The Big Loser In This Election: The Big Media
AccessNorthGA.com  | 11/3/04 | Gordon Sawyer
 

I think it is fair to say the biggest loser in this election has been America's mainstream media ... the BIG media ... the three old-line television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC ... newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post and down to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. We have come to expect them to have a liberal bias in their news columns as well as their editorial pages, but never before have we seen these so-called news sources so blatantly partisan as they have been this year.

The poster child of news bias this election cycle, of course, was Dan Rather and his "60 Minutes" episode in which he attacked the military record of President Bush, and used forged documents from a long-time discredited source as the basis for his story. When he got caught, he stood by his story, arrogantly insisting we should believe him because he was who he was. And when CBS finally admitted the story was untrue, they announced an investigation by so-called impartial people, but have you noticed: the election is over and we have not heard a report from either CBS or their investigators.

And the great, gray New York Times ... which prior to the election fired its editor and managing editor because of a scandal involving non-factual reporting ... continued its liberal bias, not only in its editorial pages but also on the news pages. Close to the end of the campaign CBS and the New York Times and others in the liberal media, accused the American military of not securing hundreds of tons of high explosives in Iraq even though the military people on the ground said it was not so.

There were other examples, many of them, but the obvious point is that all of these so-called news stories were heavily biased to the left. To be effective, the free press must have the respect of the American people. But in this year's campaign, America's elite media hit a new low in trust, and in so doing became the biggest loser in the 2004 elections.