The Left Coaster: The Media's True Colors

Monday :: May 9, 2005

The Media's True Colors - Part 1B

by eriposte

This post is part of my continuing series exploring the real nature and behavior of the U.S. mainstream news media - in terms of news coverage. Part 1 of this series addresses issues of basic journalism, and I previously posted Part 1A on journalistic malpractice (in political coverage). This part, 1B, is about accountability for journalistic malpractice (against the Left).

If publishing or broadcasting dubious reports about a major Republican [think 60 Minutes and the Bush TX-ANG "memos"] is an example of "liberal bias" (which it was not, as I have shown) and a firing offense (or equivalently, requires resignation) then, clearly, publishing or broadcasting unending amounts of completely fraudulent or fabricated stories against prominent individuals on the Left (especially Democratic leaders) is an example of conservative bias and should be an automatic firing offense? One would think so, but it seems that accountability is a word that is largely unknown to the big shots in the media when the targets of the smear or fabrication happen to be on the Left.

In Part 1A I presented a limited list of incidents of media malpractice against John Kerry in 2004 and against Al Gore in Campaign 2000. In this post, I am extending the targets of malpractice to cover more Democrats to show that the malpractice is not limited to specific individuals on the Left. To make my point, I present here a very small set (25) of general examples illustrating cases of blatant fabrication or lying by mainstream media reporters/columnists against many prominent people on the Left. Let me repeat: this is just a small subset of columnists/reporters and incidents - a mere drop in the ocean of mendacity about Democrats (and liberals/progressives) that has pervaded the U.S. media for a long time now. When such behavior is rampant (a week spent reading the Daily Howler, Media Matters, Eric Alterman, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons - to name just a few references - will start to give you a better idea of how rampant it is; why, even conservatives occasionally, weakly acknowledge it) and it is met with an almost complete lack of accountability, it clearly demonstrates that on the issue of accountability for media malpractice against prominent people on the Left there is clearly NO (and I mean, NO) "liberal bias". In a subsequent post I will show how accountability works when the target happens to be either someone prominent on the Right or the media's (fawning) acquiescence to the Right.