The Strategy of the Media’s Bias

By Stacy Drake

The Associated Press and Politico found it necessary to report Bristol Palin’s honest wages to the broad public, via their respective front page. Whether their reporting was honest is another matter. It’s hard to tell considering that Rachel D’Oro (a name longtime C4P readers are familiar with), author of the first MSM piece, used the Trig Truther freaks at “Palingates” as a source. Using terms like “rakes it in” and getting a “payout,” these so-called “news” articles are clearly designed to sell a narrative that the media has been pushing about Bristol’s mother for a long time. There is nothing wrong with what Bristol did for the foundation she worked for. This “story” belongs nowhere near a front page, much less a news publication. It isn’t a story, it’s one young woman’s life. Running this piece, with vile conspiracy theorists as the source, is disgraceful behavior by an already close to illegitimate press.

Kelsey has more on Bristol here.

For many years I believed that the media had a blanket left-wing bias towards all Conservatives. It has been proven lately that there is more of a strategy at play, in regards to what the media reports and what they don’t, versus knee-jerk ideology. Take for instance this story that popped up a few days ago on Mother Jones:

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee’s governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas’ political scene—including one of Huckabee’s former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

A truly fascinating piece of information, especially for a “GOP front-runner,” is it not? Yet, there were no corresponding stories from AP and the only thing Politico had on it was a link buried on Ben Smith’s blog page. Why didn’t the media cover this? Doesn’t the public have a right to know what kind of behavior a potential candidate for the presidency took part in? Can you imagine if Governor Palin had done such a thing? I would bet every dollar I have ever made, and ever will make, that that story wouldn’t be buried in a link in the blog section. It would be Top Story news, in every media publication, and on every network.

Speaking of ‘what ifs’… What if Governor Palin had said this:

Bachmann, who’s flirting with a presidential run, was in the early-primary state of Iowa last week for the Rediscover God in America conference. Bachmann was born in Iowa, as she told the crowd. But she couldn’t leave it at just being an ordinary Iowan:

“I’m actually even more than just an Iowan,” she told her audience. “I’m a seventh-generation Iowan. Our family goes back to the 1850s, to the first pioneers that came to Iowa from Sognfjord, Norway.”

[…]

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t hold water, as researcher Chris Rodda ably points out at OpEdNews.

“I was watching her speech, and it was when she said that she was a seventh-generation Iowan that I knew something was wrong,” Rodda tells City Pages. “She’s in her fifties–there’s no way there could be seven generations between her and ancestors in the 1850s.”

So Rodda, who has a background in genealogical research, decided to do a little digging. Without too much trouble, she found that Bachmann is actually a fourth-generation American, not seventh, as she claimed. And that’s just the start.

Bachmann’s immigrant ancestors didn’t make a pilgrimage straight to the promised land of Iowa. From Quebec, they went to Wisconsin. That’s where the 1860 census found them. From there, they moved to the Dakota Territory.

Bachmann claims that her people “kept going, and they persevered” through floods and crippling winters. Well, kind of. After enduring those trials in the unforgiving Dakota Territory, they actually turned tail and retreated to the relative ease and safety of…Iowa.

“Okay,” Bachmann apologists may be saying at this point, “but history is hard and stuff! Maybe this was just an honest mistake.”

Not a chance, Rodda says.

“The only historical sources where she could have found some of the details of her story–like the 13-week ocean passage–also clearly show that her family went to Wisconsin, not Iowa,” Rodda says. “She couldn’t have known those things without knowing that the whole premise of her speech was a lie.”

You really can’t blame Bachmann for that though. Tuesday night on O’Reilly, she stated (4:32 mark) that she just reads whatever is on the teleprompter. She also indicated during the interview that she isn’t “afraid” of media attacks on her. After the mainstream media let a whole speech full of pandering distortions, slide on by without mere mention, I wouldn’t be afraid if I were Bachmann either. At least not at this point.

I think my Twitter buddy, Val, said it best today:

Liberals & Dems SHOULD fear @SarahPalinUSA in 2012, b/c she is thee ONLY candidate who will NOT have an October surprise!

Clearly that has a lot to do with the strategy being implemented by the media, in this pre-primary season.

Here we have three possible contenders for the GOP nomination in the upcoming presidential election of 2012. While all three claim the mantle of “Conservative,” one is treated very differently than the others. The reason for this is something I alluded to in my last blog post. The media and the left will promote and omit news that will help them in the long-run.

For Governor Palin, there will be no “October surprise.” Every little detail of her life is already out in the open. She would be the most intensely scrutinized candidate in our nation’s history. With the other two possible candidates, that is simply not the case.

Let’s face it, the other two Republicans here don’t have the same name recognition as Governor Palin. Huckabee has been largely unscrutinized for years, and most people outside the world of politics, don’t know who Michele Bachmann is. Governor Palin and her family are recognizable faces to rake over the coals.

