Big Media’s Credibility Tied to Obama

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, AP, NYTimes and Washington Post, the core of
the national, or mainstream, media that went all in for Barack Obama in
2008, have doubled down on Obama’s re-election.

The media have skin in the game, one they are playing against half or more
of a split American electorate.

Though their names will not, the national media will appear figuratively on
November ballots, and, along with the candidates, American voters will
render a verdict on the mainstream media (MSM).

For generations, America’s heavily liberal MSM has favored Democrats, but
its slavish worship of Obama has corrupted it into a semi-official state
media. There has been systematic media coverage of news items that favor the
president and willful neglect of evidence which reflects badly on him.

Michael Beran observed, "Liberalism’s scribal class is … pleased that the
contest has become a referendum not on the president’s record or his plans
but on his charisma and popularity. In the kingdom of vapor, substance has
no place."

The national media have crafted a narrative of Obama’s inevitability to
dishearten opposition voters. The media, apparently convinced their efforts
to re-elect Obama will go unnoticed, have already declared the presidential
race in Obama’s favor at least three times, declarations which don’t mention
Obama’s record but focus on what the media represent as blunders by the
Republican nominee.

Media outlets, which failed to vet Obama in 2008 and have yet to do so,
would have us believe that dog carriers, old business affiliations, accurate
comments on government dependency and self-evident statements about Middle
East/North African violence are news.

Mitt Romney may become the news in November, but for now, the media are
missing the real news:

The last recession officially ended in June 2009, four months after Obama’s
inauguration. Obama promised that his massive stimulus, which passed, unread
and undebated, nine days after he entered office, would hold American
joblessness below 8 percent, and that, today, unemployment would be 5.4
percent.

Instead, joblessness soared to more than 10 percent and has remained above 8
percent for 43 months. In the 60 years and 11 presidencies beginning in 1948
with Harry Truman and ending with Bush II, America had experienced,
cumulatively, only 39 months of unemployment over 8 percent. If discouraged
job-market dropouts and part-timers seeking full-time work were included,
unemployment would be nearly 15 percent.

Obama promised recovery, spent money, tinkered with monetary and regulatory
policies and failed. That’s newsworthy.

Obama’s chronic economic weakness is joined by other largely unreported
administration news: government printing presses debased our currency,
inflating the cost of food and other commodities; the national debt
increased $6 trillion; retail sales are flat; manufacturing is in decline;
the nation’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time; gasoline
prices soared; and Obamacare, a massive tax increase, remains unpopular with
most Americans.

Appointing his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State,
Obama promised a new era of "smart diplomacy." Obama/Clinton diplomacy,
embodied in grand speeches, bowing to foreign rulers, a "reset" of relations
with Russia and promises to stop Iran’s nuclear program and improve
America’s image in the Middle East, failed comprehensively.

In Obama’s "good war," Afghan "allies" are turning their guns on American
troops. That’s news to anyone who gets their "news" from the MSM, which
insists that a three-month-old, 14-minute amateur video "spontaneously"
provoked simultaneous anti-American violence across the Muslim world on the
highly-symbolic anniversary of 9/11. In their reporting, the "timing" of
Romney’s reaction to attacks on American embassies outweighed the actual
attacks.

Obama has failed at foreign policy and threatened national security. That’s
newsworthy.

The strident tone of anti-Romney distractions among the MSM is a measure of
their desperation. Although they are not reporting it accurately – or at all
– the media understand that the real news isn’t good for Obama.

Though most polls are within the margin of error, media polls are
systematically biased in Obama’s favor. But even gaming the polls has
backfired.

A recent CBS poll over-weighted Democrats by 13 points. Even so, Obama only
"won" by nine. Even with a nine point Democrat advantage in a recent ABC
poll stacked to favor him, Obama’s "lead" was only six points. Every poll
has had Obama below 50 percent, a clear sign that most undecided voters will
not back Obama’s re-election. This math must be distressing to the media arm
of the Obama campaign.

Even though Republican self-identification among likely voters has exceeded
Democrats’ since late 2010, pollsters still use a more Obama-favorable 2008
model rather than the 2010 mid-term election model in which congressional
Democrats fared worse than Republicans did in Herbert Hoover’s 1930
mid-term.

The media also ignore the enthusiasm gap. Recent polling reveals that
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are far more enthusiastic
about voting than Democrats. The grassroots, especially, are energized for a
candidate many didn’t initially favor, ensuring a strong Romney vote.

The election doesn’t look especially promising for the mainstream media,
whose trivial remaining credibility could be lost with their candidate’s
presidency.

http://www.ldnews.com/columns/ci_21625609/big-medias-credibility-tied-obama