The Balkanization of the country as a
whole is just fine, as evidenced by his lawless illegal immigration
policy, but the media have to be united. It’s clear that he does not
value a diversity of viewpoints. According to the president, “people
just watch what reinforces their deepest biases” and that’s a real
problem.
Liberals have always been able to watch what reinforces their deepest
biases. It’s called the network news. They can have their deepest
biases confirmed in print as well, in the New York Times, the Washington
Post, and nearly every other newspaper.
… I’m glad that President Obama opposes the so-called fairness doctrine
in radio and television which would mandate “equal time” to differing
points of view on controversial subjects. There is, however, some
evidence that his position is a sham like his previous opposition to
same-sex marriage. His FCC even proposed a pilot program to monitor
newsrooms for “balance.” They backed away from that one after
considerable outrage. In any case, the traditional leftist position on
the issue is supportive of the doctrine. Liberals just want to hear
“both sides” and all that stuff.
Have you ever met a liberal who really wanted to hear both sides of
an issue? I haven’t. There’s a reason they insist on campus speech
codes, criminalize policy differences, fire conservatives from their
jobs, and shout down opposing speakers. Surely it isn’t because they’re
worried that the other guy won’t be allowed to speak his piece. They
even complain that there’s
too much balance on stories about,
for example, global warming. Since November of 2013, the Los Angeles
Times has even had a policy that prohibits all letters to the editor
that dispute the theory of anthropogenic global warming. You can’t make
this stuff up!
What President Obama is really complaining about with his
“Balkanization” remark is that people are allowed to hear differing
viewpoints, though not in equal proportions, of course. FOX News may be
the behemoth of the cable news market, but its influence is a not an
equal counterweight to the combined forces of MSNBC, CNN, the networks,
and print media. What he really wants is total domination of the
narrative factory that influences so of much public opinion. The fact
that someone else gets to speak every once in a while, on one cable
channel, is intolerable.
… Their journalistic good old days peaked in 1974 when the legendary
Woodward and Bernstein duo took down a president named Richard Nixon. I
don’t blame the two Washington Post reporters because they uncovered
true malfeasance which precipitated a coverup, which in turn
precipitated abuses of
presidential power. They did their job in keeping politicians honest.
Yet it should not be ignored that previous presidents—FDR, JFK, and
LBJ—pulled similar shenanigans. Why couldn’t the Washington Post be
bothered to investigate those presidents? Because they were liberal
Democrats, of course. They got a pass. The fact that Carl Bernstein was
the son of card-carrying communist parents, and that he sought to weaken
a president who was trying to salvage a war that Bernstein didn’t want
America to win explains a lot too.
Forty years later there’s at least one network that will cover
similar abuses by a leftist president. I’m speaking of FOX News, of
course.
… The media in this country aren’t “Balkanized” enough. They’re still
absurdly biased to the Left, making no pretenses of covering issues such
as same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, abortion, or global warming
with any degree of even-handedness.
