Media Bias

And we wonder why average Americans think Obama is doing a good job? For over 30 years, the Media Research Center has found that journalists are overwhelmingly liberal compared to the general public. They are more likely to vote liberal, support liberal agendas and report with a liberal skew.

I was reading a string of comments on a friend's face book page that were spurred by her posting a countdown to when Obama is out of office. One of the comments was "I think he's doing a good job, he had a very hard take over from the last administration and has a lot of cleaning up to do. At least he's trying!"

At least he's trying, eh? That's why we elect a Commander in Chief - to "try" to help clean up the mess of the last president?! What about looking forward and fixing what needs to be fixed rather than making things worse?

Here's where mainstream media bias comes in.

• Do you think this woman knows that Obama has since quadrupled the debt passed-down to him from George W?
• Has her media source shared with her that the stimulus package is not working?
• That unemployment is over 10%?
• That we're paying on-average $40,000 per person just in interest payments on government loans?
• What about the fact that the average wage of a government worker is $70,000 and a private sector worker is $40,000?
• Does she know that the government sector is the only sector of our economy that is growing?

How's that for "trying", Mr. President? Seems that he has a goal which is to grow the government and dependence upon it - and he's succeeding!

Here's a little tidbit from the Media Research Center's findings on our journalists:

WHAT JOURNALISTS THINK

■ The American Society of Newspaper Editors found self-identified liberals outnumbered conservatives in newsrooms by a four-to-one margin, 61% vs. 15%.

■ Most newspaper editors (71%) admit journalists’ opinions “sometimes” or “often” influence coverage, vs. just one percent who say that “never” happens.

■ A 1995 Pew Research Center survey of journalists found 48% thought there had been “too little” coverage of Bill Clinton’s achievements, vs. two percent who saw “too much” coverage. The same survey in 2004 found most national journalists (55%) thought the media were “not critical enough” of George W. Bush, vs. just 8% who thought the media were “too critical” of Bush.

■ When asked about the Bill of Rights in a 2005 University of Connecticut study, nearly all journalists deemed “essential” the right of a fair trial (97%), a free press (96%), freedom of religion (95%) and free speech (92%), and 80 percent called “essential” the judicially-derived “right to privacy.” But only 25 percent of the journalists termed the “right to own firearms” essential, while 42 percent called that right “important but not essential,” and 31 percent of journalists rejected the Second Amendment as “not important.”

When I was in school, it was taught that reporting take on no bias - left right or center. We weren't supposed to write or speak using personal pronouns (I or me) or personal opinions if we were REPORTING on something.

Opinion pieces are something totally different. That's this blog and O'Reilly, Beck, Boortz, Hannity, Colbert, Stewart & Stossel... - they are opinion shows.

When we read a newspaper or watch the evening news, it's supposed to be just that: NEWS, not opinion (except for that great section called "opinion").

Come on, America. Wake up and smell the bias. If we want our country to return to greatness, we must go back to our Constitution. We must fire reporters who can't help but insert their personal opinion. Report the facts and allow us to come to our own conclusions. We're really not that dumb.