Media Malpractice: The ABCs of Media Bias
\nby Malcolm A. Kline\u00a0on\u00a0February 17, 2017
\n(Source: http:\/\/www.aim.org\/aim-column\/media-malpractice-the-abcs-of-media-bias\/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Email%20Feb-17-2017&utm_medium=email)\u00a0\u00a0
\nWhen America\u2019s most powerful media outlets demonstrated their understanding of participatory democracy by actually participating in the 2016 presidential election campaign, it backfired on them, big time.
\nFor example, when President Trump came to the\u00a0CIA\u00a0and received the type of ovation he usually gets at rallies of his supporters, his appearance blew away yet another\u00a0media narrative\u00a0several weeks in the making about his alleged war on the intelligence community. \u201cIt was clear to any objective observer with a set of eyes and ears that Trump\u2019s speech at CIA headquarters was a tremendous success. He was interrupted by applause 11 times,\u201d Cliff Kincaid, Director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism, pointed out. Cliff counted, because he can, unlike many of the \u201cbest and the brightest\u201d in the media, as we shall see.
\nAt this point, the only relatively reliable news that America\u2019s so-called mainstream media offer are sports, weather and traffic reports. Even then you may want to get a second opinion. There is bias by commission and bias by omission. In other words, the media slant stories by what they report and by what they don\u2019t. With the former, if you subscribe to Democratic National Committee e-mails, you will notice how remarkably they track with headlines and teasers in the media. The latter problem would be solved if the media actually adhered to their stated mission and reported the news.
\nIndeed, the catalogue of inaccurate news reporting is so voluminous that we concluded the only way to maintain our sanity was to relay it alphabetically.
\nPro-Life March, Called the \u201cAnti-Abortion March\u201d by the Media
\nAs we go to press in early 2017, the annual \u201cMarch for Life\u201d in Washington, D.C. has recently taken place. National Public Radio estimated the crowd size at \u201chundreds.\u201d The pro-life activists who organized the march put it at tens of thousands. The latter is probably more accurate. Don Irvine, Chairman of Accuracy in Media (AIM), and Spencer Irvine, Director of Social Media for AIM, actually went down to the Mall and covered the March, finding that there was a sizable crowd, certainly in the thousands, but definitely more than \u201chundreds.\u201d
\nBenghazi
\nFive years after it occurred, the media are still in a state of denial over this one. For instance, when the House Select Committee on Benghazi report came out last summer, the\u00a0Chicago Tribuneeditorialized that, \u201cThe Benghazi report offers evidence\u00a0of Clinton\u2019s lapses, but not a lot of path breaking information.\u201d
\nBut AIM Editor Roger Aronoff, who founded AIM\u2019s Citizens\u2019 Commission on Benghazi, recently wrote that \u201cDespite the media\u2019s lackluster enthusiasm for covering new developments in the Benghazi story, several key events occurred in 2016 in the search for the truth. In June, the Citizens\u2019 Commission on Benghazi released its second report on the Benghazi attacks of 2012. Thereport outlines\u00a0how the Obama administration willfully and \u2018materially aided known al-Qa\u2019eda-linked militias to topple [Muammar Qaddafi\u2019s] regime.\u2019 This, as we have argued before, demonstrated how the administration actively \u2018switched sides\u2019 in the War on Terror. In addition, the new report revealed that the Obama administration sent aid to forces that would later coalesce into the Islamic State.\u201d
\nBlack Lives Matter
\nThe media still like to put this radical advocacy group in the same category as the original March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Jr. \u00a0Doing so does Dr. King a grave injustice. As William Johnson, Executive Director of the National Association of Police Organizations, noted on the day after the attack at a BLM rally in Dallas in which five police officers were killed, \u201cI think [the Obama Administration] continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country, has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible.\u201d
\nBrexit
