Bias 101

I was just watching about five minutes of Erin Burnett's show on CNN (I guess I like self-immolation) and perhaps the most unintended line she uttered during the was the most revealing of not only her show but of how the media typical operates today.  She was interviewing a former deputy director of the FBI regarding a kidnapping case that was just resolved today, with the kidnapper being taken out by a SWAT team.  Luckily the child, who had been the assailant's hostage for almost a week, was rescued and is now at a local hospital for treatment.  Anyway, during the course of the interview, right after the former FBI deputy director described how the SWAT team set off a device the momentarily stunned the kidnapper and then rushed in to his bunker to incapacitate him and rescue the child, Burnett, incredulously wondered aloud why the team just didn't do this on the first day.  Why did it take seven days for this to occur?  The deputy director responded that because of many factors, i.e., the size of the bunker, the instability of the kidnapper, and the overarching goal to get everyone in a hostage situation out alive, the team did the best they could considering the circumstances.  Burnett then said in an aside that she guessed it wasn't as simple as she thought and quickly moved on to the next story.

It's amazing how most of the news is shaped and presented by people who generally have some of the most simplistic and cliched views on everything.  They purport to act as though they are the authorities, without letting the public in on this secret:  the public probably knows more then them on any given subject.  A great example of this is can be seen in the current gun control debate.  Steve Hayward has a great example of this over at Power Line:

We awoke Friday to the announcement that NBC News president Steve Capus was “resigning”(that is, fired), and the only wonder is that he wasn’t fired Thursday evening after the national broadcast. I made the mistake of taking in NBC’s national news broadcast Thursday evening, and it fell below even the usual low standards for network news bias and reportorial incompetence. 

NBC essentially handed off their lead story to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. You can watch the whole broadcast at this link if you are a glutton for punishment. Brian Williams leads with the Brady Campaign’s latest death-by-firearms figures, without qualifying how many were due to gang violence, and without any mention, or curiosity, about how many crimes were prevented in the same time period by law-abiding gun owners. (In the whole segment there was only one 10-second clip from an opponent of gun control.) I suppose NBC thinks that if gun control is enacted, all those gang bangers will obey the law and turn in their guns. Like they do in Chicago. Oops. 

Actually, NBC gets around to Chicago in its story, and champions the line that Chicago police are taking 200 officers out from behind their desks and putting them out on the street to combat gun violence. Did anyone think to ask Chicago what those 200 officers were doing “behind their desks” in the first place? No; instead, the story bemoans that outlying areas don’t have gun control and hence there’s a flow of guns into Chicago. So sure, let’s enact strict nationwide gun control to stop this “loophole,” and cut off the flow of guns from Mexico just as surely as we’ve stopped the flow of illegal drugs.

This is what happens when the media for all intents and purposes becomes just another arm of the Democratic party.