By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
When Reed Irvine started Accuracy in Media, he was hoping that the public would begin to question the sources of news and information. His mission to educate the public about liberal media bias has been so successful that, as Mike Flynn notes in a perceptive piece at Breitbart, candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson surge when they are attacked by the media. Many regard media attacks as proof that the candidate is saying something that is politically incorrect and therefore makes political sense.
At the National Press Club, Carson said, “I’ll tell you right off the bat, before I go any further, I’m not politically correct. I will not be politically correct. And that’s one of the reasons that a lot of the people in the press don’t like me. But it’s okay, because you know, what I really love is this country. I don’t necessarily care whether the press likes me or not. And therefore, I’m not going to conform to all their little requirements.”
He went on, “… there is only one business in America that is protected by the Constitution. And that is the press. And there was a reason for that. It was because the press was supposed to be an ally of the people. And they were supposed to expose and inform the people in a nonpartisan way. When they become partisan, which they are, they distort the system as it was supposed to work. And they allow the side that they pick to get away with all kinds of things.”
Gallup recently found that trust in the media remains at an all-time low. The percentage of Republicans who trust the media was at only 32 percent.
The media have been losing credibility on a consistent basis. Yet, the erroneous stories keep on coming, and the mass media continue to drift even further left.
It’s difficult to believe journalism could get worse than it is now. But Breitbart reporter Brandon Darby notes that the Los Angeles Times described the recent black Oregon killer at Umpqua Community College as supporting “white-supremacist causes.”
The problem for the news media and those who claim to distribute news and information goes beyond a lack of trust. They have political agendas which are becoming apparent to news consumers, who lose faith and are turned off. That’s why people applaud a figure like Trump or Carson when they mock or criticize the media.
A new film came out on October 16 that incredibly carries the title “Truth,” taking the side of former CBS newsman Dan Rather who used fake documents to smear President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential campaign. Robert Redford plays Rather.
It is as if the truth doesn’t matter, and that Redford can sell a lie to the American people in place of the truth.
The film “Trumbo” debuts in theaters on November 6 and tells the story of “alleged” communist associations by a Hollywood screenwriter who was supposedly unfairly blacklisted from working. In fact, Dalton Trumbo was a Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist.
Some news media don’t seem to care if they are perceived as biased. For example, MSNBC aired a “global citizen” music festival to entice young people into the pro-U.N. cause.
President Obama was given sympathetic coverage for expressing outrage over the Oregon massacre, though the media were slow to cover how his administration shipped guns to Mexico which were later used to killed U.S. border agent Brian Terry in the Fast and Furious scandal. The guns were also linked to several other crimes.
Administration arms smuggling in the Middle East backfired on Hillary Clinton’s watch as secretary of state when four Americans were killed in Benghazi. Yet our media insist that Clinton came out of the recent Benghazi hearings looking better. If anything, these hearings demonstrated not only that Mrs. Clinton failed to act to save the lives of those four Americans, but that she lied in blaming the deaths on a YouTube video.
Sharyl Attkisson was essentially forced out of CBS News for being too tough on the Obama administration. Fortunately, she now has her own show, “Full Measure,” being aired nationally on stations owned or affiliated with the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
In terms of media bias that is acceptable and even celebrated, it is noteworthy that Jeffrey Toobin, the senior legal analyst for CNN and staff writer at The New Yorker, is being honored with an award by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) on November 19 in Washington, D.C. A description of the event says that Toobin, through “sharp analysis and keen insight,” has “used his platform to educate viewers about the legal rationale for fair and equal treatment of LGBT Americans and, in doing so, has helped create the political landscape that allowed recent LGBT court victories to be widely understood by the American public.”
Translated into common sense language, this means that Toobin has been pro-gay in his coverage and helped sell the public on the homosexual agenda.
The event in honor of Toobin is being co-sponsored by Comcast/NBCUniversal and CBS News. It means that although reporters sometimes talk about one another as “rivals” in the media business, they are really on the same liberal team.
The public is not fooled.
As Carson noted in his National Press Club speech, “…the good thing is that a lot of the people in America are onto them [the media] and understand what they’re trying to do. And that’s one of the reasons we’re doing well. And it seems like the more they attack me, the better we do…”
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