Making History, Not Reporting On It-->Media Bias Like Never Before

I will admit it, Sometimes the Mainstream Media's Bias makes me stark raving, frothing at the mouth, CRAZY. Many of you readers have concurred with my opinion, especially during the two years since the Presidential election began. Former newsman Bernard Goldberg, a vocal critic of his former industry, is a bit more rational on the subject. He claims that the bias of the Mainstream Media is worse than it has ever been :

Well, what do you think, as a very funny guy who looked like Joe Pesci said, what do you think the media would do if it was Sarah Palin and not Joe Biden who said that in 1929, Franklin Roosevelt got on television to reassure the American people when the stock market crashed even though FDR wasn't in office until 1933 and television wasn't introduced to the general public till 1939? How would the mainstream media have played that story? Do you think the might've portrayed Sarah Palin as a moron or worse, as a ticking time bomb? I think we all know the answer to that.

Last month he gave an absolutely brilliant summary of the state of the industry, he says that the Mainstream Media tries to make history, rather than report on it:

Bias Like Never Before
By Bernard Goldberg

The mainstream media, or the so-called mainstream media, is always going to have its thumb on the scale because it's always rooting for the Democrat over the Republican. But this year, it was different. This year, the media jumped the shark because this year, without any embarrassment, they embraced one of the candidates running for president. They took a politician – a politician from Chicago, no less – and deified him. They turned him into St. Barack.

This time around, they weren't content merely, merely, being a witness to history; this time, they felt that they had to make history because this time they had a noble cause – not just to elect a Democrat, not just to elect a liberal, but to elect the first black man in our nation's history.

I don't know that they feel just the same way. I don't know that they would've had all of that emotion if the first black man elected president of the United States were Michael Steele, for instance. When Michael Steele in 2006 lost the Senate race in Maryland, I don't remember one reporter talking about how history was thwarted. It's because Michael Steele, unlike Barack Obama, is a conservative. And as far as liberals in and out of the media are concerned, a black man who is a conservative isn't a black man; he's merely a conservative.

So, how did the media embrace "the one," as Oprah called him?

Well, there was the NBC news correspondent who, without any hint of embarrassment, said that it was tough to be objective while covering Barack Obama because he spoke so well.

There was the New York Times that ran a page one story during the campaign, suggesting that John McCain was having an affair with a Washington lobbyist, and they based this story on two unnamed former staffers who thought that "maybe, possibly, I'm not sure but I think he may have been involved with the woman" – and this made page one.

The New York Times published Barack Obama's op-ed on Iraq and told John McCain, a man who was running for president of the United States, that he had to rework his.

And then during the acceptance speech in Denver, the commentary was incredible. I mean people sounded as if they were thrilled just to be in the same city as Barack Obama.

David Gergen, whom some of my conservative friends call David Rodham Gergen, said that Obama didn't even deliver a speech that night. What he did was perform a symphony. He said – those were his exact words – "It was a symphony." He said, "It was slow at times. It was fast at times. It was intimate. It was a masterpiece." If you were sitting at home watching this kind of syrupy sweet commentary on television, you could get diabetes in your living room.

But all of this is small potatoes compared to the classic of all classics during the campaign, and that came from Chris Matthews, who – forgive me for telling you what you already know – that when he heard Barack Obama speak, he felt a thrill going up his leg. This is not political analysis. This is a man-crush.

A month earlier, after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, Chris Matthews went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and said --and these are his exact words – "If you're actually in the room when Obama gives one of his speeches and you don't cry, you're not an American." I hope all of you right-wing bastards heard that, fascist pigs.

And before he was done with the Leno Show, Chris Matthews morphed from Mr. Hardball into Miss Winfrey, and he told Jay, "If you're in a room with Obama, you feel the Spirit moving." I don’t know about you, but if I’m in a room with Chris Matthews, even if he's only on the TV set babbling in the room, I feel something else moving: my lunch, moving from my stomach up my esophagus and out of my mouth.

The worst thing that MSNBC did was during its hard news coverage. During the day when Sarah Palin was being announced as John McCain's choice for vice president, they put up a graphic on the screen in capital letters that said, "How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?" This wasn't on the Jon Stewart comedy news show. This wasn't on one of their lunatic primetime shows. This was during the day during their hard news coverage on what is supposed to be a real news network.

