INFO Wars: Sarah Palin, John Edwards Get Very Different MSM Coverage

MSM “News” Coverage a Scandalous Joke
MSM Stockholders Laugh While Selling

Did you hear the one about the Mainstream Media’s biased news coverage?

You didn’t? Then you must be one of the few remaining customers of the MSM.

Everyone else has heard the joke and taken action: either they’ve turned to other news sources; or, if holding stock in MSM companies, they’ve used a bullhorn to tell their brokers to “Sell!”

2008 will go down in journalistic history as a year in which the bias in Big Media’s handling of “news” became a story in itself.

First, there was the nine-month “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that the MSM pursued in the handling of the John Edwards’ scandal/affair/cover-up. With the exception of ABC News, they’re still resolutely non-covering the story and its cover-up aftermath.

The Mainstream Media did not cover the Edwards story–a presidential, vice-presidential and cabinet candidate–until John Edwards himself gave the MSM his blessing on August 8 by ‘confessing’ on ABC’s Nightline.

Most of the subsequent Edwards ‘coverage’ fell into the following categories:

1- Articles about why the MSM didn’t tell its customers about the story before Edwards’ Nightline appearance.

2- Background pieces–many stolen from the part of the blogosphere that did cover the story–attempting to bring readers/viewers up to speed on the events since last October. Many of these pieces doubled as candidates for inclusion in categories #1, 3 and 4.

3- Pieces about why it’s time to “move on”.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, after CBS was on the story for less than three weeks, “We don’t have time to fool with this”. CBS stockholders have spoken the past four years, and it doesn’t look like The Schieffer Standard of Investigative Reporting is doing so hot on Wall Street.

4- Articles about “we knew but didn’t tell you because…”. Readers can supply their own reasons, although the MSM pundits tried out various and sundry excuses, such as “ethics”, “standards”, “it was in the National Enquirer” and so on and on and on.

Three weeks after John Edwards green-lighted the MSM to now let their readers in on his story of an affair, fatherhood and cover-up involving–well, that’s still being worked out, just not in the MSM–the “ethics” and “standards” of the Mainstream press were on display when John McCain named Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, as his vice-presidential pick.

The Washington Post’s resident media apologist, Howard Kurtz, calls the reaction to the media’s Palin feeding frezy, War Against the Press.

If Kurtz wants Washington Post stockholders to join him, good luck. They’ve also been AWOL since 2004.

Sen. John McCain’s top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being “on a mission to destroy” Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying “a level of viciousness and scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life.

In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels “under siege” by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child’s parentage.

Questions the same press–and Kurtz–refused to even talk about for months when they concerned John Edwards. Of course, if Palin had jetted her 4-months-old handicapped son, Trig, around on Fred Baron’s jet, put him up in a $4 million mansion and paid him $15,000 a month, maybe Palin wouldn’t have had to deal with those questions either.

The fact that unsubstantiated allegations appear on the Internet “is not a license for smearing” Palin, he said. “The campaign has been inundated by hundreds and hundreds of calls from some of the most respected reporters and news organizations. Many reporters have called the campaign and have apologized for asking the questions and said, ‘Our editors are making us do this, and I am ashamed.’ ”

“The most respected reporters” is an unintended oxymoron.

Three times as many Americans believe in UFOs (56%) than trust the mainstream press (19%).

Nobody’s accused The DailyKOS of being in the Mainstream–media or otherwise–but the “new center of the Democrat Party” started the ball rolling by doing what it does best: letting “anonymous” members of its “reality-based community” post pieces on the site and then running from them when the kitchen gets too hot.

Continue reading: INFO WARS page 2

Tags: affair, bias, Blogosphere, cover-up, info wars. New York Times, John Edwards, Mainstream Media, MSM, Sarah Palin, scandal