The Weekly Standard: Republicans Should Be Condemning Sinclair Media and Its "Deeply Unserious" Claim that the Biased Leftwing Media is Leftwing and Biased

The cucks continue padding their Clip Reels for their job applications to work in the leftwing media.

Stuff about Amazon omitted. That's a different question and requires a different response.

For now, let's just focus on the claim that the leftwing media is not itself very biased, and therefore Republicans are charged with decrying the bias of Sinclair media. Or, at least, not decrying the bias of the leftist media.

Editorial: What If Trump Were Obama, and Sinclair Were CNN? The right response for the wrong reason.

6:40 AM, APR 04, 2018 | By THE EDITORS

Republicans have been awfully quiet over the last few days, and they probably should have been. The question is why they were so quiet.

...

And what about the controversy over Sinclair Broadcasting? The Maryland-based media company, which owns 193 local television stations in more than 100 media markets, is reported to have required news anchors at Sinclair-owned stations to read scripts about the dangers of "fake news" (meaning left-liberal biased news) on news broadcasts. Not only that. Sinclair headquarters regularly sends its stations news segments of a politically right-leaning nature with instructions that the stations are required to run them (they're labeled "must-run").

Is this a breach of basic journalistic integrity? Is the requirement that news anchors read vaguely pro-administration boilerplate an instance of state propaganda? The answers aren't obvious. Sinclair is a private company, not a government agency, and its executives can run its newsrooms how they wish....

Suspicions about Sinclair's rightward bias were confirmed when David Smith, the company's chairman, wrote in an email to New York magazine that "the print media is so left wing as to be meaningless dribble [sic] which accounts for why the industry is and will fade away." We have our complaints about the unacknowledged dominance of left-liberal political opinions in many parts of America's news media, although Smith's remark that mainstream print media are "meaningless dribble"--together with his comment that there is a "complete lack of integrity" in print-media newsrooms--strikes us as a deeply unserious appraisal.

Let me translate: Our billionaire owner might not keep us on the make-work payroll forever. Please hire us, Atlantic! We're not like those other conservatives! We like and trust you and think you do a really good job and would like to be just like you!

[W]e wince to imagine the response among lots of famous right-wingers in the media and in Congress if the same were revealed on the other side of the media's ideological divide. If, say, MSNBC were discovered to require its anchors to recite vaguely anti-administration talking points, or if Jeff Zucker, say, were overheard grousing about the "complete lack of integrity" among conservative journalists, all hell would break loose at Fox News.

What about if, hypothetically, CNN's "media analyst" Brian "Tater" Stelter acted as a corporate propagandist absolving CNN of all the journalistic sins he actually bothered to cover, and ignored most of the charges against the network entirely?

What if CNN ran an advertising campaign similar to Sinclair's?

There would be no allowance for ambiguity and context and the distinction between private companies and public entities; it would be a scandal about mandatory agitprop and radical left-wing media bias.

We're glad Republicans aren't saying a lot of stupid things about Amazon and Sinclair. We only wish it were for the right reason.

In other words, we're glad they're not saying Sinclair is biased, because it's silly to claim the leftwing media is biased, and no one who has integrity should do either.

Guys, I know you're not quite done bilking Conservative, Inc. out of the last bits of money they're willing to set on fire to fund your cush no-influence-no-results sinecures, and I know you're still busy fighting The Only Struggle That Really Matters to the Conservative Commetariat Class -- whether formerly right-wing writers like Kevin Williamson should be permitted to write for leftwing magazines, as you hope to do in the next few quarters -- but it's time for you to leave the stage like Hillary Clinton, who you all hoped would be president, and dedicate yourself to selling Cruise Cabins at steep discounts full-time.

The liberal former Republicans understand that their time being paid for zero results to advance any cause other than their own is coming to an end. Just as Kevin Williamson debuts at The Atlantic by ingratiating himself to his new liberal confreres, declaring Victor Davis Hanson to be the Real Enemy, so too must the cucks begin pre-ingratiating themselves with their would-be future employers.

That begins by flattering their future employers and coworkers on the grounds they most desire to be flattered, and demand to be flattered: that they are not biased, and do not cook stories to favor the liberal wing of the Democrat Party, and are all-around righteous, honest, scrupulous hard-working Heroes.

This is the one matter upon which you may not disagree with the leftist media on, if you hope to secure their goodwill or even tolerance one day.

And we see now the Weekly Standard working overtime to secure that goodwill. Their Exit Strategies demand that they be able to leave one well-paid, little-work sinecure for another, and if that requires mounting vigorous defenses of the leftist media -- well, small price to pay for advancing one's career.

By the way, Kevin: I know you probably thought it sounded pretty intellectual to write etatism (accent omitted, as it would blow the formatting) and throw it in quotes as if it's a French word, but in fact it's an English word, a bastardized loanword from the French, and hence does not need the accent and does not need to be italicized. French words do not end in "-ism;" they end in -isme.

You could put etatisme in italics, as that's a French word (and add the accent aigu), or you can write etatism, no accent and no italics, as the latter is an English word.

Or you could have just used the more common English word "statism."

But you can't write the English word "etatism" and then pretend it's French.

But I hope this Appeal to Cosmopolitanisme, even if it was a bit of a faux pas, endeared you to your new liberal amis.

Coming next: Williamson tries his hand with "cooperation," with an umlaut over the second "o," the way the New Yorker writes it. Because he's writing for a Smarter Audience now.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:30 PM

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