Biased Mainstream Media Yet Again Proven To Be In The Tank For Obama, Democrats

A couple of links scream about the rabid left wing media bias.  The first:

Diane Sawyer Steals Hannity, Fox Credit on Wright
By Jeffrey Lord on 6.2.11 @ 8:59AM

It was so brazen it was amazing.

ABC Anchor Diane Sawyer sits across from Bill O’Reilly last night and casually says that ABC broke the story about the tapes featuring the sermons of now radioactive and decidedly ex-Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright.

“You’re talking to the network…Obama White House remembers this… that broke the Jeremiah Wright tapes.”

The implication?

ABC News was Johnny-on-the-spot on the story of then-Senator Obama’s now infamous — and ex — pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In March of 2008.

Remember that date. March — 2008. Here’s the link to the story, filed on March 13 by ABC’s Brian Ross

This remark came about in the course of a conversation with O’Reilly in which Sawyer, discussing the role of ABC News in the last presidential campaign, insisted that her network was not populated by liberals who tilted the news leftward. O’Reilly had cited a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs on the network news coverage of the Obama-McCain campaign that showed the tilt in favorable coverage for Obama over McCain as follows:

Obama   McCain

CBS 73% 31%
NBC 56%   16%
ABC 57%   42%

ABC had fared best of the three broadcast networks, but the point of liberal media bias — the kind of reporting that dates as far back as the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign — stood. So O’Reilly persisted.

And out popped the above statement on Jeremiah Wright.

Let’s be clear here. Sawyer used the word “tapes” — and strictly speaking she is correct.

The problem comes with the context — in which she is clearly trying to imply that ABC was the proverbial dog with a bone in uncovering the relationship of Wright to his famous congregant, and what the implications might be for the country if a man who sat in Wright’s pews for 20 years listening to Wright’s leftist political rants were elected president.

Bluntly put — this is poppycock.

The man — and the network — that did the background research on this was, yes indeed, Sean Hannity and Fox News.

On February 28, 2007 — over a full year before ABC first aired its Wright story — Hannity had located columnist Erik Rush, who had written an article on Senator Obama and his church. He put Rush on the air that night.

The very next night, Hannity had managed to corral Wright himself on his Fox show with liberal Alan Colmes. Here’s the clip.

Out poured the tale of Wright’s devotion to Black Liberation Theology and the radical writings of James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. From this initial work the connections of Wright to Louis Farrakhan and Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi were uncovered and more.

And on it went.

The role of ABC News here?

Zip, nada, zero.

And yet plain as can be, there sits Diane Sawyer, the anchor of ABC News, on the set of Fox’s O’Reilly Factortrying to pretend ABC was a prime mover in Hannity’s story — a Fox story that surely would never have seen the light of day anywhere had it not been for Hannity’s tenacity in digging it out and putting it on TV. And, as regular viewers will recall, being snickered at while doing it — snickering that stopped when Obama finally felt so much pressure on Wright he stopped going to the church and felt the need to publicly rebuke the man he had once said was like an “uncle” to him.

Ms. Sawyer insisted her network would be providing “fantastic coverage” of the 2012 race, citing the liberal ex-Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos as a key member of her team.

If this is an example of the work to come from ABC News on the 2012 presidential campaign… well, we report, you decide.

The second:

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “Back of the Book” segment  tonight: As we reported last night, elements of the national liberal media have  begun their campaign to re-elect President Obama. The attacks on Fox News are  being stepped up, and we used an example of NBC News correspondent Andrea  Mitchell deriding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for criticizing Mr.  Obama.

Here now to talk about the Obama advantage in the media, Fox News political  analyst Charles Krauthammer, who is in Washington this evening. So how much of  an advantage? Because in my lifetime covering politics, 35 years now, I’ve never  seen a media as rabidly invested in a president as the liberal national media is  in Mr. Obama. Have you?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I  think that is true, and you can see it in a Pew study, Pew Center for Excellence  in Journalism that they did in 2008 election. They found that of the three cable  networks, Fox played it absolutely right down the middle, the same amount of  favorability to McCain as to Obama. CNN three times as favorable to Obama as to  McCain; MSNBC 5 to 1. So, I mean, and that was four years ago. Interesting, to  give you an idea of how biased the media is, when it issued a press release on  that study, Bill, it played it as CNN was the cable norm, with MSNBC on one side  and Fox on the other deviating from the norm. The norm being the pro-Obama bias  of CNN, rather than the norm that any objective American would say, which is  what Fox has done, which was to play it right down the middle.

O’REILLY: Sure. Now, there was another study done by the  Center for Media and Public Affairs that showed the network broadcasts — CBS,  ABC and NBC — were 68 percent positive for Obama, Senator Obama, then-Senator  Obama, 32 percent negative. For John McCain, it was the reverse: 36 positive, 64  negative. So, my contention is that nothing is going to change this time around.  That the national TV media and the big urban newspapers, like The New York  Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, will all be trying to get  President Obama re-elected. So the question then becomes: How much of an  advantage is it for the president?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it’s a major advantage, but you’ve got to  remember this. The left, the Democrats always have the press on their side.  They’ve had it for 40 years. Nonetheless, the Republicans have won the  presidency seven out of the last 11 elections, and that’s because what  Republicans have, what conservatives have is the country, which is a  center-right country, has remained so almost unchangingly for four decades. So  what the media bias does is it slightly — it gives an advantage. It’s a major  advantage, but it’s undoing the deficit that Democrats and liberals already have  because it’s a country that is not essentially conducive to a liberal  message.

