media bias

Media fury at one Donald Trump is sowing worrisome consequences for the future. The lying so-and-so, as most of the media view him, is going to be gone one day: possibly with the media’s invaluable assistance. And will there linger, save in progressive circles, any public inclination to believe, or even listen to, a word the anti-Trump press says about anything? Including the weather?

Journalists often talk about President Trump's "war on the media" and can't possibly discuss the media's war on President Trump. When the president attacks the media, that's an attack on democracy. When the media undermine the president, that's the full flowering of democracy. Removing the statements made by Trump and other politicians, 90 percent of evening-news Trump evaluations were negative, and only 10 percent were positive.

Liberals at the Washington Post didn't seem to have a merry Christmas this year. They were seriously unhappy about the fact that anyone would utter the "lie" about President Trump making it safe to say "merry Christmas" after eight years of the Obamas sending out White House cards wishing "happy holidays."

Seven months after throwing Carter Page as fuel on the collusion fire lit by then-FBI director James Comey’s stunning public disclosure that the Bureau was investigating possible Trump campaign “coordination” in Russia’s election meddling, the Gray Lady now says: Never mind. We’re onto Collusion 2.0, in which it is George Papadopoulos — then a 28-year-old whose idea of résumé enhancement was to feign participation in the Model U.N. — who triggered the FBI’s massive probe by . . . wait for it . . . a night of boozy blather in London.

The corrections, reflections, and over-the-top hand-wringing are set out now in everyone’s eye, thanks to a media dishing it out to everyone with a smartphone or a laptop. It’s often not very pretty. The hand-wringers in the newsrooms, complaining that nobody loves them anymore, should worry less about what their critics say about them and spend more time learning their craft. An editor steeped in the art of head-pounding would have told them that.

It’s not clear whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., can round up the needed 50 Senate votes and, if he does, whether a conference committee will hammer out a version that can pass both houses. In any case, the Republican tax bills are something more serious and responsible than “hurtling” missiles “tilting” the tax code toward the “wealthy.”

In the angst-ridden aftermath of Donald Trump's election, the media found vindication by reporting all kinds of "hate crime" incidents, lurching so eagerly that they fell for a few that turned out to be hoaxes. Any media outlet that leaps on a small incident of vandalism as a grand statement on Where America Stands ought to have the courage to make a public acknowledgment when the story is fraudulent. To do otherwise is to stoke racial fires with dishonesty.

Corruption, in the eyes of our partisan media, is solely a Trump problem, just like colluding with Russia to manipulate the election, or hating facts you find inconvenient. When Republicans agreeably proclaim that only Trump is ruining Washington on all of these things, they are trapped in the liberal-media mind meld.

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released a follow-up to its exposé of bias at the New York Times earlier this week. This time, the target is YouTube, the ubiquitous video-sharing platform owned by technology giant Google.

Nothing pleases journalists more than when Republicans do their propagandistic work for them. They like the construction, “some critics say,” but they like the phrase “some Republicans say” even more when they need to smear a reviled target. With Trump, the sticks grow ever more thin, but the media can always count on me-too Republicans and conservatives to sharpen what little remains of them.

CNN host Brian Stelter said, "President Trump’s actions and inactions in the wake of Charlottesville are provoking some uncomfortable conversations, mostly off the air if we’re being honest." There is certainly a question of just how uncomfortable CNN has been about raising issues related to President Trump’s health and character. “My impression is that since President Trump’s inauguration, there’s been a lot of tiptoeing going on,” added Brian Stelter.

Trump’s Phoenix speech was good mostly because Trump showed he could still be Trump, and that he wasn’t going to be cowed into abandoning his base – and because along the way he delivered an epic put down to the national media’s Charlottesville narrative.

When (Trump aide Stephen) Miller was done, (CNN reporter Jim) Acosta complained, "You called me ignorant on national television." The Washington Post "fact-checker" squad must have agonized as it underlined Acosta as the ignorant half of this exchange. If it did, kudos to the Washington Post for breaking the mold.

The MSM are — channeling a phrase from the Vietnam Era — a "pitiful, helpless giant."  The work begun in 2004 when many of us spoke out against Dan Rather's deceitful promulgation of the forged Bush National Guard papers on "Sixty Minutes" has, thanks to O'Keefe and others, not to mention the irrationality of the MSM itself, finally reached a critical mass. If only Andrew Breitbart were here to see it.

The Harvard scholars analyzed the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the main newscasts (not talk shows) of CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC during Trump's initial time in office. They found, to no one's surprise, that Trump absolutely dominated news coverage in the first 100 days. And then they found that news coverage was solidly negative — 80 percent negative among those outlets studied, versus 20 percent positive.

Women deserve a workplace where men don't harass them for sex. But that's what these sanctimonious liberal journalists care about. It just doesn't matter how brutal the alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick was. What matters is that Bill O'Reilly had to go. Bill Clinton is laughing.

This is just the latest attempt by The Media Resistance to make Chelsea Clinton a thing. The same liberal lunatics in the press who rage about the Trump children's nepotistic privileges champion the "refreshingly outspoken" daughter of the Clinton dynasty — who, at 37 years old, will receive a "Lifetime Impact" award from Variety on Friday for her "humanitarian work."

Trump is pulling the curtain back on the charades of the media, but often they pull the cord before he does. Instead of taking a pause in their partisanship, they plunge more deeply into it. Editors rebuke other editors for not calling Trump a “liar” on their front pages. Schools of journalism fete the most virulently anti-Trump pundits. In a way, it is all wonderfully clarifying. The mask of phony neutrality is off and their partisan faces are visible for all to see.

“I want you to quote this,” President Trump’s senior White House strategist Steve Bannon told The New York Times. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Thanks to President Trump's Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, conservative outlets finally have a seat in the White House press briefing room and we will have reporters in the room to ask questions Americans in flyover country actually care about.