I simply cannot see how anyone can argue against a media bias anymore. Let’s look at three examples of how the media covered President Bill Clinton and how they have covered President Bush. If at the end of this exercise, you still don’t believe that the mainstream media is 100% biased against liberals, then you can no longer make any claim to be a rational person.
Three “scandals” that the media covered 24/7 during the Bill Clinton presidency:
1.Whitewater. This was an obscure land deal in Arkansas from decades ago. The President never made any money off of the deal, there were never any actions on his part that could even vaguely be characterized as illegal. And after a $64 million investigation by a prosecutor absolutely determined to get the President, the conclusion was that the President had not done anything wrong.
2.Travelgate. How were employees at the travel office treated during the Clinton presidency? Were they fired because of a secret agenda by Hillary Clinton? The travel office. The travel office. Quite the controversy. The nation hasn’t quite recovered since.
3.Monica Lewinsky. Did the President lie about having a sexual affair with a White House intern? It turned out, after endless coverage for what seemed like decades, they nailed him. He had in fact received oral sex in the Oval Office. And this affected our foreign policy and domestic policy, how? In fact, the only effect it had was when the Republicans claimed Bill Clinton was trying to distract from the scandal by bombing foreign targets. Do you remember who he was bombing? Yes, al-Qaeda. How dare he?
Now, three stories from President Bush’s tenure that the media hasn’t found worthy of comprehensive coverage yet:
1.Jeff Gannon. This was a man who was a gay, male prostitute posing as a reporter. He was allowed into the White House by the administration under an alias to manipulate press conferences. Anyone who says this story wouldn’t have been covered for two straight years on every cable news station if it was the Clinton White House, doesn’t live on the same planet as I do.
When you come back from the planet Uranus, please tell me how this story wouldn’t have been interesting to the American people or relevant as part of the overall effort of the administration to manipulate the press.
Was it not salacious enough to capture the imagination of the American public? Did it not fit into a pattern of propaganda that the Bush administration was caught using by paying off “journalists” and commentators like Armstrong Williams?
2.Downing Street Memos. Imagine for a second if Fox News Channel had secret memos that indicated that President Clinton had started an illegal war based on fixed intelligence. The British government was not convinced Clinton’s war -- say in Kosovo -- was legal, whether he had any post-war plans and whether it was based on a personal grudge instead of an actual threat to the country. And imagine if in that war we had lost thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of American soldiers had been maimed and wounded.
Yeah, Fox News Channel would have probably just let that go. It just probably would have been a dead issue that the Republicans would have had trouble getting the press to pay attention to. Who believes that? Even the most rabid conservative couldn’t possibly believe that scandal wouldn’t be front page news every day in the Clinton presidency.
3.The Karl Rove Leak. Close your eyes for a second (okay, open them back up so you can continue to read) and imagine if President Clinton’s top political advisor had just admitted that he had revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative. His main defense was that he indicated exactly who she was but didn’t give her name. Yeah, the press would have probably just accepted that answer and moved on. I’m sure Fox News Channel (and quickly copied by all of the other channels) wouldn’t have had headlines that screamed “Clinton Advisor -- Traitor” or “Treason at the White House.”
They probably wouldn’t have pointed out that Valerie Plame was moved out of the field one other time – when the CIA was worried that Aldrich Ames had revealed her identity. The Aldrich Ames analogy wouldn’t have been used, they wouldn’t have discussed how the CIA believes this is the worst crime against national intelligence or how George H. W. Bush said in 1999 this is an act a “traitor” to the United States would commit.
Yeah, they probably would have been very careful to tread lightly on such a sensitive issue.
The media absolutely savaged Bill Clinton at every turn, for what now appears to be laughably innocuous matters. They even made a scandal out of his haircuts for God’s sake. Now, they can’t seem to gather up the courage to challenge this administration on the most egregious crimes, transgressions and salacious scandals.
A haircut at the airport is a big story when it comes to President Clinton but torture at Bagram Air Base is barely covered for President Bush.
What Hillary Clinton did with the travel office is worthy of a non-stop national scandal, but what Karl Rove did to a covert CIA operative isn’t enough to make headlines?
A complicated land deal in Arkansas is interesting enough to be covered for years, but a male prostitute infiltrating the White House as a journalist wouldn’t interest the American public?
Lying about a sexual affair is of paramount importance to the nation worthy of an impeachment, but lying about why we invaded a country that did not attack us and did not pose a threat to us is no big deal?
Well, you’d just have to be plain old biased to believe all of that.