Media Bias and The Democrats - The Sin of Omission

Sundry of Liberal friends and acquaintances have taken me to task for claims of Media Bias in favor of Democrats. "How does this Bias manifest itself?" they ask.

Over the years, I have observed in all its splendor the amazing number of different ways there are for The Media to lie, either to the advantage of Democrats or the disadvantage of Republicans. The techniques vary, but all of them - in one form or another - are lies. In fact, most of the techniques they use are standard Democrat Party propaganda, and all too frequently the Democrat propaganda is merely regurgitated whole to the Public.

For the sake of a narrative, I've given each technique a name. And since "technique" is such a morally ambiguous term, we shall call them what they rightly are: Sins. These Sins include Omission, Oblivity, Objectification, Repetition, Retroactivity, Diversion, Demonization, Extrapolation, Amplification, Miminalization, Capitalization, Marginalization, Nullification, Criminalization and Incontinence.

Taken together, these techniques represent not only the means by which The Media write the first draft of history, but subsequently rewrite history. It's important to remember that, for Democrats, nothing is so fluid as fact; nothing so malleable as perception; and nothing so adaptable as the Ethics that govern journalism. And since 90% of all Journalists are Democrats, it's important to understand that there is no distinction between the two.

So, let's break this down into bite size chunks. Here's the first example of Media Bias from the OffHisMeds school of Political Science:

OMISSION - Leave out critical details of a story or context that would foul the message. One of the most common methods of Media Bias, This one is used to both benefit Democrats as well as disadvantage Republicans.

Example: Barack Obama's "stimulus plan", to revive the economy, and to cost $750 billion dollars, would, in his words "create or preserve 2.5 million jobs". That was in November. Now, in December 2008, his stimulus plan will, according to Jackie Calmes of the New York Times "create 3 million jobs", albeit that in the same article the author states that the economy will likely lose 4 million jobs. And just like that, Obama is simultaneously credited with creating 3 million jobs whilst not being called to account for his original weasel-words about perhaps merely "preserving" 2.5 million jobs, much less that his policies - or lack thereof - will cause the loss of 4 million jobs. On down the line, Obama will be credited with creating 3 million jobs, whether he created even one job.

You've just got to know that the Media spin on this news if it had been a Republican president would be that there would be the "loss of 1 million jobs", assuming they'd even have given him (or her) the benefit of the doubt about creating 3 million jobs.

And of course, the most obvious conclusions regarding Obama's program were not addressed at all: a) however many jobs his stimulus package creates, they are all make-work jobs that will dry up as quickly as the money does; and b) the cost, by Obama's own accounting, would be $300,000.00 per job.

Spending taxpayer money on makework jobs hardly seems to be a good deal at that rate. Wouldn't Obama be better off simply writing checks for thirty grand each to 25 million people? That way he could say he created 25 million new jobs, not "preserved" a measly 2.5 million.

I'll make one further prediction: before he's done, the cost of this program will double to $1.5 trillion dollars, probably shortly into his term as president.