Jake Tapper: Gee, Maybe The Media Does Sort of Pounce on Republican Gaffes While Ignoring Obama's Gaffes

Say it's not so. He almost admits to ideological bias in the press before Dennis Miller, pursuing his own thought, cuts him off.

What's interesting here is that Jake Tapper of course at first insists that it's not ideological bias at play here, but anti-woman bias. That's why, you see, Palin's Paul Revere quote and Bachman's Founding Fathers one get endlessly chattered about, while there is a coordinated media blackout on Obama's Medal of Honor gaffe.

Similarly, Jon Stewart claimed the press was merely biased in favor of "laziness, conflict, and sensationalism" in poo-pooing Chris Wallace's assertion that is it liberally biased.

They always do this. They will eat razors before they admit to any liberal bias. They will confess to a hundred biases, even some they do not actually have, before they will admit to a liberal bias.

Let me give you an example I always give. If the Black Correspondent's Association (or whatever) claims the press has a subtle anti-black bias, the media will consider this and meet with that association and consider implementing reforms/safeguards to ensure against such bias continuing. They'll have a panel discussion on Nightline or Meet the Press to seriously consider this bias.

Same thing with anti-woman bias. Or anti-Muslim bias.

The press is perfectly willing to consider the possibilities it is biased in many ways, and take seriously such complaints.

Except for one, of course. The one bias they will not admit to having, ever, is a liberal ideological bias. (And note-- the biases they're willing to cop to tend to require them, to cure those biases, to adopt even more anti-conservative positions. Biased against women? Include more feminist voices. Biased against Muslims? Make sure the country knows about anti-Muslim "hate" in the form of racial profiling. Biased against blacks? Agitate for preferences, quotas and so on.)

Why? For two reasons:

1. That is the bias they are most flagrantly, obviously guilty of, and no one likes confessing to their real flaws. People will cop to lesser flaws and non-flaws all the time. But not their deep dark dirty laundry.

2. Because they absolutely despise conservatives. Because they hate conservatives so much that they view this entirely as political actors, and if conservatives "win" a little on this point (as a serious discussion about it would represent), then they lose.

The very fact that this is the One Sin They Will Not Confess proves the existence of the sin.

Tapper and Stewart will trot out a series of crimes to excuse media misconduct -- some crimes, in fact, the media isn't even very guilty of -- to avoid any sort of reckoning on the real crime they're guilty of.

posted by Ace at 07:08 PM

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