The Media at Their LowestBy R. Quinn Kennedy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/the_media_at_their_lowest.html

When Joe Biden claimed this week on The View (see it here) that the Obama administration “had not a whisper of scandal” during eight years in the White House, the audience cheered wildly.  And why wouldn’t it?  It’s a partisan crowd that overwhelmingly leans left.

Those of us on quite the other side of the aisle didn’t bother falling out of our chairs at such an absurd claim.  We know how the game is played: make sure that statements such as this from Democrats are played in front of a partisan audience on a biased show that isn’t about to challenge the assertion.

As a reminder for candidate Biden, let’s review a partial list of the dozens of scandals and all the corruption during the Obama administration:

  • IRS targeting of conservative 501(c)(3) nonprofits
  • The $500-million Solyndra scam admitted to by secretary of energy Steven Chu
  • Attorney General Eric Holder held in contempt for lying to Congress
  • Mass domestic spying by the NSA
  • Illegal DOJ investigations of journalists
  • Complete mismanagement of the war in Syria
  • Transferring $1.7 billion in cash to Iran
  • The Benghazi cover-up
  • Operation Fast & Furious
  • Secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s pay-for-play scam with foreign governments
  • Falsified Veterans Administration documents after patients died waiting to be seen

The above list could easily be three times as long.  It could specifically include Joe Biden, as vice president, pressuring Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor, who, at the time, was investigating illegal activity by his own son, Hunter Biden (which Ukraine On what other grounds would Joe Biden even care?

When presented with a list of these scandals, the Left scoffs and passes them off as right-wing conspiracy theories.  Yet every scandal and instance of corruption cited is amply documented.

How is it, then, that Joe Biden can make such a claim without being held accountable?  You and I know the answer.  It’s because shows like The View and the national mainstream media aren’t about to hold Biden or any other Democratic candidate accountable.  Rather, they want such falsehoods to resonate as believable.  (With inserted loud claps of approval to validate them.)

Unfortunately, we are at a point in our nation’s history where freedom of the press has reached its lowest point.  Not only do the national mainstream media immorally sweep such contradictory statements under the rug, but they are, as President Trump has stated, “an arm of the Democratic Party.”  Rather than being impartial in news-reporting, their narrative clearly promotes the Democratic Party’s agenda and is hypercritical of Republican Party policies and social stances.  Can any mainstream reporter deny this with a straight face?

The devious relationship between one party and its willing accomplices in the media has moved beyond the point of eye-rolls and shoulder-shrugs.  It has reached a tipping point for our nation.  Joseph Goebbels famously stated, “Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine.”  This has become the incestuous relationship the Left lustfully pursues with increasing reliability.  Through decades of permeation, the media have been given over to the Left, and for leftists, our society has become the herd of swine.

Not surprisingly, the playbook isn’t limited to the national mainstream media.  Media technology group AllSides published a report that Google News results lean heavily toward media outlets with a “left” bias.  The author of the study, John Gable, stated that the bias is a result of “most news outlets and most news consumption online being from a left perspective.”  The purveyors of Google News are well aware of this egregious bias, but because Google’s corporate culture sways heavily left, we can hardly expect the company to create an algorithm that provides a fair and balanced narrative.

Indoctrination of the masses by the Left used to come in the form of opinion pieces.  During the Reagan administration, White House network reporters certainly reported the news.  However, they steadily began introducing the technique of ending each report with strongly worded opposing viewpoints from critics of the administration.  Who were these unnamed critics?  The ones holding the microphone.

Thus began the stepped up infiltration of political views into national news.  Subsequently, what began as infiltration has become full-on partisanship.  The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC, and various other “news” outlets used to portray themselves as impartial.  Reading an opinion piece masquerading as a news story in a national news publication no longer seems brazen.  It has become the new normal.

On any number of subjects, building a wall between Mexico and the United States being a current topic of the day, there are literally dozens of video recordings of Democrats contradicting themselves from the position they took even a decade ago.  Joe Biden once pounded the pulpit demanding that we build a wall.  With Joe Biden as the Democratic frontrunner for U.S. president, you’ve seen that contradiction reported all over the national mainstream media, haven’t you?

Contrast that with anything and everything Donald Trump says.  The media are quick to pull any quote, any tweet out of context or bend it out of shape to promote the narrative that the president is an unhinged liar.  With very few exceptions, how can one not be entirely cynical of our news sources and online media?

Remember the Joe Biden interview on The View and the clapping throngs responding to his claim?  In a 2017 article by leftist Slate.com (find it here), the subtitle reads, “The Nazi propaganda machine exploited ordinary Germans by encouraging them to be co-producers of a false reality.”

Not a whisper of scandal, indeed.

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