\nThe reporting on both sides of the Atlantic regarding Britain\u2019s exit from the European Union in order to go back to governing itself shows how successfully media bias can go global, and collapse. Probably the ultimate authority on Brexit is Daniel Hannan, the Tory representative in the European Union who led the movement that summer to leave the EU. Here\u2019s what he had to say about it at the Cato Institute last fall: \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to begin to describe the imbalance of forces in our recent debate and referendum. Every broadcaster, every political party, every bank, every big corporation, every trade association, every think tank, every EU-funded university, the whole of the establishment was telling us that it was a matter of national survival to stay in the EU. That it would be calamitous for us if we left. And people didn\u2019t believe it. On June 23, they politely disregarded all the advice, all the bullying, all the hectoring and threats, and they voted to become a self-governing country again.\u201d
\nOf course, the media in Great Britain and America first said it wouldn\u2019t happen, then went into Chicken Little sky-is-falling mode when it did. \u201cLet\u2019s just look at what happened since our vote,\u201d Hannan said in his October 2016 speech. \u201cWe were told by every economist, by every bank, by every politician, that if we voted Leave, our stock exchange would collapse.\u201d
\n\u201cIn reality, the stock exchange collapse is happening in the Eurozone; British stocks are the best-performing in Europe. We were told that unemployment would go through the ceiling. In fact, unemployment has fallen every month since the vote, and is currently at its lowest-ever level. Your president [then, Barack Obama] said, if you leave, don\u2019t expect us to talk to you as a commercial partner\u2014you\u2019ll be in the back of the line for any trade talks. He\u2019s conspicuously failed to repeat that line since, and the Speaker of the House has quite rightly said: \u2018We\u2019re going to have a trade deal with the UK long before we have one with the EU.\u2019 The German finance minister said: \u2018If you vote Leave, you\u2019ll be treated as any other country and we won\u2019t have any special arrangements with you.\u2019 He now says: \u2018Oh no, no, no, Britain\u2019s our biggest customer, of course, we\u2019re going to have a good deal.\u2019 This is the extent to which the experts were wrong, and the people were right.\u201d Does that sound familiar?
\nCommon Core
\nThe media have barely covered this. At our sister organization,\u00a0Accuracy in Academia, we have not only done so, but noted that opposition to the untested educational experiment has gone way beyond conservative activists to include local Democratic parties, some unions and even teachers. Candidate Trump spoke about it less frequently than he did unemployment or terrorism but he never had a kind word for it. Conversely, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whose endorsement of CC and connection to it was fairly consistent, saw his own candidacy for the Republican nomination fail as a result, although he might not have realized it himself.
\nCrime
\nAlthough the media would rather focus on the alleged misdeeds of renegade cops, murder rates in major metropolitan areas have gone through the roof, making many of them about as safe as the Middle East. Along with the crime wave, few in the media care to acknowledge that most blacks are killed by other blacks, as crime statistics from the Obama Administration\u2019s Justice Department have indicated. Similarly, they rarely report on the violence perpetrated in border towns by illegal aliens with criminal records, although residents of those communities regularly share tales of beheadings, murders, rapes, kidnappings and robberies.
\nThe Economy
\nThis is arguably the big one. The mainstream media have been content to accept former President Obama\u2019s monthly jobs numbers and proclamations of economic growth and recovery, but if they dug just a little deeper they would find that other numbers from the same source tell a different story. So, for that matter does a long ride outside the Beltway. On at least half a dozen occasions since last November, I have had bewildered federal employees ask me, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d I have told each of them, \u201cDonald Trump is the first presidential candidate to talk about jobs since Bill Clinton in 1992 and the first Republican to talk about jobs since Ronald Reagan in 1980.\u201d When I mention that, I can almost see the light bulb turn on in their heads.
