Who needs an endorsement? Media has been been biased for Kamala Harris from the start
In a recent op-ed, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos noted that the media is now less trusted than Congress. “Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.
It was a refreshing admission that followed an uproar at the ultra-lefty Post over his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. Naturally, most of the staff was hell-bent on supporting Kamala Harris, and some sputtered with rage by accusing Bezos of trying to curry favor with Donald Trump.
In his column, the owner rejected the charge while noting that endorsements “create a perception of bias . . . ending them is a principled decision.”
Bezos deserves credit for explaining his decision, but events demonstrate that he misdiagnoses the disease and vastly underestimates it.
The problem is not that the public believes the media is biased. The problem is that the media is biased.
The main evidence is not editorial endorsements or opinion columns labeled as such. The bias is revealed when supposedly straight-news articles are so one-sided as to be indistinguishable from propaganda.
Agenda-driven journos
To borrow a phrase from the late Ed Koch, too many reporters are nothing more than politicians with press passes.
That’s certainly the case at The Washington Post, which has been at the forefront of the outbreak of media madness dominating the campaign’s final days. Along with ABC, NBC and CBS, The New York Times, CNN, NPR and the Associated Press, Bezos’ outlet has disgraced itself by shilling for Harris in its news pages, facts be damned.
This is not the ordinary tilt we have unfortunately come to expect. This is a whole new level of flagrant misconduct.
I have never seen anything like it — nor has anyone else. History is being made in a terrible way.
It’s seems incredible now but just 20 years ago, during the 2004 campaign, top CBS anchor Dan Rather was caught presenting false documents to claim that President George W. Bush got preferential military treatment in the 1970s to avoid being sent to Vietnam.
CBS investigated and Rather and his team were fired. Nowadays, given how corrupt CBS is, they would be celebrated.
That’s how far the media has fallen. Fearing that Harris could lose Tuesday’s vote, most major outlets are trashing even the pretense of professionalism and fairness to serve up distorted and sometimes fabricated “gotcha” moments against Trump.
Each is delivered with a breathless urgency aimed at swaying voters.
Monday reeked of false claims that Trump hates Puerto Ricans and his wildly successful rally at Madison Square Garden was full of racism.
I was there — it was a joyful, spirited crowd, with one comedian making a tasteless joke.
Then came the ridiculous assertions that Trump is targeting women with his policies and doesn’t care what they want or say — all designed to boost Harris with women.
Liz Cheney spin cycle
Friday brought the disgraceful accusation that he threatened GOP turncoat Liz Cheney with execution.
In fact, what Trump clearly did was call her a war hawk who wouldn’t last a minute in combat if she had to face enemy guns pointing at her.
But why report the truth when a lie is much more useful?
Harris, who has escaped all serious scrutiny, naturally took her cue from the media jihad and declared that each concocted issue proved Trump is unfit.
Her remarks were then featured by the same media outlets, as if repetition makes them valid. This is what passes for a news cycle in 2024.
The bias against Trump has been a regular feature of his 9-year political career, but the open hatred for his supporters has reached new depths.
When Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables” and “irredeemable” in 2016, the media recognized her contempt and warned it could hurt her.
Fast forward to how the same press downplayed Joe Biden’s description of Trump supporters as “garbage.”
The intent was so clear that the White House offered stupid lies to make it seem innocent. When that didn’t work, aides changed the official transcript, which angered stenographers.
If a president Trump had called Harris supporters “garbage,” then tried to cover it up, Dems would have demanded impeachment and the media would have applauded like trained seals.
Burying Biden’s gaffes
But when Biden does it, the press rushes to rescue Harris by framing the incident as Republicans “seizing” on a Biden “gaffe.”
Notice, too, a lack of follow-up stories on how Trump supporters felt about being called “garbage” by the president who promised to unite the nation.
No surprise. These days, “MAGA Republican” is used as a synonym to describe someone as stupid, insane, a racist, a misogynist or even a traitor! Who cares how they feel?
Besides, most of the media thinks Biden was right.
It’s all part of the see-no-evil approach to virtually everything Democrats do and say. When they fail, their motives are always pure and their mistakes innocent.
Everything Trump says and does comes from a heart of darkness.
This rampant media misconduct is a big part of why I am voting for Trump.
Beyond the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policies, the progressive cultural rot they advocate is undermining our nation. The rise of antisemitism on college campuses reveals the dereliction of university presidents, faculties and administrators, but the White House has been shamefully silent because most Jew hatred is coming from their party’s left wing.
Other signs of cultural madness include the administration’s near-religious devotion to climate change and its use of elementary schools to indoctrinate children in radical gender and race theories.
Almost without exception, the press corps has embraced those attacks on Jews and American life and history. A Trump victory would deliver a crucial comeuppance.
Recall that his 2016 victory provided an essential course correction in both policy and culture, and another correction is desperately needed now.
That’s not to say I believe a Trump presidency would lead to soul-searching and a new commitment to fairness among the leftist outlets. After all, his first election saw them spend four years trying to get him impeached, convicted and prosecuted.
Many, including the Times, saw a surge in readers, which its former CEO, Mark Thompson, called the “Trump bump.”
In truth, it was an anti-Trump bump. And Thompson now heads CNN.
Still, a second Trump election would, at least for a time, smash the gatekeepers’ prestige and power and allow new outlets to gain an audience by pursuing facts instead of a partisan agenda.
The way Elon Musk has turned X into a prime source of news and opinion is an example of what could happen elsewhere. Having a president committed to free speech should further shame Big Media into dropping their support for censorship of facts and opinions they don’t like.
More broadly, a second Trump term would teach independent-minded Americans they can freely ignore the sort of misinformation created last week in the bid to help Harris.
That alone could be a gift that keeps on giving.