Jay Leno had the last laugh, though. He said that after the election, the Obama people were throwing a victory party at their headquarters, MSNBC.

There was so much other stuff, we'd be here for three years. But let me just tell you about one other thing.

There's a young man at CBS News who I'm sure you haven't heard of. His name is Jeff Glor, He's one of their rising stars. To the extent that anybody cares about anything that CBS does, he's one of the people in the future. He did a piece called "Five Things You Should Know About Barack Obama." You're going to think I’m making this up. When I read this, I thought the person who sent it to me was making it up, so I tracked it down. This is exactly what he said.

"In addition to enjoying basketball and cycling during downtime, Obama loves to play Scrabble. Obama's job as a teenager was at Baskin-Robbins, and to this day, he does not like ice cream. This is a man who plays to win. No matter what it is, whether it's the woman he wants to date or elected office or board games, there is an ambition there. There is a determination."

Folks, you can't make this crap up. Now, it isn't just what they said about Obama; it's also how hard the mainstream media worked to either ignore or, at best, downplay stories that might've hurt Obama.

Let’s take a few examples….

Do you think the media would've paid more attention if it were the National Rifle Association instead of ACORN that signed Mickey Mouse up to vote? That's a good question, I think.

Do you think the mainstream media would've shown more interest if it was John McCain and not Barack Obama who had a relationship, no matter how flimsy, with an unrepentant terrorist?

What if this unrepentant terrorist had bombed not the Capitol or the Pentagon but a black church or an abortion clinic no matter how many years ago it was?

What would the media say if on September 11, 2001, of all days, the New York Times ran a story in which this bomber said that his only regret was that he didn't do more? What do you think the media would say about all of that?

How would the media play the story if it had been John McCain and not Barack Obama who spent 20 years in a church with a right-wing bigot?

What if it was Sarah Palin and not John McCain, who before a cheering crowd of supporters, said that the answer to our economic problems is a simple three-letter word, jobs, and then went on to actually spell J-O-B-S?

Well, what do you think, as a very funny guy who looked like Joe Pesci said, what do you think the media would do if it was Sarah Palin and not Joe Biden who said that in 1929, Franklin Roosevelt got on television to reassure the American people when the stock market crashed even though FDR wasn't in office until 1933 and television wasn't introduced to the general public till 1939? How would the mainstream media have played that story? Do you think the might've portrayed Sarah Palin as a moron or worse, as a ticking time bomb? I think we all know the answer to that.

Part way through the campaign, speaking of Sarah Palin, right after she was announced, something very, very strange happened. A mental disorder spread through liberal America, including many American newsrooms. This disorder became known simply as PDS, Palin Derangement Syndrome. PDS was a lot like BDS, which was Bush Derangement Syndrome, in which liberals foam at the mouth at the mere mention of the name George Bush. Palin Derangement Syndrome was a lot like that.

A few examples of Palin Derangement Syndrome:

Mary Mitchell wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that Sarah Palin "makes me sick."

Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times that Palin was our "new Napoleon in bunny boots."

Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote on the Washington Post's website, "Sarah Palin's greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she's a woman."

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, wrote a piece for Salon, the online magazine, "What's the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

Also on Salon, somebody named Cintra Wilson managed to type these words as Palin Derangement Syndrome was eating away at her brain: "Sarah Palin has me and my friends wretching in our handbags. She's such a power-mad backwater beauty pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her, but in reality, I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism."

Now, you can Google it, as they say. The rise of Sarah Palin to PDS sufferers is akin to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany?

Somebody, somebody, please, call Jerry Lewis. We need a telethon. We need to raise money to fight this terrible disease.

I have a theory as to why liberals in and out of the media hated this woman so much. What drives them nuts, especially liberal feminists, is that this white trash pro-gun, pro-life church-going woman who didn't go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton was and remains the most prominent talked-about woman in the United States of America. They hate that. They hate that. It wasn't supposed to be that way. The most prominent woman was supposed to be one of them, a liberal feminist.

