What are some examples of the liberal drive by media?

Question

This is a serious question. I hear Rush Limbaugh speak of the atrocities of the drive by media every day that I listen to him, yet, when I open a paper or turn on the TV, the news (to me), seems to have a conservative twist. ie, Fox News. So what is it?

Answer 1

CNN:
Reporting on PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES and plastering the faces of ALL democratic candidates behind the reporters desk and not showing any republican candidates.

Airing 45 minutes of repetitive BS on what Congress is doing (nothing) and reporting on what the President has done (for the day) and have half a dozen journalist wannabe's state their opinions and babble on what the President actually said or did... Loading their banter with slurred comments and accusations by undermining even the most simplistic topics or issues.

Generally they do this by showing clips of highly educated people like Rosie O'Donnell sounding off in whatever manner she can by hollering/shouting/spewing how obnoxious the Bush Administration is and saying it as if shes just stepped out of a gutter somewhere.

Answer 2

Than you have a fairly liberal world view. It isn't so much that they are trying to be liberal, it is that reporters are generally liberal, 89% voted for Kerry in the 2004 election, and the same percentages of their political donations go that way to. This almost has to cloud their judgement a little bit when reporting on stories.

A good example is Dan Rather and his phony documents during the 2004 campaign. When bloggers came out and showed how they were fake, the other big TV anchors and newspapers came out and, at first, attacked the bloggers. The New York Times ran an article later titled "Fake, but Accurate". They spent days trying to prove Rather right, before admitting that those documents were fake, and the story was too. Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, however, were attacked from day one as a right wing hatchet group.

Another example is the economy. The majority of people polled feel that the economy is terrible right now. That is because of the spin the media puts on things. We have some of the lowest unemployment figures in decades, even after the latest turndowns, the market is higher than it has ever been, but still, people think the economy sucks. That is because the media covers the good news poorly, and the bad news hugely. For example, a few months ago, I was driving home from work and heard about how the stock market had dropped 80 points, and this was a sign of a poor economy, and it was going to get worse, and blah, blah, blah. It was a 2 minute long segment, which on the radio is huge. The next day, the same announcer, in a 5 second clip said, the market hit a record high today in medium trading. That was it, as though the day before he hadn't practically hadn't been talking about the next Great Depression being upon us.

Another sign of bias is Iraq. I was there before, and I still have many friends who e-mail and write me, and my wife is there now, and I get e-mails and calls from her. They ALL say the same thing. Attacks are down, Iraqis are starting to work with them more, things are looking better and better. Even my friend who is a raging liberal, and hates the war, and George Bush, but is working over there now as a contractor (she speaks arabic, and wasn't going to turn down $175,000, tax free, over a simple thing like disliking Bush and the war) says that things are looking up over there. But somehow, you hardly ever hear from these people. July had the lowest death toll in over a year, but that fact was barely mentioned, unlike when the media practically gloats over days and months with high casulaties. I trust my friends on the ground more than I trust reporters.

Then there are the way titles are used. For example, it isn't Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, it is Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion. When there are debates on the news, the guests are often classified as conservative, but not as liberal. You might see a debate between say, someone from the Heratige Foundation, and a spokesman from say, The Economic Policy Institute, which is admittedly liberal. The Heritage Foundation will be labeled as "the conservative think tank", while The Economic Policy Institute is just that, not labeled "the liberal think tank". Small things like that can change perception.

Answer 3

Keith Olberman, Lou Dobbs, Dan Rather (I know he retired), Brian Williams. All have done hatchet jobs on the republicans, but won't do investigative reports on dems accused of wrong doing (Diane Feinstein, Harry Reid, John Murtha). BTW, haven't heard too much from Murtha about the Haditha investigations being dropped. Will he appologize for calling the US troops murderers? Haven't seen or heard CNN, MSNBC, or any of the "mainstream media" say much about it either.
My point is, there is corruption in both parties, yet the media has a feeding frenzy about republicans being investigated, but don't report much when democrats are being investigated.
Everyone talks about Rush Limbaugh, but no one says anything about the LA Times reporter who first used the "Magic *****" term to describe Barak Obama. They just decry the fact that Limbaugh picked up on it and had someone make a song about it. He picked up on what someone else said, even giving the Times reporter credit for it, however, the "mainstream media" reports it like Limbaugh made the original statement.
Dan Rather tried to effect the outcome of a presidential election by using forged documents to try to create a scandle.
George Bush could turn water into wine and Keith Olberman would report it as "Bush is still an alcoholic", or "Rebublicans are trying to contaminate the drinking water".
I'm not saying all media is biased to the left, but there is no denying that there is alot of left leaning in the media, Just as FOX occasionally leans to the Right. Most mainstream reporters are against the war in Iraq, and subsiquently that's how stories get reported in an anti war slant.

