The media double standard: They just love trashing those Democrats

[ruggerson]

When the media dissects the Democrats, they invariably hone in on their perceived CHARACTER flaws.

Endless babble on the talking heads shows about Edward's vanity, his "pimping" of Elizabeth's cancer, his talks-about-poor-people-but-lives-in-a-mansion hypocrisy. Chatter about Clinton as an ambitious, shrewish, habitual evader. Yammering about Obama as an inexperienced egotist, reaching above himself.

Most, if not all, of the same chatter about Republicans, conversely, is ISSUE oriented. Is McCain too hawkish to make it? Is Rudy too much of a nominal social liberal to pull it off? Can Romney capture the religious right?

The Democrats are analyzed and dissected and, invariably, assigned devious motives and highly negative personality characteristics.

The Republicans, however, are identified, in a very subtle but powerful psychological assumption, by these same media talking robots, to be decent, honest men; their character is not in question, thus we must only need to examine where they stand on the ISSUES in order to evaluate their fitness for the Presidency.

If a Democrat had exhibited half of the duplicity of a Mitt Romney, flip flopping on the most major cultural issues of the day, that Democrat would have already been laughed and derided out of the race. Their character would have been ravaged and destroyed by a relentless media bloodhunt. Mitt? He's the front runner in Iowa and NH.

The media double standard is once again firmly in place. And it's very dangerous.

[AndyTiedye]

1. The Mighty Slime Machine is Just Getting Warmed Up

[rwheeler31]

3. Not the right wing. Money wins in that market.

[AndyTiedye]

9. Money for the Parent Corporations

GE purchased RCA so they could control NBC News. Jack Welch even said so at the time.
As long as the war is profitable for GE, NBC will support it and ratings be damned.

We all know about Rupert Murdoch and Faux.

and the beat goes on.

[tularetom]

2. If you think its bad now wait until the general election campaign

It won't matter who the Dems candidate is, everything they ever did will be fair game. The librul media will somehow know about every time they ever masturbated or peed in the woods. The repubs on the other hand will be assumed to be above such character flaws so the question won't even be asked. My TV is gonna be turned off until after the election (assuming there IS an election). Well except for Countdown.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. The Daily Howler does a great job of showing this and

has for many years. If every American read it, they'd realize how the media plays us, or tries to.

[LibDemAlways]

5. Look what they did to Gore in 2000 - turned him into an

habitual stretcher of the truth on the basis of statements which they freely took out of context and/or altered to suit their own malicious purposes. They also made a huge stink about the fact that he sighed during one of the debates.(Never mind that Bush couldn't piece together a coherent sentence. That didn't seem to matter.)

In 2004 they took the swiftboaters at their word and gave them all kinds of facetime. When Dan Rather, an honest old-school journalist, tried to get at the truth about Bush's pathetic military record, he was swiftboated, too.

You won't catch Russert asking Fred Thompson if he ever saw a UFO or asking Mitt to justify how much he spends on his haircuts. (It's a safe bet the Ken doll clone has never seen the inside of a Fantastic Sam's.) They'll be tossed softballs that will make them appear thoughtful and, by extension, Presidential.

The propaganda arrows are flying already, and the Democrats, as always, are the targets.

[ClarkUSA]

6. Nothing's changed because Democrats allow the MSM to get away with it.

Republicans would never tolerate such one-sided treatment. Democrats ignore it.

[AndyTiedye]

8. Democrats Can't Do Anything About the Media. Repiglickins Own It, Lock, Stock, and Barrel

[ClarkUSA]

10. They can respond to it (as Keith Olbermann does on MSNBC).

Not that I watch KO anymore since he's picked up a noticeable candidate bias based on media access needs.

[Clark2008]

13. Noticable candidate bias? Who?

I haven't noticed it - but I don't get to see it as often as I used to because of the baby.

[loudsue]

15. Wrong.

[WCGreen]

7. Perhaps the main reason the Dem's garner so much attention

from the cable TV shows is because is the simple fact that they are far more interesting than the Republican field...

