By Jim Whitt
President Obama’s second inaugural address was proclaimed to be Lincolnesque by many of the main stream media. He talked about climate change, gay rights, anti-discrimination, equal pay for women, immigration, gun control, foreign policy, partisan gridlock and income equality while barely touching on the most critical issue of our day — the economy. Imagine Lincoln mentioning the civil war in passing during his second inaugural address while the fate of the union was hanging in the balance.
A logical response from the media would be to say the president was out of touch, in denial or possibly even delusional. But this president always gets a pass. Bengahzi, Fast and Furious, Guantanamo, Arab Spring, drone strikes on U.S. citizens, record unemployment, etc. — any of these issues under a Republican administration would be the makings of Pulitzer Prizes for an army of journalists.
Main stream journalists are quick to proclaim they have no bias. Why, Ted Koppel’s wife doesn’t even know how he votes. I’m reminded of when Larry King asked Paul Harvey in an interview years ago if he could really be objective while he endorsed his sponsor’s products in his own commercials. Rather than deny the thinly veiled accusation, Paul Harvey smiled and said, “Larry, no one is truly objective.”
None of us are truly objective. We’re all biased. In the closing seconds of the Super Bowl a commentator made a statement to this effect after what appeared to be a holding call: “At this point in the game they aren’t going to make that call.” He didn’t say there wasn’t a violation; he said the officials wouldn’t make that call. That’s bias. What makes a rule different in the first 30 seconds than it is the last 30 seconds? Choosing to make or ignore a call at any point of the game may have altered the outcome.
This is exactly what we’re witnessing with the main stream media. For example, they didn’t seem to think the administration’s actions in the Benghazi fiasco were worth questioning. Imagine how the main stream media would have howled if George Bush’s secretary of state would have pulled a Hillary Clinton in a hearing and shouted, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Fortunately, we have alternatives to the main stream media thanks to new technologies but the main stream media still dominate the blue dots that are peppered across an otherwise red election map. This is where the voters are beneficiaries of government largesse. And the mainstream media isn’t about to tell them the emperor has no clothes.
I believe those in the main stream media honestly believe they are unbiased. Why? They suffer from what is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. To explain this phenomenon I offer this from a piece by Laura Fitzpatrick in that bastion of unbiased reporting, TIME Magazine: “It was first widely recognized after the Swedish bank robbery that gave it its name. For six days in August 1973, thieves Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson held four Stockholm bank employees hostage at gunpoint in a vault. When the victims were released, their reaction shocked the world: they hugged and kissed their captors, declaring their loyalty even as the kidnappers were carted off to jail.”
To explain the rationale behind this theory I turn to a more trusted source, Wikipedia: “One commonly used hypothesis to explain the effect of Stockholm syndrome is based on Freudian theory. It suggests that the bonding is the individual’s response to trauma in becoming a victim. Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they no longer become a threat.”
The main stream media was captured by Obama in 2008. They didn’t put up a fight because they shared his values. Once their captor was elected, the media watchdogs that so ferociously attacked George Bush no longer needed to guard the American people. President Obama embodied everything utopian in the liberal handbook therefore he posed no threat. This president couldn’t be guilty of evils they gleefully attributed to his predecessor. Big Brother was a menace who needed to be put away under Bush. Big Brother is just another member of the family under Obama.
As Obama captives, the mainstream media’s worldview — in my biased opinion — looks like this:
• Closing Guantanamo isn’t important anymore, the Arab Spring was a good thing, the Muslim Brotherhood are just good old boys and Bengahzi was nothing more than a good riot gone bad.
• Providing Mexican drug lords with assault weapons to kill a border patrol agent isn’t newsworthy. Obama shoots skeet and has a picture to prove it, so why would he want to take guns away from law abiding citizens? Don’t worry about that drone overhead. Obama may have ordered the kill on Osama but he’d never put you in his crosshairs.
• The economy is great and we’re not going to count those millions who have stopped looking for work as unemployed. What’s the big deal about a $16 trillion national debt? The problem isn’t that we spend too much it’s that we tax too little. The rich need to pay their fair share to fund Obamacare and give even more to the poor. That increase you saw in your payroll taxes isn’t a real tax increase.
The main stream media are not biased, they’re just victims — they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. Nothing Obama does will ever cause them to question their captor. They express their unquestioned loyalty by idly standing by and saying nothing. No, they’re not going to make that call at this point in the game. It might change the outcome. No, it’s not rational — it’s a Freudian thing.