Depends on the media. Fox News sometimes will report a Republican’s scandal but show a (D) after his name.
Cite the “lying about his Vietnam record” too, if you please.
As I recall, the people lying about his record have become a bit of a joke. Kerry was a decorated war hero. “Swift Boating” has become a rather ugly term.
No, that was the Swiftvets, who lied about Kerry’s Vietnam experience, as you know.
Is that all you’ve got? He’s got a faded bumper sticker on his pickup-try to top that!
Actually IIRC the ratings weren’t all that good; the media just wanted to bash Clinton and so force fed the public a “scandal” most of it wasn’t all that interested in.
IIRC, that’s completely wrong.
“The media” doesn’t purposely lose money in order to “bash” a president.
The media tends to ignore Dem scandals until they can be ignored no longer. The opposite is true for Pub scandals…reporting will start the minute there is a whiff of scandal (remember John McCain’s implied affair?). Also, when there is a scandal involving a Pub the media attempts to hang it around the neck of the entire party (remember Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment and the Republican war on women?) while a scandal involving a Dem is considered a “personal failing” that in no way indicts the larger partly.
Media bias can be very subtle…like only reporting on morning shows but ignoring a story in the evening broadcast, really reporting on a Pub scandal from the first moment while dragging their feet on a Dem scandal, or treating the scandal as an isolated event for a Dem while attempting to tar the entire party in the case of a Pub.
Oh, yeah, there was that thing with that governor in Illinois selling some graft or something, what was his name again? Ron Blegonski? Big story that the media just buried.
Sure it does, if it fits their political agenda or personal dislikes. It’s composed of humans with feelings and agendas, not robots.
These types of anecdote wars aren’t particularly compelling.
My own sense is that, yes, most of the reporters for the big media outlets lean Democrat, but they generally don’t care if their scoop has an R or a D after their name. They want the scoop. This may not be as true about a media source like FoxNews, but they are still a bit player in the world of “The Media”.
And when a large segment of the American population gets its news from right-wing radio, I think the idea that “the media” treats Democrats less harshly is, to use a technical term, horse shit.
And I betcha on their talk shows, they moderate conservatives much more harshly while liberals have free rein to break any rule they like.
There you go, being reasonable again, John.
I don’t think that Fox is a ‘bit player’. They seem to be the major source of [del]propaganda[/del] news for much or most of the Republican Party.
I didn’t bother to find the most current numbers, but according to the List of most-listened-to radio programs, the conservative shows (top of the list, with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity) have about 42.25 million listeners, and the liberal shows (on NPR stations) have about 37.6 million listeners.
I listen to a lot of Public radio, and I detect little bias. I have heard them being called out by listeners when bias in either direction was detected. Also, the programs cover a range of interests, from Art to Science to Politics.
I do not listen to conservative radio, so I don’t know the range of topics they cover. What I have heard is a lot of Liberal-bashing and a notable lack of correction or apology when they are caught out.
Given that most radio listeners listen to conservative radio, I agree with your technical term.
Not even you believe that.
Yes, that’s why you’re hardly hearing anything about these Anthony Weiner and Bob Filner things. This use of “can be ignored no longer” is weasel wording.
Frankly, I can’t think of a great example, which is why I posed the question to the board. The difficulty is finding two situations that are sufficiently comparable to be deemed basically equivalent, which itself can be highly contentious.
For example, when I get into this with my father-in-law, he alleges that Benghazi is getting swept under the rug because Obama’s a Democrat, liberal media, etc. I reply, among other things, that there were 53 attacks on diplomatic targets under Bush and no one in the liberal media made a political football of any of them. He then says that the the two (well, the 54) are not comparable, because no one in the Bush administration tried to cover up the nature of those attacks or flagrantly declined to respond to them for fear of political repercussions at home. Putting aside that I think he’s ill-informed, as far as he’s concerned it’s not a valid comparison. Are there recent examples where two situations were uncontroversially similar, where we can clearly say one way or the other whether the Democrat got a pass while the Republican didn’t?
