Thursday, June 19, 2014

Press Bias

If you genuinely expect the press to play its watchdog role in our republic then you must vote Republican.  When a Democrat occupies the White House the press plays a lapdog role.  That explains the difference between coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Storm Sandy:

Stories like this used to get a lot of ink when George W. Bush was in the White House and the press couldn’t say enough about the botched recovery after Katrina. But now that the greatest President since Lincoln occupies the Oval Office, trivial stories like agonizingly slow hurricane recoveries bore our enlightened press corps to tears. There is a clear message here: if you hate bad news, vote the straight Democratic ticket. True, bad things will still happen, but instead of rubbing your nose in them day after day, the press will say as little about them as is humanly possible.

3 comments:

maxutils said...

I think a large part of the difference lies in two things: Katrina had a lot more visible effect on the population on the city of New Orleans, largely due to the established poverty and being below sea level ... and the Superdome was a disaster. Second, I don't think Bush WAS indifferent? But he certainly appeared that way to me. ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie). Obama, was out in front of it, and appeared to be doing whatever he could -- as did Chris Christie. The fact that rebuilding claims are slogging around in bureaucratic red tape should surprise no one, and I bet if you went back to Katrina, there were similar delays. Obama may have meant well, but -- how does the President cure decades of bureaucratic bloat? As a side note ... MSNBC, the most liberal of liberal media, are absolutely hammering Obama about the IRS scandal, to the point of mockery. So, sometimes, it works.
And I must say ... voting for a candidate with whom you disagree, in order that the press will attack him/her when they do something illegal/stupid doesn't sound like a particularly good strategy to me. Find me a good Republican, and I'll vote Republican.

Darren said...

Have you found any good Democrats, max?

maxutils said...

Well, that wasn't the question, but no, I haven't. Nor have I voted for anyone in either major party save for the guy who ran against Lungren for Congress, and that's a special case because I met Lungren, shook his hand, and could feel the sleaze pouring out of him ... that's why I vote predominately third party. And ... I voted for Gary Johnson in the Republican primary, and again in the general. And if Rand Paul runs, I will vote for him. Of course, they are Libertarians in Republican clothing, but that's okay. As for Dems ... I'm curious about Elizabeth Warren ... from what I've garnered so far, she seems fairly reasonable, but the juries are out. But ... every Republican candidate since Reagan has been horrific. So have the Dems.