With Governor Palin, the leftist media is forced to throw everything at her, as soon as they can. They do whatever they can think of to try and damage her in any way possible. With the others, they can afford to wait. This is after all, a strategy with the re-election of Obama in mind.

The left, and their partners in the press know what’s at stake. They don’t want to face Governor Palin in a general election, but the others look like walks in the park in comparison. They will save their bias and garbage reporting for a more strategically significant date. At the right time, they will unload all the information they held from the public on these candidates, given the opportunity. Let’s not give it to them.

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The AP’s Blatantly Biased Haiti Coverage

By Stacy Drake

The Associated Press provided another example as to why the media cannot be trusted to cover anything Governor Palin does fairly. AP “reporter” Jonathan Katz, wrote an article about the governor’s recent trip to Haiti with Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse. Katz opens his article by saying:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.

“Stage-managed” eh? As to imply that this is just some sort of staged political photo-op, no doubt. It wasn’t, but regardless it is not Jonathan Katz’ job as an AP reporter to make that assumption in the first place.

He then goes on to say (emphasis mine):

Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.

Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, refused to discuss Palin’s itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a “security lockdown.”

It should be noted that Greta Van Susteren was asked by Franklin Graham (this is not the first time Greta has accompanied Graham on an overseas trip) to come to Haiti, it wasn’t Governor Palin who set that up.

Rebecca Mansour weighed in on Twitter to say:

Jonathan Katz of the Associated Press is a liar. He knows very well that Samaritan’s Purse was in charge of press in Haiti, not Gov. Palin.

Also

I told him myself repeatedly. He also knows very well that for security reasons, Samaritan’s Purse did not want to release their itinerary.

Katz and others in the media seem to be saying two different things in their articles about Governor Palin’s trip to Haiti. They imply it was a photo-op on one hand, then complain about a lack of access on the other. So which is it? I gather this is just more, ‘throw the kitchen sink‘ at Governor Palin to see what sticks.

Jonathan Katz then writes:

Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.

Why is JonathanKatz reporting on Governor’s Palin’s wardrobe? The last time I checked, Katz wasn’t a fashion reporter. Who cares what Governor Palin wore on a humanitarian mission? Some might say that it was sexist of Katz to include that in his article. I’ll leave that up to readers to decide for themselves.

By the way, as Ian noted earlier, Governor Palin and Franklin Graham held a press conference on Sunday in Haiti from the Samaritan’s Purse camp. So, no this trip was not closed to the media. You can see a photo from that presser here.

Update: I was just reminded that the Hong Kong speech was not closed to the media. Katz was wrong about that as well. The Wall Street Journal covered the Hong Kong event here.

Highlighting a Correction from JSOnline

By Stacy Drake

JS Online, the internet version of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, published the following on their “Corrections and clarifications” page (emphasis mine):

A headline Saturday incorrectly stated that Sarah Palin’s speaking fee at a California college dwarfed the income the school realized from the appearance. Net proceeds from the appearance actually were more than twice the fee Palin received.

Keep in mind that was a second priority for their daily corrections, just after:

Due to a misprint in USA Weekend’s July 16-18 issue in today’s Journal Sentinel, the Stickdoku puzzle solution is incomplete. The complete solution is reprinted in the Sunday, July 18, newspaper.

I wouldn’t classify that as a typo or a small mistake. That headline was a total distortion of reality. I know the left is having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Governor Palin’s speech at Cal State Stanislaus “turned out the be the most successful fundraiser in the campus’ history,” but a deception like the one the headline writer for JSOnline tried to slip past the readers, was too much.

The other way the current-day activist media tries to distort the success of the event, is to highlight her fee, yet again, instead of talking about the money brought in. What other reason would the AP title their article on the subject, “Palin earned $75k to speak at Calif university?” Would they write an article covering the amount of money the Super Bowl brings in to the NFL, by highlighting the salary for the star quarterback of the winning team? I don’t think so.

At least JSOnline had the decency to note a correction about their distorted piece, even if it was hidden on their correction page. I can’t say so much for the the AP or other LSM publications that chose to obsess about Governor Palin’s well deserved salary, other than reporting the record funds for the university, or perhaps the destruction of the Gulf while the nation’s First Dog flew on his own personal jet to Maine.

This is the current state of the media. They are no longer press agencies tasked with gathering and distributing accurate information to the public for it’s own sake. They are now in the business of left-wing, Democratic Party public relations. They hide the president’s gaffes, play down the state of the economy, cover-up facts about ‘transformational‘ legislation, and they try to paint the narrative about all things Sarah Palin, in a negative light. The Governor brought in a lot of money and attention to Cal State Stanislaus. No matter what the media says or does, they cannot take that away from her or the university.