The Media Goes Full Liberal : The Double Standard on John Edwards and Bristol Palin

The very same media organizations which for months refused to cover or even mention the story of a Democratic Presidential candidate's affair and illegitimate baby, threw all their efforts into covering the pregnancy of the daughter of a Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

The website of ABC News, as well as many others, reported the pregnancy as "Breaking News". On Google News, both a hurricane which endangers the Gulf Coast and has set off a massive evacuation and the Republican National Convention, rank second to the major story that the daughter of a VP candidate apparently had premarital sex.

This isn't a double standard. It's not even bias anymore, the media is functioning as an arm of the Obama campaign and the coverage is as slanted as anything in Pravda. News stories about the election are simply the Obama campaign's talking points.

The same media which refused to cover the question of Al Gore's hypocrisy in maintaining an energy wasting mansion and tanks coverage of Obama's own home ties to Rezko, leaped on the Obama 7 homes ad campaign, as if it was news, instead of a weak political attack ad. The Gore and Rezko stories were relevant, the McCain one isn't.

John Edwards' affair may have resulted in illegal payments to the woman he was having an affair with. Nevertheless the media continued refusing to cover it, until the story had bypassed them and everyone knew about it anyway, making their Wall of Silence pathetic.

Meanwhile the media is presenting the announcement that Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant and getting married as a major news story, one that overshadows a hurricane and a party's national convention. Those same stories also repeatedly cited discredited and unsubstantiated claims by diarists on DailyKos that Sarah Palin's baby is actually her daughter's, without actually bothering to substantiate them in any way.

We expect bias from the press, but this is a game changer. We're no longer looking at bias or even just slanted stories. We're looking at a media that functions in the same way that the press does in totalitarian countries, suppressing the truth and providing wall to wall coverage of stories that no journalist could possibly defend, for no other reason than to harm the political opposition.

We're living in Pravdaland now.

In poll after poll the public has called the press on its left wing bias and rather than reform, the press has decided instead to cast off any restraint and go full liberal.

The media's behavior is not simply wrong, it's a declaration of war. Not a declaration of war on Republicans, but a declaration of war on the democratic process and it affects us all as Americans who want to see elections decided at the voting booth not in a media conducted coronation.

Chicago Tribune reporter and Obama campaign manager David Axelrod has forged an alliance with the press from the start to dig up dirt, smear and destroy Obama's opponents. What was once a local arrangement, has now become a nationwide arrangement. And the target is anyone who gets in Obama's way.

The same media that once refused to touch Chelsea, now had no problem describing her as being "pimped" around. Why should anyone be surprised that Bristol Palin got the same treatment from the media.

The frenzied media coverage had two objectives, one was to alienate religious people from McCain. That failed badly and instead generated a backlash, as the media's despicable behavior was apparent for all to see. The second was to overshadow the convention, something that they have partly succeeded in accomplishing.

But every action also produces a counterreaction. The readership of news magazines and evening news shows is already down. This will only accelerate the process. You don't have to be a Republican to see the bias anymore. Not when that bias is the subject of Saturday Night Live routines and when Bill Maher describes reporters covering Obama, "these guys were ready to have sex with him."

At a time of declining audiences, the media has insured that they will not only be preaching to the choir, but preaching to those of the choir that can stomach it. And their numbers are shrinking. The media can't compete with DailyKos, and when they try to act like DailyKos, they wind up scrambling for a vanishing audience and reduced to a narrow demographic that doesn't get its news from the internet but wants unvarnished radical left wing propaganda in place of news.

Meanwhile the media is also eliminating any perception of neutrality and therefore legitimacy. Becoming an organ of the progressive wing of the Democratic party when combined with dwindling audiences, makes the media fair game for being ignored or ostracised by the right and center politicians they've targeted. If the media wants to function as the PR agency for the far left, then they should be reduced to having nothing else to cover until they become nothing more than small voices in an empty room bleating the same things over and over again.

Postscript: Biden's daughter has been arrested for an altercation with a police officer outside a bar. Let's see if this gets a fraction of the media attention that a pregnancy by the daughter of Palin did. Anyone want to take the bet?

Sen. Biden’s Daughter Arrested in Altercation

The daughter of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer outside a Chicago bar.

Ashley Blazer Biden, 21, of Wilmington, Del., was with a group of people on a North Side street where several bars are located when someone else threw a bottle at an officer, police said.

When police tried to arrest another person, Biden blocked the officer’s path and made intimidating statements, officer JoAnn Taylor said.

Biden was later released and is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 20.

Sen. Biden’s spokeswoman, Margaret Aitken, declined to comment, calling it a private, family matter.