So, how many other news organizations find themselves in the position that the Washington Post is in? Probably quite a few:
The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates’ backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4. Numbers don’t tell you everything, but they give you a sense of The Post’s priorities.
[. . .]
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.
Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors — like most of the national news media — found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.
What a shock. And of course, the laudatory coverage continues . . . along with claims that the media is not biased at all. I am sure that there are those who wonder how on Earth it is possible that an engaged polity should be able to make informed decisions with this degree of media favoritism but I would encourage those people not to voice their questions and objections. Valid as those objections are, they will be met only by the derisive laughter of a media establishment that believes fervently in its ability to be fair and impartial even as it demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
Walter Duranty
wolfgang Sunday, November 9th at 8:03AM EST (link)In the 1930′s a gentleman named Walter Duranty wrote a series of articles for the New York Times extolling the virtues of life in the Soviet Union’s Ukraine, purporting a real life workers’ paradise. This occurred at a time of great political upheaval in the United States as Franklin Roosevelt was attempting to likewise impose a socialist economic system upon the United States. In reality, millions of Ukrainian peasants were being deliberately starved to death as their Communist masters in Moscow purposefully expropriated amounts of foodstuffs so large that it left too little food remaining in the province to feed the population.
The New York Times has not yet recanted these lies nor relinquished their prize. The New York Times has not changed their editorial slant or their reporting stance since then. Worse yet, the rest of the nations news media, including the WaPo, have adopted the NYT’s reporting style, untruths, half truths, distortions, or outright lies as the political situation demands.
Money talks....
LizVBronx (Diary) Sunday, November 9th at 8:43AM EST (link)cancel your subscription to the papers. Money talks, bs walks!! Our pocketbooks can speak for us!!
Where are the howls...
vernonia Sunday, November 9th at 8:51AM EST (link)against Clear Channel, Media One and other Big Evil Corporate Media?
Evidently, the Dems are not as opposed to media conglomerates as they once were…
Dave Ramsey in 2012!
Fox & Friends
George Neitz (Diary) Sunday, November 9th at 12:56PM EST (link)This morning at 8:30AM two men argued about this, the democrat talking mouth has decided that because of the obvious left slant of the WP this was a perfect reason to reinstate “The Fairness Doctrine” DUHHHH they think that shutting up talk radio is the only way to have “fairness” what baloney.
“Socialism only works
in two places:
Heaven where they don’t
need it and hell where they already have it.”
-Ronald Reagan
I already have...
drohan00 (Diary) Monday, November 10th at 3:05PM EST (link)Further, why don’t we ignore them. I still think that a conservative candidate could win with only the support of local supportive media.
We should act locally as well. Write to your local paper. Pressure the local media to ask hard questions of liberals. Go to their forums on college campuses. They cannot handle true dissent.
I went to an anti-Patriot Act rally held by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln ACLU chapter. There were twenty people there, they could not handle the idea that anyone could support the Patriot Act. I countered them with the actual wording of the act itself. Their demagogery ceased. I read the sections they cited, and they were made the fool.
As a campus conservative, you must be strong enough in your convictions to act on them. No illiberal professor can make you believe anything you don’t want to. Fight them. Correct them. I corrected my political science professors all the time. I was never downgraded for it.
William F. Buckley unleashed a flock of doves or pigeons on a peace rally at Yale. We need that kind of student radicalism as well. To hell with campus speech codes. They can’t censor you without much embarrassment. In fact, the cruder the better. We are a happy band of rebels now. Liberalism is winning the battle, but we are the minority and the underdog, let’s use our status and have some fun!