Media hostility toward Republicans

 Eric Utter:

Mainstream media bloviators have increasingly begun to state that Republicans do not deserve equal coverage alongside their Democrat counterparts.  These figures often falsely claim that Republicans seek to "end our democracy" and that they routinely traffic in falsehoods.  Ergo, there's no need to be fair and balanced.

For example, on a recent edition of MSNBC's The ReidOut, Joy Reid and her guest, political analyst Mathew Dowd (Bush-Cheney 2004 chief strategist turned Democrat), preposterously asserted that media outlets in general were too neutral in their reporting on the Republican Party and should instead ramp up the hostility.  Reid also urged reporters to "tell voters" that the GOP is a "threat" to freedom. 

Remarkably, Reid queried Dowd on how the media might "get out" of this ill advised "'both sides' trajectory."  Dowd replied that the media should start acting as if they were living in a society that isn't free — and treat Republicans accordingly.  Like state-run mouthpieces in Russia, China, and North Korea?  Great idea!

A week prior to the Reid-Dowd fiasco, CNN primetime host Don Lemon stated that journalists no longer live in a "Walter Cronkite society" and that he should therefore be able to "state [his] truth."

During a recent discussion with Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes (on her piece condemning "both-siderism"), CNN host Brian Stelter also questioned whether Republicans should be given the same coverage as Democrats.  He asked, "Is it that we're treating Democrats and Republicans equally and ignoring GOP radicalism?  Is that the heart of the problem?"  No, quite the opposite, Brian.  Hence your network's plummeting ratings.  By way of illustration, one Harvard study found that CNN's coverage of President Trump during his first 100 days in office was 93% negative versus just 7% positive.  The same study found that CBS's coverage was 91% negative and The New York Times' 87%.  By contrast, mainstream media outlets slobbered all over themselves in incessantly praising Barack Obama.  That is not treating Democrats and Republicans too "equally."  And that cannot be good for our representative republic.

And, last March, NBC News anchor Lester Holt actually said, "I think it's become clear that fairness is overrated[.] ... [T]he idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in."  It certainly doesn't, Lester.  Why give your news audience both sides of the story when you can just tell them what the "truth" is?

This acknowledgment — and encouragement — of the end of an objective "mainstream" media/free and fair press is unprecedented and surreal, at least in the modern era.

...

Joy Reid may be the most radical member of the media with a national platform.  Lester Holt used to pretend to be objective.  But I think what is happening is the leftist in the media sense that the left is losing and they think being fair to the right is a problem.  What their real problem is that most Americans are tuning out the leftist and looking for alternative news, thus Fox News is now the most popular.