The Medias Bias is Showing

By Erick Erickson On Wednesday President Trump answered a sheriffs question about the MS-13 gang. The president referred to the gang members as animals. The American political press swung into action to declare President Trump had called all immigrants animals. It did not take a rocket scientist to read the transcript to see the president was in context talking about MS-13. But the default for the media has always been to give Democrats the benefit of the doubt and presume Republicans are guilty until proven innocent. Before that a leaker in the White House noted a White House staffer named Kelly Sadler had dismissed concerns about John McCain by noting he would be dead soon and was not going back to the Senate to vote against CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel. The media dragged this story out. A charitable reading of Sadlers comments would be that she was stating an obvious blunt truth. John McCain is dying and will not be in the Senate to oppose Haspel. The remarks were unfortunate but Sadler works for a man who criticized McCain for getting captured in Vietnam. Sadlers comments should not have been a multi-day scandal. What should have been a story for several days was that a White House staffer leaked to the press yet again to undermine a colleague. When Sarah Sanders complained that the real issue was the leaks members of the media pounced. How dare Sanders say leaking was the story. The real story was about McCain and these reporters claimed Sanders is just trying to distract from the disrespect. Sanders however was right. When Barack Obama broke with nearly a half-century of American foreign policy and congressional legislative precedent to set up an embassy in Cuba the American press called it historic. There were protests. There were loud objections from Cuban Americans and both Republican and Democratic politicians. But historic it was. The American media had as Rush Limbaugh might call it a mediagasm covering the opening of the embassy in Cuba. When Donald Trump finally did what Presidents going back to George H. W. Bush had pledged to do and what a congressional resolution had called for doing i.e. move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem the press gave wall to wall coverage to protests and referred to the move as controversial. The coverage stood in stark contrast to the medias hagiographic coverage of Obama and Cuba. As Hamas terrorists tried to get into Israel from Gaza the American press could not be bothered to point out residents of the West Bank were not trying to storm into Israel. There were no riots of protest in the so-called Arab streets in Egypt Jordan Iraq or Lebanon. Gaza was the only area to see violence. The press blamed both Israel and Donald Trump. Hamas officials members of an actual terrorist group went on record to note that of the roughly 50 people killed by the Israelis all but one or two were members of the terrorist group. The media claimed the protests were peaceful even as pictures came out from Gaza showing the protestors with weapons. One resident of Gaza told NPR the protestors had painted swastikas on flags because they wanted Jews to burn. But you would be hard-pressed to find mainstream American media coverage that showed how violent and extreme the terrorists in Gaza are. The American media has always reliably blamed the Jews. Now they blame Trump too. A news publication in Washington last week noted that a pro-Trump media alternative is growing. Is it any wonder? The media presumes Trump supporters only want propaganda. But that is just not true for most. They just want a fair hearing. They do not want a media that claims to be fair or objective while hiring Democrats and leftists as reporters. They are tired of a mainstream media that drips with contempt for conservative values and has no understanding of religion. Trump supporters are fleeing the media not because they want cheerleaders but because they are tired of a secular coastal liberal press that not only cannot relate to heartland voters but thinks it is beneath them to even try.