Guest Piece: The Biggest Problem of the Mainstream Media

By Bruce Walker

The media – newspapers, magazines, book publishing, radio, television, and film – have never at any point in the history of our nation been impartial.  Newspapers were once the whole heart and substance of our media.  They provided news, opinion, entertainment, advice, humor, advertisements and information.  Newspapers were often unabashed partisans.

Some of that lingers on to this day.  Consider the names of these Arkansas newspapers still very much in print:  The Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, Natchez Democrat, Greenwood Democrat, Clay County Democrat, Trumann Democrat and Lonoke Democrat.   Aside from Arkansas, twenty-one other states have general circulation “Democrat” newspapers:  Mississippi, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado, Oregon, California, Oklahoma, Iowa, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and New Jersey, and fourteen states have general circulation “Republican” newspapers: Indiana, Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.  Newspapers were often quite consciously founded to promote one political party, and if you ever wondered why some newspapers have the term “Independent” in their names, it is because that mean the newspaper was nonpartisan.    

The danger to democracy from the media has never been because of patently partisan media.  How many Republicans would be upset with the New York Times, if it changed its name to the New York Democrat?  How upset would conservatives in Congress be with NPR if those abbreviations stood for National Progressive Radio?  Or if CBS meant Center for Broadcasting Socialism?  There is nothing ignoble or un-American about advocating what you believe or with buying a broadcast station to get your message out.  The sin is lying about bias.

But worse than lying about their bias, the mainstream media decides what is news and what is not.  Dan Rather refused to even mention Gary Condit and his missing paramour congressional aide, Chandra Levy and then the mainstream media pretended that Gary Condit was somehow a “conservative”  http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0701condit.htm  When the mainstream media covers a scandal, if the crook is a Democrat, that fact is almost always omitted http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0703/0703spotdemocrat.htm.   Even more surreal, organizations like CNN have even taken their own stories, which inadvertently mention that a malfeasant politician is a Democrat and edited out the “Democrat” in later versions of the news story. http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0703/0703howfinddem2.htm.  When the malodorous Rod Blagojevich is exposed, New York Times reporters writing nine paragraph stories seem to forget that trifling fact http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWMxYTkwNjY3ODRmMjJmY2IzMWQ3OTlmZDBiM2QxZDk=.  Omitting  or even re-editing stories to delete crucial facts is the second greatest sin of the mainstream media.  

The third great sin of the mainstream media is how “competitors” actually collude.  PBS never examines the Leftist bias at the New York Times.   MSNBC never attacks PBS for being a government funded organ of the Democrat Party.  In any other industry, every Leftist conspiracy freak in the country would be calling these cozy corporate “rivals” a cabal of corporate executives who secretly run America.  But, oddly, the mainstream media, which never criticizes its sibling elements for their failures, finds the only “threats” talk radio and Fox News.  Democrats move in and out of the mainstream media just as if they were members of some media version of the Skull and Bones Club. 

Lying about bias, ignoring unwelcome news, suppressing competition – these are all real sins in a free society - but the worst sin of the mainstream media is its ugly slide into personal viciousness.  It is not the “Mainstream Media” but the “Meanstream Media.”  When Fred Thompson, a universally respected former Senator with an inspiring life story, was pulling together a campaign to run for president as a genuine conservative, what did the “Meanstream Media” do?  Joe Scarborough suggested that his wife “worked a pole”   http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=809.    When Sarah Palin was put on the Republican ticket, the media ran stories which suggested that Sarah had not given birth to Trig, but rather her daughter was the mother, even insisting on paternity testing for the child. 

Worse, when ordinary citizens – not politicians – defy the Left, the media goes them, like Joe the Plumber http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/17/operation-destroy-joe-the-plumber/  or confronts protesters at Tea Parties http://newsbusters.org/blogs/julia-seymour/2009/04/15/cnn-correspondent-claims-tea-parties-anti-government-anti-cnn.

 The “Meanstream Media,” the lapdog of the failed Left, cannot win any battle fairly.  So it lies about its bias; it hides rather than reveals; it practices groupthink instead of openness.  Most despicably, the “Meanstream Media” savages, slanders, and screams at anyone for any reason who gets in its way.

                    © 2009 Bruce Walker — All Rights Reserved

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Bruce Walker is the author of two books:  Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.

http://outskirtspress.com/swastika_against_the_cross  

http://outskirtspress.com/Sinisterism

 

Comments

[Philip France]

In this article, Bruce Walker eloquently states the obvious. The links that he has embedded in his article abundantly support his point of view.

To embellish and elaborate on his fine piece, I would like to add that the entire ideology of the Left is to lie and to deceive. If this were not true, this ideology would be a minor footnote in American history and Marxism would be forever understood as a blight in world history.

Much of this fault lies in "We the people". Too many of us are satisfied with appearances; excepting the way things seem rather than what they are. We Americans are consumed by distraction, diversion and entertainment rather than the Godly principles that afford us such superfluous "luxury". Think of the obscene sums of money paid to the likes of Oprah, A-Rod, LeBron, even Jerry Springer for Christ's sake! None of these entertainers and athletes provide a whit of material value.

How many readers of this article and my post can name the nine Brady Bunch children but cannot name the nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States? How many know the most recent winner of American Idolatry but would be shocked to learn the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in ANY of our founding documents.

I posit that yellow journalism has existed for as long as journalism itself has. The venerable Walter Cronkite gave aid and comfort to our enemy by misreporting the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Should we try him in absentia for the killing fields of Cambodia? How many of you know of the savage murders of the Christian/Newsome massacre; hidden by the MIDstream media (think urine test)because a brutal crime perpetrated by blacks on a wholesome Christian white couple does not suit their agenda (look it up, it can be found).

The lies of the Left are temporal when viewed through the prism of eternity. However, We the People share a responsibility to know of issues as they are, rather than how they are reported to us.

Non compos mentis.