\nAIM Editor Roger Aronoff noted last year that, \u201cA December report co-authored by Obama\u2019s former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, revealed that in the last decade, 94 percent of all jobs created in this country were part-time jobs, generally without benefits.\u201d Aronoff noted in another report last year that \u201cGallup argues that real unemployment is at 9.5 percent, not the 4.9 percent that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported.\u201d
\nAs I pointed out\u00a0last August, \u201cDuring the 1930s, as many as\u00a015 million\u00a0were out of work, according to the Obama Administration\u2019s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Currently, \u2018Combining those not in the labor force who are of working age and all those unemployed shows 55.4 million working-age, native-born Americans without jobs in the first quarter of 2016, compared to 41.1 million in the same quarter of 2000,\u2019 according to Dr. Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).\u201d
\n\u201cIf the former period was a \u2018Great Depression,\u2019 surely, at least, this is an even greater one.\u201d Our population since the 1930s has tripled but the number of unemployed has more than tripled.
\n\u201cWe have noted that both conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan and liberal Democrat President Bill Clinton could, and did, legitimately, brag about record levels of job growth,\u201d I wrote last summer. \u201cBoth occurred for the same reason: New jobs come from new businesses.\u201d
\n\u201cTherein, lay the bad news, that isn\u2019t getting any better: In the past 16 years, the\u00a0BLS\u00a0reports, the new business survival rate has dropped from 48 percent to 20 percent. Even if you are lucky enough to get a job, with these odds stacked against you, the odds are that you will have little resembling disposable income,\u201d I wrote last August. \u201cThe\u00a0U.S. Census Bureau\u00a0reported in 2014 that \u2018In 2013, real median household income was 8.0 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.\u2019\u201d
\nThe Hillary Clinton E-Mail Scandal
\nPolls show that Americans were consistently upset that she would be so cavalier with America\u2019s top secrets while she was serving as secretary of state. The media are even more upset that the e-mails were leaked. Judicial Watch announced on Groundhog Day in 2017 that they \u201creleased\u00a0549 pages\u00a0of new State Department records, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which Hillary Clinton top aide Huma Abedin secured an invitation to a 2009 State Department luncheon for Sant S. Chatwal, a businessman under investigation in two countries and was also a Clinton Foundation trustee and contributor.\u00a0 The emails also contain an email to Clinton, shared with Abedin, the classified names of intelligence agency employees.\u201d
\n\u201cThe records contain 21\u00a0previously undisclosed\u00a0Clinton emails\u2013of a total of at least 259 that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department\u2013further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, \u2018as far as she knew,\u2019 all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department. Two of these emails are now available on the State Department\u2019s website.\u201d
\nFake News
\nThis media narrative didn\u2019t last long, mostly because when they echoed their favorite president in proclaiming it, groups such as Accuracy in Media said, essentially, \u201cBring it on!\u201d The mainstream media (MSM) were mainly referring to ersatz journalism on social media. AIM has been documenting fake news purveyed by the MSM, going back almost a half a century.
\nFidel Castro
\nWhen the Cuban dictator died last year, the media mourned, ignoring the decades of human rights abuses that made him a preoccupation of both the State Department and Amnesty International.
\nGOP
\nThe media write this obituary annually, even when the Grand Old Party controls the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, not to mention governorships and state houses.
\nHomelessness
\nThis only gets covered during Republican presidential administrations. During Democratic White House occupancies, it magically disappears. Not the homelessness, just the coverage of it.
\nImmigration
\nThis is the one that really struck a chord for candidate Trump, and the media are still tone deaf as to why. They want to focus their attention on whatever human interest stories they can find that support their narrative while ignoring those that don\u2019t. If you find a member of the media, mention the name Kate Steinle and see if it produces any recognition. Then make further inquiries and see if any of them have covered \u201cKate\u2019s law.\u201d She was killed by an illegal alien with a criminal record who was repeatedly caught and released.
