Sunday, October 30, 2005

More Proof of Media Bias

Over at Newsbusters, they note:

As ABC, CBS, and NBC all dived into live coverage today to report the indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide Scooter Libby, this is not at all the way the networks covered indictments of cabinet officers in the Clinton years.

In September 1997, we reported in Media Watch that when former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was indicted on 39 counts, the networks aired a single evening news story. Three of the four networks -- ABC, CNN, and NBC -- underlined that the Smaltz inquiry had so far cost $9 million. None of them noted civil penalties originating from targets of Smaltz's inquiry amounted to more than $3.5 million. The next morning, CBS's morning show, called CBS This Morning, didn't even mention Espy's indictment. Months later, I noted in a Media Reality Check that on December 11, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros was indicted on 18 counts for misleading the FBI about payoffs to a mistress, Linda Medlar. NBC Nightly News filed one story; ABC's World News Tonight gave it 18 seconds. CBS Evening News didn't arrive on the story until the next night, and gave it nine seconds, a fraction of the two minutes Dan Rather gave the nightly El Nino update, about the weather "giving a gentle lift to the monarch butterfly." The morning shows were worse: NBC's Today passed on two anchor briefs, and ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning ignored it.

More recently, note the near non-coverage of Sandy Berger's felony and slap on the wrist. The MSM is no longer a news source, it is just an arm of the Democratic Party. We've all known that for a long time, but now more and more people are coming to realize it. It does my heart good to hear the reports of depressed readership of rags like the New York Times, and look at the ratings Drudge puts up regarding cable news ratings.

Along the same lines, Rush Limbaugh is whoopin' booty big time over the liberal talkers. The story is on Newsmax. No wonder the libs have their knickers in such a twist.