Answer 4

Most of the answers, and the question itself, assumes that people are either liberal OR conservative when in fact most people are really both and that merger creates the moderate. Moderates are the overwhelming majority in the US and its shows each election as people elect the most centered candidate. To the Democrats great shame, Bush has been that moderate (not conservative candidate). Don't ever forget the millions of Dems had to vote for Bush TWICE to get him elected and we did that (I am a Dem). Conservative media is fairy rare and mostly just preaches to itself as the right wing is fairly small in this country. More liberals listen to Ann Coulter just for the excitement than do anyone else. Liberal bias in the media seems to be much more widespread and liberal bias in the movie industry is almost total. We see movies that are little more than propaganda. There is great irony there in that in the 50's a right wing Rep Senator from Wisconsin named McCarthy held hearings that rocked Hollywood with claims of communist influences in the movies. Stars, writers and producers were hauled before his committee and they either had to denounce communism or they were blacklisted by the industry leaders and they could not work. It was a dark day in US history when people were blacklisted for their political views. Fast forward to now and you will see that each performer, if he/she wants to work, must make it clear all of the time that they are liberals, make wild remarks or just say I hate Bush or they will not work in the movies. Each chance an entertainer has they have to try to appease the puppet masters and they say things that are supposed to convince everyone that its a foregone conclusion that everyone hates Bush. There are NO conservative movie actors, at least who feel free to say so, or they are blacklisted. Total circle, almost bizarro world turn. We have slogans that we are all supposed to acccept, that Bush lied about the WMDs except that Congress had a strong Dem majority and chaired the Senate Intelligence committee that sponsored that information. That is a fact, easily verifiable and yet never heard in the liberal media. That there was a Dem majority in Congress that took us to war is a fact not heard in the telling of the story of the war. The current Congress could have ended the war ten days after they regained the majority, they did not and continue to criticize the war, they started and they can stop but don't. You don't hear that. Focus on WMDs and the "lie" is the alibis of Dem politicians who want people to not look behind the curtain and see their own culpability in the war and yet people eat that up and chant and bark like dogs for them. Truth? The war was probably necessary in the beginning and officials, Dem and Repub, make the right call. However, it has descended into party, pre election politics with slogans, handshakes, funny hats and bowling shirts...and people fall for it and dance like monkeys for politicians. I want the war to end, I want the county to be safe and I haven't heard the solution yet. Thats liberal bias in the media. I am lifelong Dem, officeholder three times, but I am not stupid. It is the Dem Party that divides people, the Republicans don't have that much power.

Answer 5

I think newspaper journalism might be one of the easiest to compare... grab the New York Times and bump it up against the Washington Times. They're quite different in reporting.

Also, look at what media does or does not cover. Example: far less frequent will the media report a gun being used to protect or defend someone. Or compare what stories Fox has on their website vs. another source. They have limited amount of pages to fill, and will selectively choose to report (and not report) what they see fit to put those items in the nation's eye.

Can you imagine if every news outlet in America started raising public awareness of a plight in Africa (maybe Sudan)? Instead of hearing about insurgents killing Iraqi civilians in open air markets and getting us riled up against that, maybe Americans would start to develop a heart for those suffering in other places. Maybe then solutions would follow to those problems too.

Also, the editorialists (op-ed, etc) writers are going to say quite a bit about the bent of a newspaper. The NY Times today has an article asking "Will we elect another narcissist in chief?" The Washington Times has David Limbaugh (not Rush) poking holes in many of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls.

Dig enough and you'll seperate them pretty easily after a few reads...

Answer 6

Limbaugh uses the term "Drive-By Media" to describe most news outlets besides talk radio, including major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, as well as magazines and national television networks.

Previously, he used this description for them: "They are exactly like drive-by shooters, they pull up to a congested area, they spray a hail of bullets into the crowd. It causes mass hysteria, confusion, mistakes, and misinterpretation, sometimes people and their careers actually die, and then the Drive-By Media smirks and they ride away, unnoticed in the excitement. They're never blamed, they're never held accountable."

Answer 7

Funny thing is that people like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh ARE members of the media.

There is not liberal or conservative driving of the media. Some journalists are liberal. Some are conservative. Most of them are actually in the middle somewhere, just like the rest of America. It is all political b.s. designed to distract the people while our corrupt government makes a fortune off of idiots who actually listen to their trash talking.

Answer 8

To Rush Limbaugh, anyone who doesn't agree with his narrow-minded right-wing view gets called "drive-by media". It's a standard tactic to try to discredit all other sources in the hope that nobody will hear the other side, or even impartial facts, and get a balanced view. He's a propagandist, not a reporter, and his statements wouldn't hold up to any comparison against reality, so he wants to prevent his listeners from hearing any hard facts.

Answer 9

It is your watching Fox News, which is the only TV channel that gives the Republicans like you, the time of day. You listen to Limbaugh and Fox News, WHEW!!!!! I'm glad I'm not chained to chair with you around watching and listening to your news and dope head pill popping Limbaugh.

Answer 10

Not as much as Rush says but one example was when that Schorr (?) guy for the Los Angeles Times wrote an article a couple days before the California elections accusing Schwarzenegger of sexually harassing women.