\n\u201cAlready tens of thousands of Americans have been killed by illegal\u00a0aliens,\u201d according to The Remembrance Project. Founded by Maria Espinoza, the daughter of \u201can immigrant father and a 5th generation Texan,\u201d The Remembrance Project \u201cadvocates for families whose loved ones were\u00a0killed by illegal aliens.\u201d They claim that \u201c12 Americans are murdered each day by illegals, and an additional\u00a013 Americans are killed by illegals driving drunk.\u201d
\nThe media prefer to cover immigration as war against \u201cthe other.\u201d They never admit that both Americans and legal immigrants are concerned with terrorism, crime and jobs. Thus, terrorists on visas, even if they have overstayed them, are rarely tallied up by the media. Neither are crimes by M1-5 or \u201clone wolves.\u201d Yet and still, even among those who emigrate for economic reasons, there is a great untold story. In fact, we\u2019ve only found two writers who have, Michelle Malkin and John Miano in their book,\u00a0Sold Out. They show how crony capitalists and their allies in government conspire to import H1-B visa holders into America to displace American workers. The arrangement generally leaves the Americans unemployed, the foreign workers living and working in conditions Sinclair Lewis would be shocked at, and the employers rich.
\nJournalism
\nWhen members of the media look at themselves, they are usually in denial.
\nKellyanne Conway
\nShe actually qualifies as good news, although reporters grilling her probably don\u2019t think so. On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump\u2019s campaign manager proved that she is smarter than all of the political consultants who worked on the past five Republican presidential campaigns put together including, especially, Karl Rove. She also has the honor of being the first female campaign manager to win a presidential election. Here at Accuracy in Media, we have long been familiar with her work: She spoke at one of our lunches more than a decade ago. Now a counselor to the president, she rarely says anything that she cannot back up.
\nLiberals
\nThey don\u2019t exist, particularly in the media. They\u2019re either \u201ccentrist\u201d or \u201cnonpartisan.\u201d
\nMilitary
\nWhen the media acknowledge their existence, it\u2019s usually a derisive acknowledgement.
\nNews
\nIf you\u2019re still looking for yours from the MSM, let us know if you find any.
\nObamacare
\nThe media still treat this is as a success story, echoing their favorite source on the matter\u2014the man it was named after. Nevertheless, half of the Obamacare exchanges, from which the uninsured were supposed to get their health care, had crashed by the middle of last year. This leaves an open question that so far, no one on either side of the aisle in Washington, D.C., is investigating, namely, when they crashed, how much of Obamacare went with them?
\nDrawing on data from the Obama Administration\u2019s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Heritage Foundation policy analyst Edmund F. Haislmaier\u00a0testified\u00a0before the U.S. House Budget Committee in January of this year that, under Obamacare, \u201cWhile the final figures will be somewhat different once the more complete end of year data is available, at this point it is reasonable to expect that for the three-year period of 2014 through 2016, the net increase in health insurance enrollment was 16.5 million individuals. Of that figure, 13.8 million were added to Medicaid and 2.7 million were the net increase in private-sector coverage enrollment.\u201d
\nPolls
\nWhey they work against Republicans, the media report them as though they were election results. As they learned last November, they aren\u2019t.
\nQuestion Authority
\nBut only when Republicans control the White House.
\nRefugee Issue
\nThe media narrative on this one is of a piece with their line on immigration. Moreover, the United States has historically assisted genuine refugees fleeing oppression, from Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for instance. But do today\u2019s refugees fit that template?
