Debunking the b.s. lie about our media

I really don't know what happened to Lou Dobbs, but he's become the biggest braying jackass on a once great network. To hear Dobbs, the most notorious walking, talking xenophobe on a network not named Faux Noise Channel say that the media is largely "liberal" is a joke of the highest order (this footage is from a week or so ago). It's also worth noting that Dobbs has a partisan history going back to his earliest days at CNN, where he hosted Moneyline, later leaving the network after refusing to interrupt his precious show to air a speech delivered by President Clinton at Colombine just days after the shootings.

Anyway, what's been most evident since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate is the Republicans' return to their dog-eared playbook of Richard Nixon, which on page one says, "Slam the media for being overly liberal whenever there is news that's unfavorable to us."

And it's been parroted by every single Republican ever since when unflattering or bad news (much less a scandal) has befallen someone with an "R" behind his or her name.

I was listening to Thom Hartmann the other day, and he brought up an excellent point about Sun Tzu's centuries-old famous tome, The Art of War. The world-famous work deals with the art of military strategies and warfare. As Hartmann mentioned, in it Tzu reasons that a principle tactic of warfare is to present your biggest strength as your biggest weakness to your enemies, and that's precisely what modern-day Republicans are doing with our mainstream media - decrying the presence of a phantom "lib-rul media" whenever there is unfavorable coverage of their party or their candidates. Not only is the presence of a "liberal media" a fallacy, but it's unarguably on of the GOP's largest strengths.

To wit, there are over 1,000 radio stations in the United States that offer predominately conservative programming. How many liberal/progressive stations are there? Less than 100; and according to Hartmann, there are 70-80 He should know, since he's arguably the premiere liberal radio voice in the United States, and he has had a very difficult time getting on terrestrial radio stations in some leading media markets primarily because there are no stations to get on. The tide is starting to turn ever so slightly, but it largely favors hate conservative radio.

Some other interesting facts:

• Every major television network in the United States is owned by a multinational corporation - CBS, NBC, Fox Network, ABC, CNN, Fox Noise Channel, Clear Channel Radio, Comcast, and on and on. These giant corporations could hardly be considered Democratic (large D) leaning companies.

• One of the most visited Websites on the Internet, and the most visited political Website is The Drudge Report. According to his Website, here are the stats from the last year: "27,151,658 IN PAST 24 HOURS, 723,014,663 IN PAST 31 DAYS & 6,455,462,513 IN PAST YEAR." (And no, I'm not linking to Drudge's GOP tip sheet Website.)

• Faux News Channel is the most watched news channel in the United States, by far, whether on cable or on regular TV.

• The top three most listened to radio talk show hosts in the United States are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael "Savage" Wiener, in that order - hatemongers all, and most importantly, purveyors of GOP talking points, and often, lies and hate messages of their own.

• As far as newspapers go, there are plenty of them out there of all stripes, but the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall St. Journal has the second highest circulation in the United States, just behind USA Today; the WSJ's circulation is just over two million per day.

Some other newspapers...

#1 - USA Today - owned and operated by Gannett.

#2 - Wall St. Journal - see above.

#3 - The New York Times - owned and operated by the Sulzberger family - liberals by anyone's definition.

#4 - The LA Times - corporate owned and operated.

#5 - The Washington Post - also a liberal paper.

#6 - The New York Daily News, owned and published by Mort Zuckerman, whose conservatism is well known.

#7 - Chicago Tribune - a traditionally conservative paper operated by the Tribune Company.

#8 - The New York Post - a Rupert Murdoch rag - what is understood, needn't be discussed.

#9 - Long Island Newsday - is about to be purchased by Cablevision. Hmm, a newspaper that's going to be owned by a cable company. Just wondering where those loyalties lie?

#10 - Houston Chronicle - owned by The Hearst Corporation, a huge media conglomerate, and it's no mystery where that company's loyalties lie.

Other highlights...

#11 - San Francisco Chronicle owned by Hearst.

#12 - New York Newsday - See #9.

#20 - The Philadelphia Inquirer is now controlled and effectively owned by the insipid Brian Tierney, the CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings. He is a well-known conservative "commentator" and also a failed GOP campaign manager. This same company also owns the only other major Philadelphia daily newspaper, the Philadelphia Daily News.

As you can see, it's quite obvious that you can find liberal and conservative media outlets if you look hard enough, but with the exception of newspapers (where it's relatively balanced, but a medium that's rapidly declining in circulation and reach), our media is anything but "lib-rul," despite what Repubes would have all of us believe.

As I've mentioned, Republicans just slam the media the minute some bad news hits - we are seeing it on an almost hourly basis with McCain, and especially with Sarah Palin. Their strategy is simple - just cry "liberal media," and said media outlet(s) will quickly fold under the scrutiny. If history has proven one thing in the first decade of this century, it's that virtually all outlets in the media go soft the minute they are accused of being "liberal." And when that doesn't work, just spread lies - it never takes them long to go from a conservative pundit/commentator/columnist to the mainstream media; just in the past few days, examples abound of conservatives doing just that to try and steer press coverage toward McCain.

The truth is, it's the media's duty to scrutinize all candidates, no matter what party they are from, including independents.

