CNN
November 27, 2002

[ Who is responsible for the following? News media with a liberal bias, or news media with a conservative bias ]

Josh Cowan did a Lexus Nexus search [ far more thorough than Google, Yahoo. or MSN ], comparing the mainstream news media's coverage of Bush and Gore on a variety of issues during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Stories about Al Gore

• 704 stories in the campaign about this flap of Gore inventing the Internet. The fable has since been discredited - he never claimed such a thing, and no one could pin down actual, verifiable evidence that he did say so.
  
  
• Over 1,000 stories -- Nexus stopped at 1,000 -- about Gore and the Buddhist temple. This was a non-story that turned out to be wildly exaggerated and again, proven untrue. Besides, who really cares, anyway? It had no bearing on his integrity or his qualifications as a leader.
  
  
• 347 articles about Al Gore wearing earth tones. Somehow it became news-worthy to report on his clothing, as if that had, as above, bearing on his integrity or his qualifications as a leader.

News reports about Bush and Cheney

• 13 stories about Bush failing to show up for his National Guard duty for his last year of service. There were dozens of official documents and sworn witnesses who confirmed the story. The only chink in the armor was one document whose authenticity could be neither proven nor disproven. All of the other evidence was solid - George W. Bush did not take a required physical pilot's examination; subsequently he simply did not show up for duty.
  
  
• 12 articles about Bush being accused of insider trading at Harken Energy. No one in the "liberal news media" bothered to take the evidence and run with it.
  
  
• 10 stories about the fact that Dick Cheney did business with Iran and Iraq and Libya. And that's a fact, Jack! A vice-presidential candidate violated several laws regarding dealing with the enemy - countries he asserts are sponsors of terrorism - and the "liberal news media ignored the story."
  
  
• 0 - zip - nada - zed - no stories about either man's wardrobe.
  

In the case of those Bush and Cheney stories, they DID bear on integrity. In fact, at the heart of each were questions about whether or not those men had committed crimes.

The lies about Al Gore ALWAYS started with a misquote or something taken out of context. The "liberal news media picked up the story because it sounded juicy; rarely did any "reporter" actually investigate any of the allegations. Then the right-wing smear machine kept the false story alive, and the "so-called liberal" news media continued to repeat the lies.

If the news media actually had a "liberal" bias, all of the above stories about Gore would have been buried, and the stories about Bush and Cheney would have been highlighted constantly. The opposite happened. Clearly the news media's bias leans heavily to the right.

Labels: al gore, bias, buddhist temple, bush, cheney, conservative, discover love canal, harken, invent the internet, liberal media, national guard, news, right-wing, smear, wardrobe