The Biggest Loser

Regardless of who wins today's presidential election, the biggest loser is the main stream media—ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Newsweek, Time, The NYT, The WaPo and hundreds of other outlets whose outright and blatant bias in favor of Barack Obama sullied their reputation for fair and objective coverage. The MSM can no longer be trusted as an objective observer of the American scene.

Two quick examples:

1. the tragedy in Benghazi is a major news story and an evolving scandal that has occurred during the last eight weeks of the Presidential campaign. The MSM chose to spike the story, either under-reporting it (e.g., page 6 in the NYT, p. 9 in the WaPo, 30 seconds on CBS) or not reporting it at all. Instead of aggressively confronting the White House to better understand why its spokespeople repeatedly and knowingly lied about the cause of the attack, who the attackers were, what level of protection was provided at the Benghazi consulate, and most important, who made the decision not to apply readily available military assets to protect the U.S Ambassador and his people before and during the attack, the MSM looked the other way, afraid that their reporting would hurt their candidate, Barack Obama.

2. the coverage of suffering on Staten Island and South Jersey in the wake of Hurricane Sandy took on a far different tone than the coverage after Hurricane Katrina, even though the devastation and human suffering, the ineptitude of the federal response, and Obama's in-and-out concern were analogous to what happened during the Bush administration. Instead of split-screen TV images showing crying Staten Island residents next to a smiling President on stage with Jay-Z and The Boss, the media clucked their collective tongues about the tremendous damage, but editorializing about the federal response was non-existent. Stated simply, they were afraid that honest reporting would hurt their candidate, Barack Obama.

There are dozens of other major cases of outright bias (e.g., reporting on Fast and Furious, reporting on the implosion of Egypt's "democracy"and Obama's support for Islamists in that country, reporting on the many combat deaths in Afghanistan), human interest stories on the millions of unemployed over the past four years, stories about the long term impact of the debt), but there’s really no point in discussing them beyond a quick mention.

If Mitt Romney is elected President today, the MSM will return from its four-year hiatus of bias and cheerleading to re-emerge as the adversary to the new President. Every scandal, real or imagined will be reported with enthusiasm, any news that reflects badly on Romney will be front page, above the fold. There will be no attempt to spike any story; reporters will ask aggressive questions at news conferences—remember those? In essence, the MSM will do their job. But why the four-year vacation?

Ironically, the MSM’s extreme bias in favor of Obama did him far more harm that good. It allowed an inexperienced and incompetent President to believe his own B.S. It allowed Barack Obama to think that he was bulletproof, that his hubris and virulently partisan positions were acceptable, that his many domestic and international failures were small potatoes, because they were not questioned or exposed by the MSM. In the end, all of that may not matter if Obama wins, but it will matter over the next four years. Regardless, the MSM’s behavior was disgraceful and just a little bit frightening. During the past four years we got a glimpse of what a censored, state-run media is like. It wasn’t pretty.

Addendum:

Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel write the obituary of the MSM, so afflicted with liberal bias that they won’t last beyond the next decade:

The point is that many in the press are every bit as corrupt as conservatives have accused them of being. The good news is, it’s almost over. The broadcast networks, the big daily newspapers, the newsweeklies — they’re done. It’s only a matter of time, and everyone who works there knows it. That may be why so many of them seem tapped out, lazy and enervated, unwilling to stray from the same tired story lines. Some days they seem engaged only on Twitter, where they spend hours preening for one another and sneering at outsiders.

By the next presidential cycle most of these people will be gone. They’ll have moved on to academia or think tanks or Democratic senate campaigns, or wherever aging hacks go when their union contracts finally, inevitably get voided. They’ll be replaced by a vibrant digital marketplace filled with hungry young reporters who care more about breaking stories than maintaining access to some politician or regulator.

All of this was probably inevitable, but it came faster than expected. Through their dishonesty the legacy media hastened their own end. Their moral authority has evaporated. So has their business model. Wave them goodbye on the way out.