By Marvin Olasky
Friday January 10, 2014
WORLD’s review of 2013 is not complete without a look at
the year as depicted by the mainstream press. With the help of the Media
Research Center let’s start in January, where “Newsweek” had on its Obama
inauguration cover this headline: “The Second Coming.”
In subsequent months worshipful journalists averted their
eyes from administration scandals. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell stated in May,
“IRS agents did nothing wrong.” Even in November Ruth Marcus of “The Washington
Post” claimed, “This has been a really relatively scandal-free administration,
first term and second term.” If that statement is relatively true, it’s only
because most reporters haven’t looked.
And even when they could not help but see and report the
Obamacare website mess, some remained propagandists. Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s “The
Ed Show” on Sept. 30 inhaled about healthcare.gov: “how easy it is to navigate
all the information, all the basic questions, and all the direction you need to
take to get involved, to get health care.”
It’s not as if reporters didn’t want to be alarmist. On
March 1 Josh Elliott opened ABC’s “Good Morning America” by announcing it was
“deadline day. Hours, now, until massive government cuts go into effect that
could impact every American: jobs vaporizing, flights delayed, even criminals
walking free.” When nothing much happened, Savannah Guthrie four days later on
NBC’s “Today”explained that the sequester is “not a poison that kills you
overnight. Apparently it’s a slow, rolling poison.”
Liberal journalists regularly proposed capital punishment
for poisoners. Roger Simon, Politico’s chief political columnist, Oct. 14: “If
Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved?
Answer: America.” A joke, of course. CNN’s Piers Morgan, Sept. 12: Two
conservative talk radio hosts, Ben Ferguson and Dana Loesch, should “stand at
the end of a range and I’ll get 100 blind people to fire away at targets around
you.” A joke, of course.
Even when such hate speech didn’t propose killing
conservatives, liberal scribes suggested that their opponents were subhuman.
“New York Times” columnist Paul Krugman, July 15: Republicans have “a state of
mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already
miserable … an almost pathological mean-spiritedness.” Charles Pierce,
esquire.com, Oct. 1: “We have elected an ungovernable collection of
snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami. … The true power resides in a cabal of
vandals, a nihilistic brigade.”
Given how evil conservatives are, how could journalists
not do part-time public relations for the Obama administration? (And some hoped
for full-time gigs like the one press secretary Jay Carney nabbed from his
“Time” perch.) Chris Matthews, though, was panting a little too hard on Feb. 25
when he interviewed two pro–Hillary Clinton journalists and said, “If you’re
watching, Madam Secretary, all three of us have brilliant ideas.”
(The more sophisticated approach was that of “New York
Times” correspondent Mark Landler at an Oct. 8 Obama press conference. Instead
of asking a question, Landler went on for more than 100 words that ended with a
kiss-up comment about how President Obama alone could have brought about a
trade deal. The president’s reply rewarded him: “I think that’s a great
example.” Next stop: White House speechwriter?)
Chris Matthews is almost always over-the-top, of course,
but in 2013 he outdid himself. On July 31 he called Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul,
and Mike Lee “political terrorists” whose “only goal is to blow things up.” On
Sept. 23 he attacked Cruz’s “sinister self-awareness” and two weeks later said
“know-nothings in the Congress [are] characters in some ghastly, real-life
remake of “Planet of the Apes,” where the bad guys fear nothing more than
science and other evidence of human progress.” On Oct. 18 he spoke of
“right-wing camp followers plying their trade like the women who got their name
in the earlier time from General [Joe] Hooker.”
The single worst comment of 2013 came from MSNBC host
Martin Bashir on Nov. 15, when Sarah Palin said our spiraling national debt
enslaves us, and Bashir said she deserved—how do I put this delicately?—to have
someone defecate in her mouth. Three days later Bashir, who professes faith in
Christ, acknowledged, “My words were wholly unacceptable.” On Dec. 4 he did the
right thing and resigned. So should others—but they won’t.
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