September 26, 2012

Making ‘Earthquakes’ for Romney

After watching the national media’s performance since the party conventions, one can only hope that journalism students are out on summer safari or some Third World Peace Corps mission. Anything to avoid this mess of a profession. Sean Hannity is right. The establishment news media are dead. Whatever remains has only one standard. If it helps Obama, it’s “news.” If it doesn’t, reporters should move on; there’s nothing worth covering. Our media don’t just report “news” unfavorable to Romney. They obsess over it, complete with repetitive and thoroughly unnecessary incantations that Romney’s campaign is hopeless. On September 17, perhaps not accidentally after Team Obama started to struggle over their handling of the outrageous and deadly attack on the American consulate in Libya, the hard-left Mother Jones magazine leaked a secret tape of Romney talking to donors.

After watching the national media’s performance since the party conventions, one can only hope that journalism students are out on summer safari or some Third World Peace Corps mission. Anything to avoid this mess of a profession. Sean Hannity is right. The establishment news media are dead. Whatever remains has only one standard. If it helps Obama, it’s “news.” If it doesn’t, reporters should move on; there’s nothing worth covering.

Our media don’t just report “news” unfavorable to Romney. They obsess over it, complete with repetitive and thoroughly unnecessary incantations that Romney’s campaign is hopeless. On September 17, perhaps not accidentally after Team Obama started to struggle over their handling of the outrageous and deadly attack on the American consulate in Libya, the hard-left Mother Jones magazine leaked a secret tape of Romney talking to donors.

Kaboom.

But what did he say? He told them Obama can count on 47 percent of the voters who will vote for him no matter what, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” He added: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Impolitic? In a private campaign briefing with donors, no. Untrue? Again, no.

I will wager a million dollars that Barack Obama has told his major donors in private that strategically he is not concerned with the 47 percent of greedy right-wing rich Republican voters who will never vote for him. Impolitic? No. It’s the way politicians talk to donors in private. Untrue? They’d deny it.

The news media know this, which is why they ignore it. That’s why their assault on Romney is so disingenuous.

Four years ago, in April of 2008, Obama was caught by The Huffington Post telling donors in San Francisco that small town Americans are “bitter” people who “cling to their guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them.” This drew a few negative stories for a couple of days, but it quickly vanished from the media’s campaign narrative as Obama secured his party’s nomination.

This Romney tape was recorded in May, but the activists who recorded it obviously wanted to delay its release until the fall campaign. Once the radicals at Mother Jones posted it, on cue, the network carnival barkers erupted with the chants of “bombshell” and “earthquake” on a “seismic day” for the Republican campaign. A viewer might imagine the Earth would open up and swallow Romney whole.

On CBS, Bob Schieffer was handing out the shovels to dig a grave for Romney. “I just can’t think of anything that he could have said that could have hurt his cause more.” I can. Another million-dollar wager here. Before this one’s over there are going to be one, or two, or three or more “earthquake” moments for Romney. It could happen while he’s brushing his teeth if these reporters decide that constitutes a new “earthquake.”

There were 88 minutes of TV morning and evening news on this Romney tape on ABC, CBS, and NBC. The networks were right. There was an earthquake – of their own making.

In response, the Romney team directed the networks to a 1998 tape of Obama where he professed his love for redistributing other people’s money, solidifying the socialist world view Obama has so zealously denied. The networks gave this real bombshell six and a half minutes of attention.

That’s “fairness” to these TV people, a 13-to-1 advantage for Obama. So you say Obama’s comments were logged 14 years ago, and don’t constitute “news?” OK, then consider the coverage of Obama’s “Fast and Furious” scandal. On September 19, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a scathing report detailing the government’s incompetency that resulted in the death of an American border agent. The same networks that devoted 88 minutes to Romney talking about government dependents voting for Obama gave this scandal just six minutes and 40 seconds of airtime.

As usual on this scandal beat, CBS gave it most of the play, three minutes and 59 seconds. NBC allowed one minute and 44 seconds. ABC included a mere 61 seconds of anchor blather.

It must have been a joke over at ABC when morning anchor Amy Robach announced: “And now to the big story in Washington” as she gave it a grand total of 26 seconds. We know by now that to these “news” manufacturers, nothing can be a “big story” unless it makes Obama look good and helps him win a second term.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.