Make News Semi-Great Again: Bring Back Media Bias!
Compared to the scumminess that passes for journalism today, someone like Sam Donaldson was a boy scout. (UPDATED)
Where is media bias when we need it?
In the 1980s, when the phrase “media bias” grew popular, conservatives complained that such liberals as ABC’s Sam Donaldson would report on a Reagan Administration reform and then find a sweet old lady to cry about it on camera. She would weep that if Reagan got his way, she and her pet feline would wrestle nightly for first dibs to the Purina Cat Chow.
The hilarious, late comedian Mort Sahl joked back then that if Russia and America lobbed hydrogen bombs at each other, the so-called Paper of Record’s banner headline the next morning would read: “Earth destroyed in thermonuclear exchange; blacks and women hit hardest.”
While the liberal media twisted stories their way, at least they told audiences the underlying news. Journalists informed Americans first and spun them second.
Oh, how far from that low standard we have tumbled.
These days, the Leftist, old-guard media craft their evil far more insidiously: They studiously ignore big stories. Even worse, they concoct narratives from scratch, just as Guglielmo Marconi invented radio.
In a current, molar-grinding example of the first category, the major TV networks entombed the so-called Paper of Record’s March 16 concession that Hunter Biden’s laptop is genuine. Moreover, the Old Gray Lady independently verified Biden’s highly incriminating files.
Big news!
But this was a nullity at the networks. As of March 22, Newsbusters reports, here is how long they covered two facts:
First, that abandoned laptop belongs to the son of the President of the United States.
Second, that laptop chronicles a parade of personal failings and a panoply of public scandals through which Hunter gathered — by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer’s estimate — $40 million from sketchy Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian interests.
ABC: Zero seconds
CBS: Zero seconds
NBC: Zero seconds
Finally, two weeks after the March 6 revelations about Hunter’s laptop, the Big Three finally uttered the words “Hunter Biden.” Indeed, this was the first time in 261 days that either ABC, CBS, or NBC broke their Trappist-like silence regarding the commander-in-chief’s globe-trotting-grifter son.
“NBC finally adequately covered the growing investigation into Hunter Biden, with NBC Nightly News dedicating an entire segment to the story,” Newsbusters’ Kevin Tober reported Thursday. “Meanwhile, ABC and CBS have each decided to move on from the story after each of their morning shows Good Morning America and CBS Mornings, respectively aired segments.”
As for cable TV, aside from Fox News Channel, which was all over this story, here is how much time the other news outlets devoted to this matter over its first six days:
CNN: Zero seconds
MSNBC: Two seconds
That’s right. The First Son’s suspected graft earned a combined two seconds for almost a week. This is one-fifteenth the length of a typical shampoo commercial.
While these two channels have paid Hunter some attention since then, it has been primarily to dismiss this story as no big whoop. After all, who doesn’t have a son jetting about the planet, selling the family name to totalitarian thugs for tens of millions of dollars?
Similarly, Special Counsel John Durham’s February 11 legal brief accused Hillary Clinton of underwriting a computer-hacking conspiracy against candidate Donald J. Trump. These Democrat spies later penetrated the servers of President Trump in the White House.
What a story!
In fact, as the Media Research Center calculated, here is how much attention the Big Three networks gave this momentous development across its first five days:
ABC: Zero seconds
CBS: Zero seconds
NBC: Zero seconds
Even worse, when today’s media are not busy concealing stories like Mafiosi burying corpses, they completely fabricate others. Based on no evidence whatsoever, they scream total lies at ear-piercing volume:
Moreover, Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, brokered four peace deals between Israel and its Muslim neighbors, and hosted multiple Hanukkah celebrations at the White House.
What a Jew hater!
In fact, Omaha Nation member Nathan Phillips approached Sandmann at the Lincoln Memorial and pounded a drum in his face as Sandmann stood stoically and smiled blandly.
In fact, as an Interior Department report confirmed, there was no tear gas. Federal law-enforcement officers used pepper spray, but no tear gas, to disperse violent protesters who had hurled bricks and other projectiles at U.S. officials including Attorney General William Barr.
The feds instructed these hooligans to scram, so they could expand their security perimeter and erect a fence, across from the White House. When these Leftist thugs resisted, federal agents cleared them out. Trump spontaneously visited the church, after the park had been neutralized.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called this “the ultimate dereliction of duty by a president of the United States” and said that Trump’s alleged non-response to these bounties “stands alone on its own island of infamy” as “the worst thing Donald Trump has done as president…”
Nyet, comrade Maddow.
This Potemkin story imploded nine months later when Team Biden conceded last April that the intelligence community had only “low to moderate confidence” that Russia ever paid these rumored bounties. President Trump never raised the matter with Moscow because Washington was unsure there was anything to discuss with Team Putin.
Even the Left-wing Daily Beast admitted that this tale was taller than the Washington Monument: “It was a huge election-time story that prompted cries of treason,” the Daily Beast wrote in April 2021. “But according to a newly disclosed assessment, Donald Trump might have been right to call it a ‘hoax.’”
In fact, Rittenhouse’s gun already was in Kenosha, Wisconsin. More important, he told Tucker Carlson “I support the BLM movement.” There is no indication anywhere that Rittenhouse considers whites superior to anyone.
No, it wasn’t. As discussed, this Kremlin-cloak-and dagger fantasy remains utterly baseless. America’s Leftest daily paper finally admitted that the laptop is exactly as the New York Post described it on October 14, 2020, before Silicon Valley deep-sixed this scoop via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Big Tech’s other weapons of mass deception.
In fact, after complaining about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election, Trump urged his followers on the National Mall to march to Capitol Hill and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” This is called free speech and free assembly, two fundamental human rights enshrined in the First Amendment.
In fact, Bill 1557 does not say “gay.” What it does say is that “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3…”
Leftists who clamor to chat up 5- through 8-year-olds about gender and sexuality — homo-, hetero-, or otherwise — should be honest enough to say so explicitly. And then they should be placed under 24-hour surveillance.
Reaganites berated media bias a generation ago. But when it comes to news, those were the days.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. Bucknell University’s Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.