Let's face it, after Fred Fizzled, what else is there to talk about...

Bomb Bomb Bomb...

Tax Cuts Tax Cuts Tax Cuts...

That's all they ever talk about...

Hardly anyone watches their debates...

Is it any wonder the chat shows point and shoot democrats...

Beside that, many people view the potential democratic nominee as the defacto winner and that there is a better than good shot that the nominee will either be a woman or an American of African decent, both historical events...

The GOP, some angry older white guy will be nominated...

Where's the news in that...

[dsc]

11. I don't know

maybe the candidate who dresses in drag, married his cousin, married two other women, moved in with gay men when wife number 2 threw him out, employs child molesters, and is closely tied to a criminal.

maybe the candidate who married a woman young enough to be his daughter, lobbied for abortion though he is against it now, and tried to save Nixon.

I could go on.

[ruggerson]

16. Bingo

and those "character" issues also pertain to their voting records. If there wasn't a double standard, Romney would be tagged by the cable news talking head as a total phony: an insincere fraud. Instead, he's the noble Mormon with the straitlaced family, struggling to overcome America's discomfort with his religious background.

[WCGreen]

21. I don't get that at all when I watch the Cable shows...

They are focusing on the dem's because they think they are going to win...

And the coverage of the dem's are not all bad...

It's just the way we see it...

[Perry Logan]

12. Here's the question: why do DUers read, believe, and repeat all of this crap?

Even as I speak, there are threads filled with right-wing smears of Democrats--all dutifully posted by DUers.

Example:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[ruggerson]

17. Indeed

we often exacerbate and strengthen those media anti-Dem memes.

[Echo In Light]

14. What else would one expect from the so-called "liberal" media?

...er, make that the NON EXISTENT "liberal" media.

Ignorance is no longer an excuse...not in an era where so many people have access to so much info i.e. researching who owns the mainline media, how the "news" is slanted for manufacture of consent, and so on. Orwell was spot on in capturing the true nature of the modern state: nothing is true until it is officially denied.

[DeepModem Mom]

18. K&R

[laureloak]

19. Just a way for an Obama supporter to dig at Clinton & Edwards

[ruggerson]

20. lol

n/t

[Tactical Progressive]

22. A Republican has to pretty much get caught in a felony or soliciting sex

in a restroom before the media would even think of implying something against them.

A Democrat that starts accruing power will face a much larger and more personal level of attack.

I remember back in Campaign 1992 when the media were obsessed with the youthful Bill Clinton's reported affairs. They just couldn't stop. They wouldn't stop. Then a CNN reporter, Mary Tillotsen, asked Bush Sr about his own long-term affair with his secretary, Jean something. Now, you would think that at the very least it would be goose and gander fair, but even moreso the other way, because a young candidate's dalliances are not unexpected while the staid Republican's 'family values' proclivities would be more newsworthy - the old 'man bites dog' news metaphor for the ordinary not being the story - but not so. Bush Sr said: "I'm not answering any sleazy questions from CNN!"

And that was it. Over. Never touched on again by CNN or any other news organization. Mary Tillotsen got sent to Siberia or somewhere, not to be seen for years. I thought for the longest time that CNN just had her killed for asking the question. But I saw her someplace like six years later. From the network's chief Presidential candidate correspondent, about the most coveted position in political reporting, to gone in an instant. For just once asking the Republican a question that they all spit out continuously at the Democrat in the same race.

Just like they would go back twenty years to try to nail Clinton on a trivial, money-losing land sale - that they turned into a sexual investigation when that failed - but they wouldn't give exposure to Bush Jr's business deals that fraudulently misrepresented the financial state of a company so he and others could sneak out with their cut with everyone else holding the bag.

I've been saying this for a while: Don't worry about the mewling, supportive stenographer media.
They'll come back, nasty and sneering, as soon as a Dem shows up in power.
It's already starting.


(from part of an earlier that applies directly to the op)