Our Biased Media and the Election Process

Our Biased Media and the Election Process
By PraetorOne

“We can do The Innuendo
We can dance and sing
When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that Crap is King
Give us dirty laundry!”

From Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry.”

Did anyone catch the last debate between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama? I did and the whole thing struck me as a farce. Is there anyone out there who doubts that Hilary had been informed about the nature of the questions ahead of time? That may sound preposterous but let’s remember that one of the panel members was George Stephanopolis, a butt-sniffing political hack with long standing ties to the Clinton Administration. And while I may be pushing the envelope I don;t think there’s any doubt that Hilary was handled with kid gloves on while Obama was treated like a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. By any standard, Hilary was treated with kid gloves on while Barack was treated like shit.

Even more revealing was the body language. Both Hilary and the moderators betrayed the same degree of smugness. Indeed there were times when I wanted to slap the smirks off of all their faces. Whenever Hilary received a question she just stood there with a knowing, arrogant grin on her face. Whenever she answered a question the degree of smug arrogance reached a new peak. It was almost as if she didn’t even need to think about the answers because she had already been coached. In sharp contrast, Obama seemed attentive. He was concentrating and trying to give the best answers possible. Indeed, the only time Hilary looked nervous and worried was when Obama responded to one of the more difficult questions–possibly because these were the only moments when she wasn’t in full control or hadn’t been coached ahead of time. There’s a huge difference between sticking to your prepackaged responses and worrying about what your opponent is going to do or say off script.

Moreover our corporate, right wing media have behaved in a manner more appropriate to the village gossip than they have like reliable journalists. Reporting a story to inform the public is one thing. But throwing fuel on the fire to keep the issue burning is another. Sadly, our media are not interested in journalism. They are interested in turning a profit for the corporations which sign their pay checks, and if that means a given story or issue is rebroadcast so often that it devolves into propaganda for Republican politicians or for easy to beat Democrats the journalists will gladly deluge us with repetitive broadcasts of meaningless prattle until we have a have a strong right wing candidate running against a vulnerable left wing candidate. Granted, Obama and Clinton are engaged in a genuine competition, but during the last week the pro-Hilary bias in our media has become painfully obvious. Corporate media exists to turn a profit and the corporate owners see the Republican Party as the party that will help them in that endeavor. So naturally the corporate owners would prefer to see a strong Republican candidate running against a weak Democrat. Corporate America knows that Hilary Clinton has high negatives and that Americans view her as untrustworthy. Which explains in part why Fox News has begun to sing the praises of Mrs. Clinton while giving more and more negative coverage to Obama. The Right Wing media know that they stand a better chance with John McCain as their candidate of they can damage the opposition, so OF COURSE they’re going to fan the flames of competition between Obama and Clinton and hope that both Democrats weaken themselves.

And if Clinton wins the nomination, so much the better for corporate America.