The Shameless Bias of the Mainstream Media

CBS News Anchor - Norah O'Donnell (Newscast Studio)

Anyone recall the impeachment hearings? Of course you do. But it is a distant memory of no significance to what’s happening in the world right now. Other than what it said about partisanship in DC. And perhaps more significantly what it says about mainstream media bias.

While their attempt to hide the bias used to be pretty successful, they seem to no longer be capable of it. Their target is too juicy. The President provides them with a constant flow of material too juicy to pass up. Mostly by tweet. But sometimes by action.

It’s practically impossible for a day to pass without mentioning some news story followed by how stupid, immoral, racist, or inept what the President said or did - is. He makes it oh… so easy… so delicious  …so impossible to pass up. They still try to cover-up their bias with what seems like an impartial tone. But after the impeachment hearings,  that tone doesn’t work anymore. At least not for me.  

I used to bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt. But now I see right through their ‘reporting’ for what it really is: Pontificating - with a shameless pretense of impartiality. Of course if you are a liberal, you probably think they are as impartial as humanly possible. But that’s because the mainstream media bias matches your own. I am not a liberal. Nor am I fully a conservative.  I try to see things for what they really are.

It appears that I am not alone in seeing the media for what it is these days. The brilliant Jonathan Rosenblum has made clear that this is his view as well in yet another Mishpacha Magazine  column. (3 posts in a row on Mishpacha columns. I think that’s a record!)

Say what you will about Jonathan’s conservative politics, no one can deny that this University of Chicago graduate with a law degree from Yale is a well educated man of high intelligence. And that he does his homework.

Which brings me back to President Trump’s impeachment and all the usual suspects that that tried to unseat a sitting President. With a bunch of lies by highly partisan liberal Democratic politicians or ‘Never Trumper’ Republicans. Here is what Jonathan has discovered: 

As a result of the widespread declassification of documents connected to the investigation of President Trump and his 2016 campaign for possible electoral collusion with Russia, we now know what was previously only suspected.

First, it is beyond cavil that former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice are bald-faced liars. Each of them testified before the House Intelligence Committee that they possessed no evidence of collusion.

Yet each of them has appeared on national cable news multiple times, as expert commentators presumed to have direct knowledge of the subject, and said the exact opposite. John Brennan implied that Trump was guilty of treason and James Clapper suggested Trump is a Putin asset.

And if they are brazen liars, Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is a “pathological liar,” in the words of left-wing journalists Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Aaron Mate of the Nation. Schiff asserted repeatedly that he has viewed powerful evidence implicating President Trump, even as he successfully resisted all attempts to declassify the House testimony that would have exposed his lie. 

There is a lot more in Jonathan’s column and well worth the read.

None of this is the least bit surprising to me. Watching these people pontificate about how treasonous the President was before - and during the impeachment proceedings made that pretty obvious to me and anyone that wasn’t a liberal Democrat or a ‘Never Trumper’ Republican.

As Jonathan notes, one would have thought the media would have expressed some outrage at being duped like this. This should have made headlines. Reporting possibly worthy of a Pulitzer – as Jonathan suggests.

Instead we got silence. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Not a word about any of this by anyone in the mainstream media (at least that I am aware of). 

That leaves the public with the (by now subliminal) impression that the President got away with treason because of partisanship in the Republican led Senate that could not care less about the treason Trump was so obviously guilty of.

But the facts now say otherwise. Not that anyone cares about the impeachment anymore. There are bigger fish to fry. COVID  and racism are sucking up all the air now. But that doesn’t mean the impression left by a silent media has disappeared. It will surely be a factor in the voting booth come November. Which is just fine with them.

I realize that this post will be seen as some sort of endorsement of the President. Which it is not. This post is about only one thing. Exploding the myth of mainstream media impartiality.

However, whenever I say anything remotely positive or defend the President in any way, I always feel I have to explain why a post like this is not an endorsement. My views about him have not change from those I had about him prior to the election. When I reluctantly endorsed his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

If anything I feel even more strongly about his ‘negatives’ now that I did then. He is a narcissist who has absolutely no sense of dignity. A man who knows little about the office he holds. Who rules by intimidation and revenge. He does not know how to take criticism and – with rare exception lashes out at anyone that dares to disagree with him.

He has generated more animosity from more people than any other President in my lifetime. Some of whom might otherwise be natural allies to a ‘conservative’ President . For example, an unprecedented number of current and former military leaders have distanced themselves from him - and strongly disagreed with many of the things he has said and done. Especially lately during the anti racism protests. In short, he is one huge embarrassment to his office and to the nation. Which gets worse with every tweet he makes.

The only thing I was wrong about is that his ineptitude would destroy the country. It hasn’t. In fact I actually agree with his foreign policy decisions on Israel and Iran. And with his domestic policy decisions on the economy.

I  wish there was just about anyone else with politically conservative leanings serving in his place.

The handwriting is on the wall for President Trump. He will be a one term President - gone in January of 2021. I predict he will lose the election in a landslide as the polls seem to indicate. I know polls have been wrong before. Most notably in the very election he won in 2016. But I don’t think they are wrong this time. He will lose. He has the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent President running for a second term in modern times.

Trump is his own worst enemy. If he would only shut up and stop tweeting and feeding red meat to his base, he might have had a small chance in the next election - if for example the economy somehow bounces back before then. His base is huge. But not even close to a majority of the voters.

I will not miss him. But I will miss the above-mentioned policies he has implemented. His successor, Joe Biden, will surely go back to the status quo under the previous President that he proudly served as VP. Which he constant reminds us of. I am not going to go into details here. They are beyond the scope of this post. I am just making a prediction and expressing regret at the policy changes it will bring.

But one thing is certain and something everyone should be aware of. The mainstream media can never again be trusted to impartial. They have lost all of their credibility.