And as bad as it appears to be with the tilt in favorable coverage for liberal Barack Obama for, well, somewhat less liberal John McCain – (and here is the result of the study again):

Obama   McCain

CBS 73% 31%
NBC 56%   16%
ABC 57%   42%

– I believe it is actually FAR worse than that.

The reason I say that is there’s an implicit assumption that isn’t true; namely, that both John McCain and Barack Obama had exactly the same negative baggage or positive qualities.  As an example, if Tom and Dick had pretty much the exact same record, and the press covered Dick more favorably than Tom, you’d certainly be able to show bias.

But what if Dick had a long history of radical associations, beginning with communist Frank Marshall Davis, and including racist un-American bigots such as Jeremiah Wright and terrorists such as William Ayers?  What if Dick had all the political baggage of a Chicago thug, including dirty deals with criminal scumbags such as Tony Rezko?  What if Dick’s wife had all KINDS of dirty baggage?  What if Dick could be documented to have a radical history of being a communist?  Just as a couple of examples?  Would it be fair or legitimate to expect the coverage to be evenly “favorable” versus “unfavorable,” or would FAIR and OBJECTIVE coverage have skewed dramatically against Dick???

In the case of Barack Obama, the guy who deserved virtually ALL the negative coverage got virtually NONE.  Versus war hero John McCain who should have received very little unfavorable coverage and got virutally nothing BUT???

And that same overwhelming media bias that got Obama an undeserved victory and the presidency in 2008 is just as biased today in defending the failure’s record.

Hey, Obama: Here’s Why “Talking” To Evil Tyrants Won’t Work

I hope our nation’s leaders read about Tojo and learn from him.

Diary shows Japan’s wartime leader Hideki Tojo resisted surrender till end

August 12, 2008 By: Mari Yamaguchi, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TOKYO – Japanese Second World War leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being “frightened,” a newly released diary reveals.Excerpts from the approximately 20 pages written by Tojo in the final days of the war and held by the National Archives of Japan were published for the first time in several newspapers Tuesday.

“The notes show Tojo kept his died-in-the-wool militarist mentality until the very end,” said Kazufumi Takayama, the archives curator, who confirmed the accuracy of the published excerpts. “They are extremely valuable.”

Tojo, executed in 1948 after being convicted of war crimes by the Allies, was prime minister during much of the war. The notes buttress other evidence that Tojo was fiercely opposed to surrender despite the hopelessness of Japan’s war effort.

Can you imagine Barack Obama flying to Imperial Japan to “dialog” with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo? Can you imagine Obama convincing Tojo to get in line with American policy when a pair of nuclear bombs couldn’t?

I mean, understand something. This Barack Obama who says that as President he would talk with rogue leaders such as Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejab “without preconditions,” yet is somehow so afraid to talk with any conservative hosts (such as Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity) – or any real conservative media at all – that you’ve got to wonder how effective even Obama thinks he’d be.

But all that aside, why on earth would anybody but a genuine fool think that a leader like a Saddam Hussein, a Kim Jung Il, a Mahmoud Ahmadinejab, a Osama bin Laden, a Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, etc. etc. – who would let millions of their people starve, who would send out thousands of suicide bombers to murder women and children, who would inflict hell on earth if given half a chance – would turn from their evil ways if only Barack Obama talked with them? And if he really has the kind of persuasive powers he thinks he does, then why doesn’t he go on Hannity’s America and turn Sean into an abortion-loving liberal to prove it to the rest of us?

And yet this utterly stupid idea of “Barack Obama will talk to our enemies!” somehow holds sway over so many liberals.

You could paint string yellow and sell it to these people as gold.

Many tyrants respect only power, and fear only leaders who are willing to use it. But increasingly, there are more and more leaders arising in the world today who – like Tojo – won’t even restrain their evil in the face of catastrophic death and defeat. The only option, save bearing your throat to their knives, is to kill such people before they do more far more damage.

Had British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain recognized that Adolf Hitler was such a man, rather than trying to “talk” with him, millions who died would likely have been saved.

The reason Chamberlain (who was actually ruthless in domestic politics) is considered one of the greatest weaklings and appeasers in history is because he continued to try talking when he should have been fighting.

It was with that thought in mind that Robert Heinlein wrote:

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

Furthermore, there is a strange ignorance among liberals regarding the fact that the United States government under President Bush, like every President before him, is in constant communication with both friends and enemies alike. President Bush doesn’t personally give Mahmoud Whatanutjob the time of day, but the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. military are in contact with intermediaries who are in contact with Iran. The same is true with every other rogue regime.

Another thing to consider is the size, power, wealth, and influence of the United States relative to other countries. In terms of size, if you overlay the United States over Europe, the U.S. literally either covers or overlaps Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herze-govina, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Turkey, Russia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sweden, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Syria. To say that we should allow France or Germany to tell us what we should do in a given crisis is akin to letting Oklahoma run our nation’s affairs.

And given Obama’s documented penchant for arrogance as a mere presidential nominee, it’s frankly very hard to imagine that he would be any better or more humble of a listener than George Bush would he to win the office of President and become the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.

If that isn’t enough, then let me say one last thing: Obama really isn’t all that good of a talker. If he isn’t reading it off a teleprompter, chances are he isn’t making much sense:

I mean, yeah, maybe Ahmadinejab would say, “All right! Enough! Whatever you want! We’ll give up our nuclear weapons program! Anything! Just get this clown away from me before I lose my mind!” But you have to figure Ahmadinejab is tougher than that, and Obama’s ramblings would barely faze him.

However you want to slice it, the thinking that Barack Obama is somehow going to solve all the world’s problems by talking to the rogue leaders of the world is beyond irrational.