By Bruce Walker

The media – newspapers,
magazines, book publishing, radio, television, and film – have never at any
point in the history of our nation been impartial.  Newspapers were once
the whole heart and substance of our media.  They provided news, opinion,
entertainment, advice, humor, advertisements and information.  Newspapers
were often unabashed partisans.

Some of that lingers on to this
day.  Consider the names of these Arkansas newspapers still very much in
print:  The Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, Natchez Democrat, Greenwood
Democrat, Clay County Democrat, Trumann Democrat and Lonoke
Democrat.   Aside from Arkansas, twenty-one other states have
general circulation “Democrat” newspapers:  Mississippi, Indiana,
Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado, Oregon, California, Oklahoma, Iowa, West
Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New
Hampshire, Maine, and New Jersey, and fourteen states have general circulation
“Republican” newspapers: Indiana, Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota,
Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and
Connecticut.  Newspapers were often quite consciously founded to promote
one political party, and if you ever wondered why some newspapers have the term
“Independent” in their names, it is because that mean the newspaper was
nonpartisan.    

The danger to democracy from
the media has never been because of patently partisan media.  How many
Republicans would be upset with the New York Times, if it changed its
name to the New York Democrat?  How upset would conservatives in
Congress be with NPR if those abbreviations stood for National Progressive
Radio?  Or if CBS meant Center for Broadcasting Socialism? 
There is nothing ignoble or un-American about advocating what you believe or
with buying a broadcast station to get your message out.  The sin is lying
about bias.

But worse than lying about
their bias, the mainstream media decides what is news and what is not. 
Dan Rather refused to even mention Gary Condit and his missing paramour
congressional aide, Chandra Levy and then the mainstream media pretended that
Gary Condit was somehow a “conservative”  http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0701condit.htm 
When the mainstream media covers a scandal, if the crook is a Democrat, that
fact is almost always omitted http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0703/0703spotdemocrat.htm.
  Even more surreal, organizations like CNN have even taken their own
stories, which inadvertently mention that a malfeasant politician is a Democrat
and edited out the “Democrat” in later versions of the news story. http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0703/0703howfinddem2.htm. 
When the malodorous Rod Blagojevich is exposed, New York Times reporters
writing nine paragraph stories seem to forget that trifling fact http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWMxYTkwNjY3ODRmMjJmY2IzMWQ3OTlmZDBiM2QxZDk=.
 Omitting  or even re-editing stories to delete crucial facts is the
second greatest sin of the mainstream media.  

The third great sin of the
mainstream media is how “competitors” actually collude.  PBS never
examines the Leftist bias at the New York Times.   MSNBC never
attacks PBS for being a government funded organ of the Democrat Party.  In
any other industry, every Leftist conspiracy freak in the country would be
calling these cozy corporate “rivals” a cabal of corporate executives who
secretly run America.  But, oddly, the mainstream media, which never
criticizes its sibling elements for their failures, finds the only “threats”
talk radio and Fox News.  Democrats move in and out of the mainstream
media just as if they were members of some media version of the Skull and Bones
Club. 

Lying about bias, ignoring
unwelcome news, suppressing competition – these are all real sins in a free
society – but the worst sin of the mainstream media is its ugly slide into
personal viciousness.  It is not the “Mainstream Media” but the
“Meanstream Media.”  When Fred Thompson, a universally respected former
Senator with an inspiring life story, was pulling together a campaign to run
for president as a genuine conservative, what did the “Meanstream Media”
do?  Joe Scarborough suggested that his wife “worked a pole”   http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=809.   
When Sarah Palin was put on the Republican ticket, the media ran stories which
suggested that Sarah had not given birth to Trig, but rather her daughter was
the mother, even insisting on paternity testing for the child. 

Worse, when ordinary citizens –
not politicians – defy the Left, the media goes them, like Joe the Plumber http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/17/operation-destroy-joe-the-plumber/
 or confronts protesters at Tea Parties http://newsbusters.org/blogs/julia-seymour/2009/04/15/cnn-correspondent-claims-tea-parties-anti-government-anti-cnn.

 The “Meanstream Media,”
the lapdog of the failed Left, cannot win any battle fairly.  So it lies
about its bias; it hides rather than reveals; it practices groupthink instead
of openness.  Most despicably, the “Meanstream Media” savages, slanders,
and screams at anyone for any reason who gets in its way.

                    © 2009 Bruce Walker — All Rights Reserved

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Bruce Walker is the author of
two books:  Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his
recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on
Christianity.

http://outskirtspress.com/swastika_against_the_cross  

http://outskirtspress.com/Sinisterism