugh).
  
  Obama vows he will lead the way to less harsh rhetoric -- and his ass crazy VP calls regular, hard-working Americans terrorists because they simply want to force Congress to live within its means.
  
  And the media ignores it all...as usual.

  The same media that was so up in arms about the lack of "civility" in politics after the Giffords shooting. Words like crosshairs, target, fight, battle, etc.. Now words like terrorist, Taliban, Hezbollah, gun to the head, etc. are in fashion. They are used by not just politicians but figures in the media to describe "tea party" types. A total 180 in a matter of months. You would have to be a fool not to see the bias in this case.
  
  Remember CNN,s John King apologizing for a guest who used the word "crosshairs" (gasp) in his political commentary.
  
  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/01/18/cnn_apologizes_for_guest_using_term_crosshairs.html
• coyotes22

  

  New Barack Channel
  
  All Barack Channel
  
  Clinton News Network
  
  Clinton Barack Station
  
  pMSNBC
  
  They are loading their guns now, and the GOP and TEA Party, will be their targets. The next 12 months will be a bloody one.
• Footwedge

  jhay78;849959 wrote:But I thought Wall Street owned our government- both parties. Guess I got my information from the wrong place . . .

  If you don't think Wall Street controls the laws and lawmakers in this country....then let's meet for lunch and talk about a bridge I'm selling on e bay. Does Medicare Part D ring a bell?
• Footwedge

  coyotes22;850391 wrote:New Barack Channel
  
  All Barack Channel
  
  Clinton News Network
  
  Clinton Barack Station
  
  pMSNBC
  
  They are loading their guns now, and the GOP and TEA Party, will be their targets. The next 12 months will be a bloody one.

  99% of all news media is bought and paid for by sponsors. If the media has a liberal slant, then you can thank the companies that manufacture things like Viagra or those that make Budweiser beer.... that controls the content that is released to the public.
• coyotes22

  

  Footwedge;850449 wrote:99% of all news media is bought and paid for by sponsors. If the media has a liberal slant, then you can thank the companies that manufacture things like Viagra or those that make Budweiser beer.... that controls the content that is released to the public.

  
  And GE?
  
  So you mean Unions can control the media?
• believer

  

  majorspark;850256 wrote:You would have to be a fool not to see the bias in this case.

  Oh even fools on the left see the bias but they agree with it and encourage it. It's not about fairness, balance, and professional journalism. It's about furthering the socialist political agenda.
  

  Footwedge;850449 wrote:99% of all news media is bought and paid for by sponsors. If the media has a liberal slant, then you can thank the companies that manufacture things like Viagra or those that make Budweiser beer.... that controls the content that is released to the public.

  Leftist corporatism then, Footie?
• Writerbuckeye

  

  Footwedge;850449 wrote:99% of all news media is bought and paid for by sponsors. If the media has a liberal slant, then you can thank the companies that manufacture things like Viagra or those that make Budweiser beer.... that controls the content that is released to the public.

  
  If ever a post screamed I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOW MEDIA WORKS IN THIS COUNTRY BUT TALK OUT MY ASS ABOUT IT, ANYWAY -- this is the one. Congrats, footie.
  
  Just so you have one bit of real information (not the crap you've apparently picked up from some anarchist's blog or Daily Kos): sponsors don't CARE what is put into programming so long as readership/viewership/listenership/web hits are strong and getting stronger.
  
  The bottom line IS the bottom line for sponsors. They could care less if the people putting the content they attach their ads to are communists or capitalists, and could give a crap if they tell the truth in reporting. So long as business is good, they're happy.
• Prescott

  Why are the Republican "Tea Party" backed representatives called terrorists because they did not vote "FOR", but the "Lefty" backed Democrats who did not vote "For" are called patriots?
• believer

  

  Writerbuckeye;850775 wrote:The bottom line IS the bottom line for sponsors. They could care less if the people putting the content they attach their ads to are communists or capitalists, and could give a crap if they tell the truth in reporting. So long as business is good, they're happy.

  Capitalism at its finest! Precisely why it works and socialism never will.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  believer;850945 wrote:Capitalism at its finest! Precisely why it works and socialism never will.

  
  In eight years of working in a newsroom, not once did the advertising manager come over to us and complain about what stories we were putting in the paper. Not once.
  
  If footie's view is correct, then the advertising manager would be calling the shots day-to-day of what goes into a newspaper. That just doesn't happen. Never.
  
  Not even the publisher was involved in the daily activities of running the newsroom and deciding which stories should be covered, how they should be covered, etc. If he had something to say, he had us write an editorial about it or he wrote it himself.
• BGFalcons82

  

  From the "Ed Show" - http://nation.foxnews.com/rick-perry/2011/08/16/nbc-news-edits-perry-black-cloud-comment-make-him-seem-racist
  
  Can one of the, "there's no bias in the media" crowd explain what the fuck Ed and MSNBC are doing here? Is this what's in store for the next 15 months? How in the fuck does MSNBC have any sponsors? They can't be that dumb...can they?
  
  Finally, can someone explain how this mofo keeps a job with such blatant mis-use of his journalistic license?
• Writerbuckeye

  

  That's one of the more egregious examples of media bias I've seen. It's a blatant lie based on an edit and the lies of the commentator after he cuts off the Perry clip and tells us he's talking about Obama.
  
  Shameful.
  
  In the world of journalism not so far removed from today...everyone involved in such a hoax would be summarily fired. You won't see MSNBC do that, though. They have a niche audience (liberals) and don't care about the truth.
• 2kool4skool

  

  
• Writerbuckeye

  

  2kool4skool;864419 wrote:

  
  Seriously? A major media purposely edits the quote of a presidential candidate to make him appear racist and it's beating a dead horse in your mind?
  
  This is a whole new level, so you're wrong.