The proverbial elephant in the room in Megan Feldman's ironically-entitled political piece in 5280 Magazine, The Elephants in the Room, was the obvious Progressive bubble bias that, among other things, created a Bizarro Arizona Immigration Law out of the thin freaking air.
Following is a letter to the editor I wrote to 5280 Magazine, Denver’s hip, urban and edgy city magazine geared toward Denver’s upwardly mobile Hipster Dufus crowd. As a little background to my letter, Megan Feldman wrote an article in the November issue of 5280 about the implosion of Scott McInnis’ campaign for governor of Colorado this past election cycle.
Being curious and hoping to glean some interesting and perhaps scintillating information about how and why the campaign went so horribly awry, I was sorely disappointed. It merely regurgitated what I already knew and what had been covered by local media and here at the Daily Plunge.
What did interest me were the little throw-away lines and descriptions sprinkled throughout the text that revealed a certain bias. Bias is obvious and expected in opinion pieces, but this one wasn’t floated to the readership as an opinion piece, but as a hard news expose.
When presented as news, bias is a bit more subtle, but you can pick it up if you have a keen eye. For instance, when a conservative was referenced in Feldman’s article, he was saddled with the additional adjectival baggage of “polarizing right-wing Republican,” but the liberal in the race was simply the “Democratic candidate.” But that’s not all, as you’ll see in my admittedly sarcastic letter to the editor:
I have a difficult time believing anything Megan Feldman wrote in The Elephants in the Room when she trots out the usual Progressive Urban Legends, such as, “…he became one of the first major GOP politicians to praise the Arizona law that requires law enforcement officers to stop people they suspect may be in the country illegally.” Seriously?
I’m not sure if Feldman or the editors of 5280 are familiar with a handy tool called Google. Had they simply Googled the Arizona law, they would have found that the law says no such thing. But I suppose fact-checking is no longer necessary, as long as you simply repeat what you hear in the Progressive bubbles in which you circulate.
If you’re willing to throw out whoppers like that, with nary an editor questioning the veracity of the claim despite the presence of Google and the ability to access it practically anywhere, any time, it makes me wonder about the believability of the magazine as a whole.
How many of the assertions made in 5280’s articles are based on Progressive tribal knowledge? I get the sense through reading the magazine that most of its writers and editors are of the tolerant and open-minded Hipster Dufus set who were taught in college that it’s tolerant and open-minded to close your mind to all things that are not deemed as tolerant and open-minded.
Megan Feldman’s article merely makes my point.
So there! Interestingly, and to my pleasant surprise, the editor wrote me back and said that 5280 would run a correction in the next issue. That’s a positive start to what I hope will be a keener eye toward eliminating “what I want to be true,” ala the 60 Minutes Bush National Guard story, with what really is true. I will continue to crusade against fake-but-accurate coverage in my local news media. I hope someday you’ll join me.
The level of press the mainstream media has devoted to Obama is unprecedented. The lovefest began on day one and it’s never stopped.
The nonpartisan research group Center for Media and Public Affairs along with California’s Chapman University released a study that found the nightly newscasts devoted 27 hours, 44 minutes to Pres. Obama’s presidency in his first 50 days. That compares to 7 hours, 42 minutes for Pres. George W. Bush and 15 hours, 2 minutes for Pres. Bill Clinton during the first 50 days of their first terms.
Not only has Obama gotten more coverage, but that coverage has been more positive than his predecessors.
On the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts, 58% of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, while 42% were unfavorable. That compares with 33% positive in the comparable period of Bush’s tenure and 44% positive for Pres. Clinton.
Wow, the press loves Obama even more than Clinton. The first 50 days of the Bush administration occurred in rather peaceful times. The economy was entering a small economic recession, but nothing close to what we’re facing today. That being said it would make logical sense that Obama would face harsher criticism during these perilous times than Bush received. Well, the press is basically an arm of the White House, except for Fox.
The first half hour of Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” which the study says most closely resembles the network evening newscasts, devoted 10 hours 24 minutes to the Obama administration, nearly as much airtime as CBS gave him.
But Fox News stands apart from its competitors here – only 13% of comments* were considered favorable. On ABC, 57% of the comments were favorable, compared to 58% for CBS and 61% for NBC.
Fox is definitely less friendly to Obama. Basically the idea of “objective journalism” is over. Each network is slowly but surely moving towards a niche audience. Fox was the answer to market dominated by liberal news coverage. Now that Fox has exploited this market MSNBC has tailored their news to liberals. That leaves CNN, ABC, and CBS in the lurch. They were already tilted to the left. What do they do now?
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