Time For The Republican Party To Openly Take On The Liberal Media
The dominant media in this country, which are overwhelmingly liberal, are waging a sophisticated, undeclared war on the Republican Party (and conservatives in general); and the party, instead of strongly fighting back, is weakly and incompetently just letting those media win the war. Who knows how many elections Republicans/conservatives have lost because of biased media coverage?
Some have attempted to quantify the significant electoral advantage Democrats have due to that bias, like Professor Tim Groseclose of UCLA, author of the book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. According to his analysis: "Media bias aids Democratic candidates by eight to 10 percentage points in a typical election, every mainstream national news outlet has a liberal bias, and only four of 100 news outlets examined lean right and even those can't be considered far right" (from an editorial titled "Why The Bias Matters" in Investor's Business Daily, Sept. 7, 2011, p. A14).
Back in 2008, "An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this [2008] election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans" (William Tate, "Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1," Investor's Business Daily, July 24, 2008, p. A11).
And back in 2004, "Evan Thomas, Newsweek's Washington editor, conceded that there was media bias favoring Senator [John] Kerry [in his presidential campaign against George Bush] and speculated that it might be worth a...5-point advantage [in the election]" (John O'Sullivan, "The Limits of Media Bias," National Review, Nov. 29, 2004, p. 46).
I could go on and on because the evidence for liberal media bias is overwhelming. Those of us, like yours truly and some of my conservative friends, who are actively censored by the liberal media, we don't need statistics to back up our "beliefs" re liberal media bias. We know it exists from numerous personal experiences. We live it and see it, witness it.
Unless we fix the dominant media in this country, Republicans/conservatives will continue to lose elections they normally, under fairer circumstances, wouldn’t lose.
To fix the media we are going to have to engage them in their undeclared war (it’s undeclared because the biased media are trying to keep the number of people they alienate to as small a number as possible, and if the public saw an open war by the dominant media against Republicans/conservatives many more people would be alienated from those media). We are going to have to draw them out and expose their corruption. We need to bring their violations of their own Journalism Code of Ethics out in the open so the public can fully see what’s going on, so the public can see how the dominant liberal media are trying to manipulate them in order to impose their irrational liberal values on them. The credibility of those media is already woefully low according to various studies, what little remains also needs to be taken away.
Our Republican/conservative leaders need to start publicly demanding changes in the ownership of the dominant media. We need to start at the top, with the owners, because they set the tone for their employees. If the owners let editors and reporters work for them who are sleazy liberal bigots who discriminate against Republicans/conservatives, then the owners may as well be waging this discriminatory war themselves.
If a member of the media sticks a microphone in front of our leaders, for whatever reason, our leaders should begin the interviews by demanding these changes at the top of the dominant media. And they need to name the names of those who are malpracticing and who should be fired. Our leaders need to explain how these malpractitioners have betrayed us and violated their own code of ethics. Our leaders need to cite real-world examples. And our leaders need to keep doing these things, publicly and prominently, until the situation is rectified. No compromises. People need to be fired. New owners have to be found, people with excellent reputations, to replace the liberal bigots in the media who discriminate against Republicans/conservatives and who violate their own code of ethics.
Yes, there may be an initial backlash from the media. It’s possible they may become even more biased against us in the short term. But that just gives us more ammunition to use against them, and also helps draw them out in the open so their bias is less hidden from the public. And if we don’t engage them in this undeclared war, our future isn’t bright.
This situation needs to be addressed, and addressed aggressively and effectively. If our leaders are not willing to take this battle on, they too need to be fired and replaced with people willing to face reality, and willing to deal with it appropriately, instead of ignoring reality. Elections are being unnecessarily lost.
One last note, while conservatively biased news media are currently needed to try to balance out liberally biased media, shouldn’t the ultimate goal be UNbiased media? Do you really want anyone, liberal or conservative, spinning the news for you, coloring the news, using personal and/or ideological biases to decide what’s “news” in the first place, to decide what events should be covered or ignored? Probably not. Who really wants to be manipulated? The goal should be unbiased news media which use objective criteria to decide what’s “news” and how to cover it. So, to be fair, we eventually should expect any conservatively biased news media to also abandon their biases and employ objective criteria to decide what’s “news.” If we don’t expect that, a lot of people won’t take us seriously and we won’t have much credibility.