Mainstream Media-ocrity

It’s said that if you’re still a Conservative at 25, you’re heartless, and if you’re still a Liberal at 35, you’re brainless.

I guess I’m heartless, then.

I think it’s about time I delve into politics.  Everyone else seems to be talking about it, and what’s more, people actually appear to be listening.  I’m torn about it though — too many people use blogs as their only source of news.  That’s not healthy, in my opinion.  On the other hand, too many people get all their news from mainstream media.  That’s worse.  At least with blogs, we don’t all sing the same tune, and that unfortunately is where the mainstream media is heading at an alarming rate.

I’d like to talk a bit about the blatant hypocrisy of mainstream media.  The New York Times published a piece last Saturday[link] about Cindy McCain.  The piece was less than flattering, to put it mildly.  To put it more honestly, the NYT sounds like a child who’s been told he can’t have a piece of candy (i.e. Mrs. McCain chose not to comment for the article).  In contrast, NYT’s article on Michelle Obama[link] shamelessly dotes on its subject as if she’s God’s gift to their readers.

For starters, let’s compare the headlines:

For Cindy McCain: “Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In”

For Michelle Obama: “Michelle Obama Thrives in Campaign Trenches”

It doesn’t take 20/20 vision to see the completely different tone, just in the headlines.  When you get into the text however, it’s even more apparent that the NYT clearly favors one candidate over another.  The McCain article portrays John as the absent husband who was never around to support his wife.  It also smears John for leaving his first wife, after “she had stood by her husband during his captivity in North Vietnam, never passing word of a debilitating car accident, only to discover, a few years after their reunion, that he was leaving her for a younger, richer woman.”  The article describes Cindy as looking fragile — NYT describes Michelle as athletic.  Now while some (probably Liberal folks) will say that the Cindy McCain article isn’t trying to take a poke at the Republican Presidential Nominee, the Obama campaign was quick to claim that McCain referring to Obama as “that one” was a racist remark.  What’s my point?  If the Obama campaign gets to be outraged at “that one”, then our entire nation should be outraged at the NYT using Cindy as a way to hit John McCain below the belt.  It’s just irresponsible journalism, and I use the word “journalism” hesitantly

How about the mainstream media glossing over the Obama-Ayers connection like it doesn’t matter??  The media has rushed to not care about Bill Ayers’ connection to Barack Obama, but I guarantee you, if John McCain had someone in his past who had bombed a Planned Parenthood office, Liberals would be lining up, with hammer in hand, to nail him to the wall.  People laugh at Fox News for saying that they’re fair and balanced, arguing that they’re anything but.  I have an experiment for you:  Get two bowls — fill one up with water at room temperature.  Fill the other one with ice water.  Put one hand in each bowl.  After 30-60 seconds, move one hand from the ice water bowl to the other one.  At this point, even though both hands are in the same water, the water will feel warmer to the hand that was in the ice water.  What’s my point?  When most mainstream media has a Liberal slant, any network that doesn’t will appear to have a Conservative slant.  I’m willing to bet Obama isn’t squeaky clean — no politician is — but you don’t hear anything bad about him on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN or MSNBC.  One of the only places you’re likely to get a complete story is on Fox.  Now, I’m not a huge fan of Fox myself, I just don’t particularly think the quality of reporting is very high — but I’d prefer to have a little less quality and get an honest report than to have a really well done piece of Liberal propaganda.

Then let’s look at CNN’s fact check segment.  While they do a good job of trying to look objective, there is a decidedly Obama favor in what CNN reports.  It could be argued that McCain has thrown more mud that needs to be washed off, but at least in my observations, both sides are using equal amounts of political doublespeak, hoping the American public is stupid enough to buy what theyr’e selling, so to refute McCain to a greater degree than Obama demonstrates a bias on the part of CNN.

Lastly, I want to talk about talk radio.  I do my best to listen to all sides of an issue, because self-imposed bias — bias you get by only looking for information that supports your already formulated opinion — is every bit as repugnant as other forms of bias.  I was listening to a Liberal talk show the other day — I don’t recall which — and a caller wondered why Obama can have a past with a domestic terrorist and it’s totally okay, but McCain gets riduculed for putting off David Letterman.  The host of the show quite literally laughed at the caller, said it was an apples and oranges comparison (obviously missing the point the caller was trying to make, that the media is completely biased), and moved on to interview a reporter from High Times. 

On the other hand, when I listen to Conservative shows, Liberal callers make their arguments, and the hosts refute them.  The hosts don’t always use the most sound argumentation methods, but it doesn’t take much to be better than “you’re comparing apples and oranges” (making no justification for how it’s a disparate comparison) and moving on without a second thought.

This leads me to the bottom line: The difference between conservative media and the liberal media majority is that Conservatives want to convince the opposition; Liberals want to silence them…

^Z