\n\u201cHomeland security officials and inspectors general have warned for decades that our consular offices are filled with corrupt and incompetent clerks; our computer systems are outdated; criminal background checks have been abandoned wholesale; the deportation and removal apparatus has been sabotaged by pro-illegal immigration ideologues; and our southern border is overrun by drug cartel violence, human trafficking and misery,\u201d\u00a0Michelle Malkin\u00a0reports. \u201cWe already grant 1 million legal permanent residencies to people from around the world every year.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s expected to increase to 10.5 million green cards by 2025. Add in between 11 million and 30 million aliens here illegally, along with an estimated annual influx of 70,000 asylees; 500,000 foreign students; nearly 700,000 total foreign guest workers (skilled and unskilled, plus their spouses, many of whom are allowed to work here as well); plus more than 350,000 foreign high school and university students, researchers, physicians, and summer work travelers on J-1 exchange visitor visas; 66,000 visas for nonagricultural temporary foreign workers; and 117,000 slots for seasonal agricultural workers.\u201d
\nDownsizing Federal Regulations
\nThis is a hard story to pitch to media outlets but the people who pay for it, their readers and viewers, might find it fascinating. The last U.S. government report to take a comprehensive look at the cost of federal regulations came from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in 2010: The SBA put the number at $1.7 trillion. \u201cU.S. households \u2018pay\u2019 $14,842 annually in a hidden regulatory tax ($1.885 trillion in regulation [CEI\u2019s calculation of the SBA total updated] divided by 127 million \u2018consumer units\u2019), or 22 percent of\u00a0average income before taxes,\u201d the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found last year. \u201cThat figure is higher than every annual household budgetary expenditure item except housing.\u201d
\n\u201cMore is \u2018spent\u2019 on embedded or hidden regulation in society than on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel and services, and savings. Societal regulatory costs amount to up to 28 percent of the typical household\u2019s expenditure budget.\u201d
\nRussia
\nThe media worked every angle and adjective to tie the Republican presidential candidate to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government while ignoring the more tangible connections of the Democratic presidential candidate to the Russian regime. As AIM editor Roger Aronoff noted late last year, \u201cAnother issue is that it is really Hillary who has had a tight relationship with Russia, especially when she was secretary of state.\u201d
\n\u201cShe used that position as a cash cow for her family foundation. As we pointed out a few months ago, through Skolkovo and Uranium One, tens of millions of dollars flowed to the Clinton Foundation in return for incredible rewards for the Russians, including 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves.\u201d Peter Schweizer has researched and analyzed the Clinton Foundation\u2019s myriad dealings to a fare thee well in his book\u00a0Clinton Cash.
\nSanctuary Cities
\nThe media love to cover the marches in them, and statements by their public officials, but don\u2019t look much further. \u201cDepartment of Homeland Security records show that in just one eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released by sanctuary jurisdictions,\u201d\u00a0Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow\u00a0Hans von Spakovsky\u00a0wrote in The Daily Signal. \u201cThree thousand of them were felons and 62 percent had a prior criminal record.\u201d
\n\u201cNineteen hundred were later rearrested a total of 4,300 times on 7,500 different offenses.\u201d Von Spakovsky has worked as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.
\nScandals
\nHillary Clinton was always mystified that no one other than the press pool and herself seemed to care about Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns. Here\u2019s a hint: People are much more interested in what politicians do with their taxes than what businessmen do with their own money. AIM Editor Roger Aronoff nicely summarized some of the actual scandals that the media missed: \u201cThe press considered few, if any, of the major Obama scandals\u2014the IRS targeting scandal, Benghazi, the Veterans Administration scandal, Fast & Furious, ransom cash sent to the Iranians\u2014as real scandals.\u201d
\nStock Market
\nOn Election Eve last year, media superstars corralled every \u201cbusiness expert\u201d they could find to go on the air and support their conclusion that a stock market collapse was imminent in the wake of a Republican presidential victory. Since then, the market has hit record highs that Trump supporters have gleefully posted on social media.
\nAccuracy In Media Inc
\n\u00a92017 by\u00a0Accuracy in Media. All Right Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Media Malpractice: The ABCs of Media Bias by Malcolm A. Kline\u00a0on\u00a0February 17, 2017 (Source: http:\/\/www.aim.org\/aim-column\/media-malpractice-the-abcs-of-media-bias\/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Email%20Feb-17-2017&utm_medium=email)\u00a0\u00a0 When America\u2019s most powerful media outlets demonstrated their understanding of participatory democracy by actually participating in the 2016 presidential election campaign, it backfired on them, big time. For example, when President Trump came to the\u00a0CIA\u00a0and received the type of ovation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}