Been a while since I did one of these – but this article has some interesting things to say regarding media bias and the 2000 election:
…The northwesternmost part of Florida is the Panhandle, which stretches along the Gulf of Mexico to Alabama. Often called the “Redneck Riviera,” it is the most Republican part of Florida, regularly giving Republicans big margins in state and national elections. The nine Panhandle counties that are farthest west—Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Holmes, Jackson, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton, and Washington—are in the Central Time Zone, and one additional county, Gulf, is split between Central and Eastern Time. According to the Miami Herald, “It is only a few miles to the Alabama border from anywhere in the western Panhandle, but more than five hundred miles and a cultural light-year to Miami.”
On Election Night, between 6:30 and 7:50 p.m. Eastern, anchors on all the major networks and cable channels reported over and over again that the polls in all of Florida closed at 7 p.m. Eastern. Not once did anyone on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, or MSNBC inform the audience that Florida has two time zones and two poll closing times. During that hour and 20 minutes, 13 journalists asserted a total of 39 times that there was only one poll-closing time throughout the entire state of Florida…
Why does that matter? Well, after 7pm Eastern, voting dropped off to practically nothing in the Florida Panhandle. It was over, you see? The Networks were already calling Florida for Gore before the polls closed in the Panhandle. The article goes on to note that the drop off probably cost Bush a net of about 11,000 votes – that margin would have still triggered an automatic re-count, but with that large a margin the result would never have been in doubt. Gore would have, at the latest, conceded a day or two after the election…no Bush vs Gore to the Supreme Court, no doubt cast over President Bush’s legitimacy. A lot of things would have been different (as an aside, I still recall very vividly that when the Networks finally did call the State for Bush, it was something like 97% of precincts reporting and Bush had a healthy lead – all of a sudden, a bunch of votes reported from heavily Democrat precincts and, presto!, it was effectively a tied race…I do wish someone had looked into that little, electoral miracle; that sudden surge in Democrat votes in FL is what caused the Networks to re-re-call FL and Gore to suddenly refuse to concede).
In light of this, you might recall the JournoList scandal – where it was discovered that a bunch of journalists had a private chat room, as it were, where they could discuss and coordinate their message…in the service of Democrats, naturally. We don’t know if there was such a thing during the 2000 election, but such things as JournoList and the massive repetition of the “polls close at 7 Eastern” lie over all MSM outfits in 2000 does indicate that the friendliness of journalists for their Democrat pals probably extends beyond mere friendliness. It might well go all the way to Democrats and journalists coordinating their efforts to tear down Republicans and build up Democrats in the public mind.
Remember, it wouldn’t take much – a hint here, a short phone call there and there you have it…messages all in agreement, everyone takes essentially the same line about whatever issue is being pushed at the moment. It’s not like this hasn’t happened – Ben Rhode’s demonstrably coordinated the MSM talking points for Obama’s Iran deal, after all.
We all know that almost all journalists are liberals – Progressives; Democrats with by-lines, as Instapundit puts it. They are not in journalism to serve objective truth – most of them, given their education, probably don’t believe there is such a thing as objective truth. But they do believe in Progressive ideology – they are quite certain that the world will be a better place if Progressive ideology triumphs in every particular. We know they are not on our side – but we only partially accept that they are on the Democrats’ side. In a certain sense, we know this – but in a larger sense, we still reject it…still expect that when facts are on our side, they’ll have to acknowledge it and (however grudgingly) go along with the facts. Drop that – if the facts disprove Progressive ideology, then the facts are wrong: this is how Progressives always have and always will view matters. And if they have to simply make up facts – or work up a scandal to destroy the purveyor of anti-Progressive facts – then that is what they’ll do.
And they do it all the time – right now, they are inventing “facts” to show that Hillary Clinton’s foundation is just this wonderful, life-giving entity out to serve the poor and downtrodden, even though all the actual facts show it to be nothing but a slush fund to keep the Clintons and their minions on the gravy train. What genuine charity would hire a political hatchet-man like Sid Blumenthal at $10,000.00 a month? Don’t get me wrong, almost all major political figures have a hatchet man or woman on the payroll; it’s part of the nature of things in politics…but 10 large per month for a hatchet man at a charity? Come on! That is just a bit of payola to your hatchet man…keeping him well fed until you needed him for political work. But, if you listen to the MSM, they’re going to have you believing that the Clinton Foundation was the next best thing to Mother Theresa…and perhaps better because the Clinton Foundation is pro-abortion (remember, in the topsy-turvey world of the left, being in favor of abortion in saintly).
And, so, don’t believe them. Oh, you can read and listen to their reports – and when an identifiable fact comes across, you can believe it (but check, to be sure – and even if it’s confirmed elsewhere, run it through your “does this really seem likely?” mental filter). But remember that even when the MSM reports something true, it is bound to be mixed with lies – and as I said the other day, add an ounce of lie to a pound of truth, and you get a lie. The stories will be reported, if they relate in any way to politics, in a way which will reflect ill on GOPers/Conservatives and well on Democrats/Progressives.
As it relates to 2016, the real problem is that Trump is giving the Democrats and their MSM lapdogs a lot of ammunition – but, even then, keep in mind that as bad as Trump may be, the MSM will paint him as worse than he is (and they’ll be assisted this year by a section of the right which has decided that hating Trump is vastly more important than stopping Progressives). Don’t fall into conspiracy theory stuff about it – it isn’t a conspiracy, once you understand that the nice, attractive and well-spoken reporter on TV is as dyed in the wool Progressive as Hillary and is convinced that come heck or high water, Hillary simply must be elected President. Even if they wanted to be honest, this simple fact of life will color their perception of what is going on…and if they don’t care about being honest, then it’ll just be worse as far as telling the truth goes.
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