Media Being Left By The Wayside

Americans have always relied on the media to keep tabs on those in power.  It now seems we need someone to keep tabs on the media.  

During the 2008 primaries an online listserv group of liberal journalists going by the name Journolist plotted to cover up the Jeremiah Wright story in an effort to boost Obama into the Presidency.  Sound like a nutty right wing conspiracy?  Not so.  According to records obtained by Tucker Carlson of the Daily Caller this actually happened.  

During the debates when Obama was asked by George Stephanopoulos, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”   Richard Kim of the Nation fumed on Journolist that Stephanopoulos was “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent went even further. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”  He continued: “I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a right winger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically.”  I guess I should be thankful he only meant it "rhetorically."  

As if journalists showing their already present biases weren't enough Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, suggested “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?”

Luke Mitchell, a then editor at Harpers magazine, even suggests openly coordinating coverage in favor of the Democrats.  “...It seems to me that a concerted effort on the part of the left partisan press could be useful. Why geld ourselves? A lot of the people on this list work for organizations that are far more influential than, say, the Washington Times.  Open question: Would it be a good use of this list to co-ordinate a message of the week along the lines of the GOP? Or is that too loathsome? It certainly sounds loathsome. But so does losing!”

This was not just a group of disaffected D-listers either.  Its 400 member roster included Joe Klein of Time Magazine, Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker and CNN, Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, and was founded by Ezra Klein also of the Washington Post.  

Is there any wonder every poll done on the media in the last 30 years has shown that most people believe the media tilts left?  But this is even beyond that.  In his 2001 book, Bias, Bernard Goldberg exhaustively proved a left bias but chalks it up to everyone cribbing the same big sources for headlines such as the New York Times.  He stressed that although 99% of media lean left, there is no grand conspiracy.  Goldberg has now been making the rounds on talk radio shows saying that this is new and very troubling.  He conjectures that the media is no longer 99% liberal with the rise of Fox News which presents points of view previously only heard on the AM dial.  The liberal media realizes it is losing its great monopoly on TV and won't go down without a fight.  While some claim that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party, there is no evidence of that.  On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that the mainstream media is an arm of the Democratic Party.