The Patriot Post® · The Networks' Shameful Midterm Bias

This election cycle has seen a slew of compelling campaigns from Republican women: Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, Washington Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley, and Virginia congressional candidate Yesli Vega, to name a few. But arguably the most impressive of all has been Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

We mention this because nothing scares the Democrats more than strong conservative women, and because there’s no more compelling evidence for this than the left-wing media’s coverage of Lake, which has been — we kid you not — 100% negative. As Rich Noyes of NewsBusters writes:

Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President [Donald] Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press. This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the president — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.

Imagine that. And media personalities wonder why the American people hold them in such low regard.

Noyes notes that much of this year’s focus has been on four particular candidates: Republicans Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, and Kari Lake, and Democrat John Fetterman. Lake, by the way, is running for governor of Arizona, but she could help Blake Masters win the Senate seat in the state. The media’s focus makes sense given the stakes: Republicans are expected to easily retake the House, but the Democrats still desperately cling to hopes of hanging onto the Senate. Here, Fetterman notched 81% negative coverage, which was mostly due to his stunningly bad debate performance. But, Noyes writes, “That’s still better than Arizona’s Kari Lake, who was on the receiving end of nine evaluative comments, all negative, giving her a 100 percent negative press score.”

Thus, to say that the networks are 100% against Kari Lake is not an exaggeration. Take a look:

In this respect, Lake has outdone even Trump in exposing Leftmedia bias. Recall the May 2017 report issued by Harvard’s Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which analyzed news coverage — in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post; the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC; and three European outlets — of Trump’s first 100 days in office. The report, which was refreshingly honest, found his coverage to be 93% negative. By contrast, Trump’s hopey changey presidential predecessor received just 41% negative coverage.

What explains the Left’s unbridled enmity toward Lake? Hmm, where to start? She’s beautiful, she’s magnetic, she’s whip-smart and in command of the issues, she’s incredibly comfortable in front of a camera or an audience, and she has the deliciously Trumpian quality of being a great counterpuncher.

Lake, though, has one other unforgivable quality: She’s a traitor — a media personality who’s not a Democrat. For 22 years, Lake worked as an anchor for Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV. So she knows all the Leftmedia’s secrets, knows all the dirty tricks, knows where all the bodies are buried.

Thus, Kari Lake poses all sorts of problems for the Left, and we can expect to see the media’s petty nastiness and deceitfulness toward her to continue. Which brings us to a prediction (you heard it here first):

If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination in 2024, he’ll tab Kari Lake as his running mate. She’s what we call a ticket-balancer: old-young, male-female, northeast-southwest, and she’ll be the governor of a swing state, Arizona.

All this could be avoided, of course, if only the mainstream media would play it straight. Heck, we’d settle for 60-40 and trust the American people to do the rest. Instead, though, we get 87-13 or, in Lake’s case, 100-0. So we’ll keep hammering away.