We’ve become accustomed to Democratic Party operatives thinly disguised as journalists smearing, slurring, slamming, and lying about Republican candidates. They don’t want voters to know the truth. They’re not objective purveyors of the facts but rather political players who want to have the power to pick the winners of every election.
Some years ago, while at the University of California, Los Angeles, economics professor Timothy Groseclose wrote a book that showed Democratic candidates start their campaigns with significant leads over their GOP candidates due to media preference.
In “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” Groseclose, now at George Mason University, demonstrated how that bias could be measured. “He is so numerate,” economist David Henderson wrote in a review, “that he makes clear with the data just how extreme the left-wing bias is.”
It’s possible that the hole Republicans have to start in is even deeper than it was when “Left Turn” was published in 2011.
The media are so invested in Democrats, through their votes and their campaign donations, and through their hard-left ideology, that they don’t want voters to determine the outcomes of elections. They want to be the power brokers who coronate the kings and queens of our executive and legislative bodies.
The partisanship is obvious, and it goes beyond the opinion pages and the unprincipled pundits who continuously screech on television. What is supposed to be straight news is so laced with fabrication and half-truths meant to mislead, that it is, as New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin has noted, “indistinguishable from propaganda.”
If the news gatherers and disseminators were to come out and admit their bias and declare the press a wing of the Democratic Party, it would be acceptable. But they continue to lie, to portray themselves as objective arbiters. This is a clear violation of ethics and a breach of the public trust. It’s election interference.
None of this is new. More than 50 years ago, the late columnist Edith Efron wrote “The News Twisters.” She looked at coverage of the 1968 presidential election and documented the extreme bias in the press. Her research showed “that while coverage of Hubert Humphrey was almost equally balanced at 8,458 words pro– and 8,307 words anti-, coverage of Richard Nixon was 1,620 words pro– and 17,027 words anti-, an incredible anti-Nixon ratio of over 10 to 1,” says a review from the March 1972 issue of Commentary.
The routine is, however, growing old – and might be nearing its end. The legacy media know that they’re losing their power and influence because they have ruined their credibility with their overt cheerleading for the Democrats. They’re therefore working this election particularly hard to leave one final stain on our political affairs.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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