Bias Myopia

McBride wrote a column for the Waukesha Freeman on Saturday. In her column, she griped about what she perceived to be media bias in the case of former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. She complained about what she perceives to be unfair coverage, and compares the coverage on Spitzer to Mark Foley.

I agree with her. Half-way.

There is bias in the media. Media dominated by the likes of Sykes and Belling, and foisted upon us by TMJ and ClearChannel and Fox News.

In a previous post, a commenter named Boxer puts it aptly:

I think everyone should read the full GMT Today/Freeman column and count up how many different ways Jessica tries to have it in the column.

My personal favorite: "Foley's terrible personal choices were painted as a failure of the party to which he belongs." That's right, because that party's leadership knew of Foley's terrible proclivity for making "terrible personal choices", some of whom were underage, and yet did nothing to address the problem before it became public and the GOP was linked to the scandal.

She fails to distinguish party-linked scandals of Congress and the White House from Democrats and Republicans who had a personal scandal. For example, party affiliation had nothing to do with Jesse Jackson's extramarital affair--he happens to be a Democrat, but was not elected to office, so his affair is between him, his wife and the other woman. However, Larry Craig's solicitation for gay sex occurred while he was serving as a member of Congress, being paid by the taxpayers to represent the residents of Idaho, and presumably was only in the Mpls airport on his way to or from his Washington DC job. So yes, it was a Republican party-linked scandal. Why else would the Republican caucus have called for his resignation?

Neither of these 2 examples (Foley, Craig) explains the viciousness with which these 2 "I'm not gay" legislators went after gay people who only wanted to marry, adopt children or just "be out" without being harassed.

It's the hypocrisy, stupid.

March 17, 2008 4:42 PM

Boxer's comments also reminded me of another example of media bias:

So, yeah, McBride's correct in asserting there's a media bias. And it should give one shivers down the spine to think that she is the one teaching it.