Perhaps at no other time in American history has media bias against Republicans been so blatant.
We know from Wikileaks that the media is secretly in bed with Hillary. But some reporters have openly urged others to throw the book away on journalism and abandon all neutrality to take down Donald Trump.
Sadly, this liberal bias in the media is not new, they have a history of going to extremes to create their own “October Surprises” to affect elections before, they’re just more honest and brazen about it this year. Here are 5 times in the past 5 election cycles that the media sought to destroy a Republican candidate right before the presidential election.
November 2, 2000: Bush’s DUI
Five days before Election Day, the media leaked that George W. Bush had a DUI charge in Maine in 1976. Bush famously gave up alcohol in 1986 and has been sober ever since, but the fact that he didn’t disclose his arrest earlier did not sit well with Republican voters.
According to Politico, Karl Rove wrote that the bombshell cost Bush several states and countless votes across the country:
“Did this last-minute revelation of Bush’s decades-old DUI hurt?” Rove continued. “Yes, a lot. First, it knocked us off message at a critical time. … Second, we had made a big issue of Gore’s credibility and now we had a problem with Bush’s. … [A] number of people who supported Bush flipped and went for Gore. Second, a larger number of voters — especially evangelicals and social conservatives — decided not to vote, taking votes away from Bush. …
“Before the news broke, we were up … in Maine … Bush went on to lose Maine … If Bush did drop 2 percent nationally in the vote because of the DUI revelation, then it probably cost him four additional states that he lost by less than 1 percent — New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Oregon. Had he won them, … [it] would have allowed him to win the White House without Florida. … Of the things I would redo in the 2000 election, making a timely announcement about Bush’s DUI would top the list.”
September 8, 2004: Rathergate
This story was luckily nipped in the bud before it could have devastating consequences for Bush’s reelection, but it is important as an example of the media intentionally trying to create their own “October Surprise,” albeit in September.
Less than 2 months from Election Day, CBS news anchor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes aired a report on old memos saying Bush had received special treatment during his service in the Air National Guard and had failed to fulfill his duties. It was quickly determined by bloggers that the primary documents were forgeries written using a modern day computer with font and spacing that a 1970s typewriter was incapable of. CBS stubbornly defended its story for weeks with Rather infamously calling the documents “fake but accurate.”
An independent panel investigated and months later 4 CBS employees were fired over the affair, with Rather merely demoted. Accuracy in Media reported at the time:
Mapes, who was very close to Rather and enjoyed his confidence, had the evidence exonerating Bush of this malicious charge. The report shows that there were multiple credible sources to prove that Bush did not try to avoid Vietnam by going into the National Guard and that he was in fact willing to go to Vietnam as a pilot. However, CBS News deliberately kept this information from its viewers and conveyed an opposite impression because Rather, Mapes & Company were trying to depict Bush as a coward who, as Commander-in-Chief, was sending American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq. …
Rather saw this as a Watergate-style story that could damage the Bush campaign and sink the President’s chances for re-election, as Americans were fighting and dying in Iraq. He seemed to be making a virtual guarantee that the story would be a smoking gun that would usher John Kerry into the White House. Instead, the story backfired, implicating Rather and his associates in a sleazy political operation, with links to the Kerry campaign, that was intended to mislead and misinform the American people as they prepared to vote on issues of war and peace.
September 24, 2008: Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin
John McCain’s surprise pick of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin injected new life into his campaign and galvanized the base of the GOP. So, of course, the media had to take down this newcomer to the national scene by introducing her to the public in the worst possible light.
To that end, CBS anchor Katie Couric sat down for an extensive interview with Palin and whittled 9 hours of footage into heavily edited segments.
Politico reported on Palin’s explanation of her interview performance and Couric’s bias at the time:
“I’ll tell you. Honestly. The Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed. Because it’s like, no matter what you say, you’re going to get clobbered. If you cease to answer a question, you’re going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too.”
“But, in the Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing, in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for. What the values are represented in our ticket.”
“So, I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed. But, that’s also an indication of being outside of that Washington elite, outside of the media elite, also. And just getting to talk to Americans without the filters and let them know what we stand for.”
“My response to her [on what she reads], I guess it was kind of filtered. But, I was sort of taken aback, like, the suggestion was, you’re way up there in a far away place in Alaska. You know, that there are publications in the rest of the world that are read by many. And I was taken aback by that because I don’t know, the suggestion that this was a little bit of perhaps we’re not in tune with the rest of the world.”
September 17, 2012: Romney’s 47% quote
In mid-September, audio of Mitt Romney speaking privately to donors saying 47% will vote for Obama no matter what was leaked to the media. Of course the media gleefully ran with the video, eager to cut it down to take out the context that Romney was actually talking about a campaign strategy to focus on the undecideds. They also neglected to mention that Romney was right about the 47%. Meanwhile almost half of the country thought that media spent too much time covering the story.
As Linda Chavez wrote at the time:
It’s important to note the context in which the statements were made. Romney was answering a direct question, which asked: “For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?”
His reply listed among the 47 percent who won’t vote for him those “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.”
But Democrats have been encouraging Americans to believe just that since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. And President Obama reiterates it every time he has the chance. So why is Romney’s repeating the Democratic mantra controversial? Isn’t it logical to assume that those who support President Obama agree with him about the role of government in providing health care, housing, food stamps — you name it?
Romney has said his statement could have been made more elegantly. But inelegant or not, he was right; we are becoming a nation of people who depend on government. Nearly half of Americans pay no income tax — Romney suggested it was 47 percent, coincidentally the same percentage that support Obama.
October 7, 2016: Trump’s lewd recorded comments
By now everyone on the planet knows about Donald Trump’s lewd comments in 2005 that were captured off-set from an appearance on Access Hollywood. But not much has been made of the fact that NBC sat on the recordings waiting to release them at a time they would have maximum impact on the election.
As TMZ reported:
NBC execs had a plan to time the release of the Donald Trump audio to have maximum impact on both the 2nd presidential debate and the general election … sources connected with the network tell TMZ.
Multiple sources connected with NBC tell us … top network execs knew about the video long before they publicly said they did, but wanted to hold it because it was too early in the election. The sources say many NBC execs have open disdain for Trump and their plan was to roll out the tape 48 hours before the debate so it would dominate the news cycle leading up to the face-off.
As we reported, Billy Bush was bragging about the tape — in front of NBC execs at the Rio Olympics — in early August. NBC says it’s only known about the tape for a little more than a week.
So there you have it. Further proof of the liberal media’s bias against Republicans and attempts every four years to affect the election against the GOP candidate.
Their scheming has worked the last two election cycles, will it work again this year? Only time will tell.
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