There are more reasons that they hate her. Liberals, again, in and out of the media, they look at this woman and they say, what kind of woman has five kids? What kind of woman actually has a baby with Down Syndrome? What kind of woman lets her daughter go through with the pregnancy? What kind of woman is this?

And there's one more reason that they hate her, and Dennis Miller mentioned this the other day. Women hated her more than men hated her. Women hated her because she seems to be happily married and she's not neurotic, unlike so many liberal feminist women.

You know, what I've learned over the years, and this, again, has to do with liberal reporters but liberals, in general, they not only don't understand middle Americans; they don't want to understand middle Americans. They think that anybody who eats at a Red Lobster is committing a crime against humanity; anybody who flies the flag on the Fourth of July is a hopeless hayseed; anybody who bowls is a square. This wasn't about Sarah Palin at all. This was about them. This was their real pathology that they have no use for regular Americans.

Now, a few points as I wrap up because I know you guys have other things to do.

A few years ago, I spoke about bias in the news to a class at the American University, and after I talked, every question that I got was from deep left field from the students in the class. And then the professor said something at the time I didn't find especially interesting, but I did much later.

He said, "But isn't it the role of the media to effect change in society?" "Isn't it the role of the media to effect change in society"? I said to him, "Your change or mine?"

And he went silent because this supposedly intelligent guy, it never occurred to him that change comes in more than one package. The only change he thought was worthy of affecting by the media was liberal change.

Now, I put that out of my mind the way you try to put a lot of bad things out of your mind, but it came rushing back to me during this campaign because it occurred to me that's exactly what the media is doing. They are trying to effect change in society, their change, not your change, I guarantee you that.

As corrupt as the media was this time around the media did not defeat John McCain; Republicans defeated John McCain. George Bush, who strikes me as an eminently decent man, was an albatross around John McCain's neck. He got this country into an immensely unpopular war, and whether the surge works or not in the long run, and we all hope it does, the American people will not tolerate a war that goes on this long. John McCain was with Bush on that. John McCain paid the price.

The Republicans in Congress cost John McCain the election. In 2000, when they controlled not only both houses of Congress but when Republicans also controlled the White House, that's when Republicans sold out their conservative principles. They spent money like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store. They were out of control. And what did our compassionate conservative president do? He didn't veto a single spending bill. He paid for that, and John McCain paid for that.

I don't want to perpetuate the civil war that is now going on in our ranks. Some people think Sarah Palin was a good choice; 91 percent of Republicans do. I'm not at all sure that if she, 100 percent of Republicans, she can get 51 percent of the vote. That is going to be up to all of you to decide as time goes on. Reasonable people on that score may disagree.

One final point, and I don't know why this bothers me as much as it does, but three days after the election, I heard two political journalistic heavy hitters, a fellow named Charlie Cook and another one named Stuart Rothenberg, on C-SPAN. They were at a seminar in Washington, and they both acknowledged that there was bias in the media during the campaign. They said, "Of course, there was bias in the media." And then Stuart Rothenberg said, "But it is what it is." And Charlie Cook jumped in and said, "Stu is right. It is what it is."

And this really troubled me in a way I couldn't put my finger on it, and then it hit me. What other kind of bias do intelligent, decent, reasonable people write off with, "It is what it is." Have decent people ever said, "You know, black people, they can't drink from that same water fountain as white people, but, hey, it is what it is." That's not how decent people talk, and that's why this problem is a problem because there are no people in mainstream journalism with the guts to stand up and say, "Maybe it is what it is today, but this can't go on any longer."

Well, I'd like to end on a more upbeat note. It has to do with something I read in the newspaper. It was one of those advice columns. This one was Dear Abby. I'm not making this up. I read this in the paper the day before yesterday. And then if there's time, I'd love to take questions.

It says, "Dear Abby, my husband is a liar and a cheat. He's cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It's so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job, all he does is cruise around and chew the fat with his buddies. He doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?" signed Clueless. And Abby responds, "Dear Clueless, grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman, you don't need him anymore. You're a United States Senator from New York. Act like one."


CLICK HERE to read the rest of Goldberg's Speech.