While at home about a week ago, I turned on NBC Nightly News to see how this once well-respected news organization is covering the upcoming Presidential election.
The newscast started out with a piece about Missouri Representative, Republican Todd Akin, who communicated some idiotic beliefs about women having difficulty becoming pregnant after being raped. Next up was a short piece about President Barack Obama's news conference, with footage of him asking why presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney would not release more years of tax returns. The third piece was about a trip to the Middle East in which a Republican member of Congress went skinny dipping. Together, these three stories consumed about one third of the newscast.
The remainder of the newscast consisted of non-campaign issues, including segments about former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell surviving a heart attack by taking an aspiran, the death of comedienne Phyllis Diller and the passing of Scott McKenzie, who performed the 1967 ballad, "San Francisco."
Three cold, hard facts stood out about this newscast: 1) A third of the newscast was consumed with pieces that put Republicans in a negative light; 2) there was no mention of major issues affecting America, including the skyrocketing debt, the unemployment and underemployment of 23 million Americans, or the impending insolvency of entitlement programs; and 3) the quality of NBC News has deteriorated significantly from the days of the well-respected and legendary Huntley-Brinkley Report.
After watching the newscast that evening, I wondered if NBC News is being paid by the Obama Campaign. In reality, a public relations firm paid by the Obama Campaign couldn't have done a better job of spinning the news so that it is favorable to President Obama than NBC News did on that particular newscast. It was that biased.
As a trained journalist, I am appalled and angry at how far journalism has fallen. I am also saddened that there are so few journalists who will report the story and actually take the time to check the facts and statistics spewed by campaigns.
Recent news coverage by the mainstream news media has focused on Akin's stupid remarks, the Obama Campaign continuing to ask for Romney to release more tax returns and other issues that won't help put Americans back to work or stop our country's sprint towards bankruptcy.
Ignoring major challenges facing the country is one issue, allowing outright lies to be broadcast without confronting them is another.
Earlier this week the President's deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said that more jobs had been created in the past 27 months than following the recessions faced by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. She implied that President Obama has done a better job at managing the economy following a recession than the two Republicans.
The facts are that the Bush recovery created 200,000 more jobs than the Obama recovery, using the same methodology cited by Cutter, and the Reagan recovery created about twice as many jobs.
http://news.investors.com/article/623290/201208231729/obama-created-half-as-many-jobs-as-reagan.htm
As President Obama said in a recent news conference, "You can't make this stuff up." Actually, Mr. President, your deputy campaign manager is doing just that. And she's done it more than once.
A few news organizations, including Investor's Business Daily and Fox News have challenged Cutter's outright lie with undisputable facts. Most others, including NBC News, haven't taken the time to check to see if what Cutter said was actually true.
Earlier this week, the President was asked in his news conference about the tone of his campaign. He was questioned specifically about his campaign insinuating that Romney may have committed a felony. President Obama replied, "Well, first of all I am not sure that all of those characterizations that you laid out there were accurate. For example, nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon."
http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-denies-campaign-called-romney-a-felon-surprise-press-appearance
Again, this was an outright lie. Cutter said in a recent interview, “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments."
Maybe Cutter didn't come straight out and call Romney a felon, but the insinuation was strong enough to make some uninformed voters believe Romney is a felon.
Not one member of the media at that news conference had the intestinal fortitude to point out to the President that one of the highest ranking members of his campaign had indeed strongly hinted that Romney had committed a felony. And only a few, including Fox News, reported in later reports the discrepancy between what the President said and the truth.
In that same news conference earlier this week, the President had the audacity to say, "We point out sharp differences between the candidates, but we don’t go out of bounds.”
Out of bounds? Would you call broadcasting a Super PAC ad accusing Romney of contributing to the cancer death of a woman "out of bounds?" Or would you consider insinuating that Romney is a tax cheat "out of bounds?" What about the Senate Majority Leader saying that the "word's out" Romney hadn't paid any federal income taxes in 10 years? Would you consider that accusation from unnamed sources on the floor of the Senate to be "out of bounds?"
Again, not one member of the media challenged the President.
Even the online news media versions of major news media have been piling on the Republicans. Yesterday, CNN.com featured a front page article about how the Republican convention in Tampa will mean better business for area strip clubs. The fact of the matter is that almost any convention results in increased business for area strip clubs.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/politics/tampa-gop-strip-clubs/index.html
I wonder if this same website will do a feature about how the Democratic Convention in Charlotte will result in more business for strip clubs? I would venture a guess that we won't see similar negative coverage prior to that convention. I wouldn't be surprised, though, to see glowing features about the Democratic Convention on almost every website and news broadcast for the mainstream news media in the days before the Democrats head to Charlotte.
The lamestream news media is clearly in the tank for the Obama Campaign and might as well be on his campaign's payroll. It's become that biased.
We can only hope that the American people dig a little deeper than watching NBC Nightly News or reading CNN.com to learn about the major issues facing this country and to determine what is the truth and what is a bold-faced lie.
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