My two cents: depending on the context there may /sometimes/ be a bias toward IOKIADDI - for example, liberal politicians may get more leniency in sex scandals, partly because there’s less hypocrisy involved. But then, in some contexts, there’s probably an IOKIAWMDI rule: as much grief as Bill Clinton got over Monica Lewinsky, I cannot even contemplate the shit-storm of murderous rage that would be unleashed if Obama were ejaculating onto barely-legal white interns in the Oval Office. Likewise, if Obama belonged to a church that excluded white people until 1978 and had served his whole life as a leader in that church, he would have been disqualified from office; not so for Mitt Romney. In the context of draft-dodging, there may be some evidence of an IOKIARDI rule. The list could go on. The point is, I think that the media is sometimes arbitrary and uneven in its application of scrutiny, but it’s not clear there’s anything particularly systematic about giving a free pass to Democrats per se.
I thought George Will made a pretty good case in his column a few days ago when he wrote about the President sidestepping Congress and the Supreme Court thereby violating Constitutional Law in order to rewrite the ACA.
articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-14/opinions/41408610_1_affordable-care-act
That’s actually what got this whole discussion started. I don’t view that as a good example, chiefly because a reasoned, well-defined delay in enforcement falls well within the discretion of the executive; and secondarily, because George Will had nothing to say about Mitt Romney’s promise to grant a 50-state waiver from Obamacare on Day One of his administration, which serves only to argue against the existence of an IOKIADDI rule.
No, I don’t. I remember I remember Hillary’s “right wing conspiracy,” I remember Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch,” I remember Willie Horton, I remember John McCain’s “black” baby… but a John McCain affair? Just not ringing a bell.
As I recall, the Republican Party mostly abandoned Akin after the “legitimate rape” comment, with the exception of a few whacko birds (that’s a John McCain term – do you remember that?) like Richard Mourdock who endorsed Akin’s candidacy with his own sexist comments.
OTOH, there was the “forcible rape” controversy in which significant numbers of Republicans cosponsored a bill that made a distinction between “forcible rape” and… God knows what they were thinking, maybe “voluntary rape.” Perhaps that’s the news story you’re thinking of that was an embarrassment to more than one Republican candidate, since many Republicans supported that bill.
Examples of ignored Dem scandals?
I disagree with your post in general, but I am willing to keep an open mind. For example, Todd Akin’s comments were really about Todd Akin, not about the Republican party. The Tea Party folks who did not say dumb things about rape did fine. Still, I see little difference between claiming Democrats are gun grabbing treasonous socialists that want to raise your taxes and claiming Republicans are fundamentalist misogynists that want to legislate who you can marry and what you can do in your bedroom. Both parties try to create a caricature of their opponents to run against, and sometime those opponents help in you in this regard as they did with Akin, Mourdock, and Rivard. Finally, the whole war on women thing was never about Akin or Mourdock, it was about the huge number of anti-abortion laws that are being passed nationwide and the attempts to defund planned parenthood. Trying to conflate the two is pretty much bullshit.
Still, let’s talk about Dem’s peccadilloes being considered a “personal failing” while Republicans don’t get the same treatment. Do you mean like disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner (D) (sexting)? Disgraced Governor Mark Sanford (D) (adultery)? Disgraced presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (D) (multiple acts of infidelity!)? Disgraced Senator David Vitter (D) (Prostitution)?
Oh wait, it just occured to me that Sanford, Gingrich, and Vitter are Republicans that were forgiven for their various sex scandals while it remains to be seen if Weiner, the only Democrat, will be. We could talk about Edwards (D- the scumbag) and other politicians of either stripe that never made a comeback, but I think you are full of shit when you say Democrats are given a free pass and Republicans are not. Let’s get some examples, surely you have some.