Romney's Today comments high comedy

I saw Mitt Romney on the Today show on Friday, and I was pretty surprised at the ineptitude of his appearance. First, it's a GOP talking point (that of course Lauer let Romney get away with saying) that Obama "determined his policies in Afghanistan and Iraq before going there." In essence, yes, but John McCain has done the same thing regarding Afghanistan, as Media Matters has thoroughly documented. But, that inconvenient fact hasn't stopped people like Romney, Rudy Giuliani (remember him?) and McCain himself from repeating, over and over, how Obama shouldn't have laid out much of his Iraq policy before going there.

Quite frankly, it doesn't take a trip to Iraq to determine that we need to withdraw from the country as soon as humanly possible. What's more, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has in most ways endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw in 16 months upon taking office. If Obama is elected, of course that plan could always change, depending on developments on the ground, but it sure beats McCain's plan of staying in Iraq for up to 100 years through his first term, oh, I don't know what his position is this week.

Anyway, more on Obama's Iraq and Afghanistan plans in a minute.

What I found really telling in this interview is when Lauer asked Romney about McCain and the differences the two had in January. Romney just laughed and shrugged it off, and Lauer let him get away with it.

Is it just me, or is the media making considerably less of a big deal about McCain's differences with his former opponents like Romney, Giuliani and Mike Huckabee who all now support him than it's making about Barack Obama's differences with Hillary Clinton? The differences in media coverage are stark, and telling.

I do get tired of hearing the same old trite media bias debate over and over and over, but the more I see in the mass media, the more I'm convinced that our corporate media is going to pull out the stop to try and cause a John McCain victory in November.

Oh, and about the coverage of Obama stating his Iraqi plan before going there? Again, McCain has done the same thing, but not according to our corporate media. From Lou Dobbs, late last week:

Above is video of John McCain during an appearance in New Mexico last week, openly mocking Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, McCain's hypocrisy knows no bounds - as mentioned above, he's done the same thing regarding Afghanistan, a country he hasn't visited since 2006, yet he's laying out all sort of proposals for "victory" in that country.

(Quick aside: It's painfully obvious that our political leaders learned nothing from our national tragedy in Vietnam and from the Soviet Union's disaster in Afghanistan that our presidential candidates (McCain, mostly) are talking about victory in either country. It's just plain preposterous.)

One other quick note, however. I laughed quite hard when McCain said in the video above, "I know how to win wars." Um, exactly when have you won a war, Senator? We certainly didn't win in Vietnam, an experience that I'm certain he didn't enjoy (but never misses an opportunity to remind us about). What annoys me even more than McCain saying "he knows how to win wars" is that the media lets him get away with such "straight talk."

Way to hold 'em accountable, Lou Dobbs - I would expect nothing more.

As for the Faux News channel's coverage of Barack Obama at the end of the clip above, I'd also expect nothing more. (Soon Brit Hume will be gone, what a sad day that'll be.) I'd love for FNC to devote its highly powered flip-flop microscope to McCain's record, but I know it'll never happen. That's okay, liberal bloggers are only too happy to highlight McCain's multiple positions on a multitude of issues. With BIG assists from both Crooks & Liars and Keith Olbermann, I blogged about McCain's many issue changes earlier this month - take a look.

Lou Dobbs gets cotton mouth

Here at CMB, I try to not focus so much on the trivial, nonsensical stuff, but every once in a while, something funny comes along in our political world that's simply too good to not at least comment on.

Take a look at this footage as Lou Dobbs banters with Wolf Blitzer about race in this country when Sigmund Freud pays his mouth a visit. Too funny ~ "Cotton Piiiiii... Arrrgggh!" What was that, Lou?

Something else I've noticed about CNN lately (when I rarely watch it these days) - the American flag is seemingly everywhere. In this clip, it's all over the background, with of course the requisite lapel pins, etc. CNN tries to become more and more like Fox News every day, no doubt so it can recapture the lost glory it held long ago of being the number one cable news network.

Lou Hannity loses his cool over immigration

Lou Dobbs, a guy I used to respect a great deal, seems to be a little past his prime these days.

On a recent show, he was discussing the immigration problem with several guests, including Air America's Laura Flanders. When she has the temerity to bring up the use of the term "illegal aliens," Dobbs blows his stack.

I think Flanders makes a pretty important point here. Not all of the people at these protests are "illegal aliens," and it's patently unfair to paint them that way.

From the transcript:

DOBBS: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, Joe. Laura Flanders, let's talk about Mitt Romney at ...

LAURA FLANDERS, AIR AMERICA: I wanted to come back for a minute to the L.A. story, the last two stories. I think if Dr. King were alive today, he would be talking about what happened on L.A. on May 1st. When you talk about abuse, 240 rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas.

We've gone from legal punishment of illegal aliens to physical punishment, and it's not helped by language like yours, Lou, talking about these [marchers] as being illegal aliens...

DOBBS: Laura, Laura, Laura, that's ridiculous.

FLANDERS: They're not aliens, they're people. And the vast majority of people at these marches are utterly legal. They're not aliens, Lou. They're people, and you're dehumanizing them with that language.

DOBBS: And you're absurd to suggest such a thing.

FLANDERS: I don't think so.

DOBBS: You're being absolutely absurd.

Dave Neiwart has written an excellent and thought-provoking piece on the Dobbs dust-up.

I immediately thought of Sean Hannity when watching this clip - Dobbs behaves just like him (or BOR) by shouting over Flanders. It seems that CNN is leaning further and further right, by the hour. Dobbs' faux Fox grandstanding, as well as the ridiculous and absurd Glenn Beck are merely the latest examples. As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Hat tip to C&L for the story