Ed Note: At the time of the writing of this essay, Kimit Muston was sure of a G.W. Bush win in Florida. He instructed your editor to "run the piece". If Kimit ends up with egg on his face, he put it there....not me!
The Liberal Media Myth
I don't suppose the next four years will be a complete disaster. We've elected idiots to the White House before. Just never quite so deeply, widely or broadly an idiot as George W. Bush. And what bothers me most is not that I'm more qualified to be president than he is. What bothers me the most is the free ride the national press gave George's little boy.
I never again want to hear the lie about the "liberal media." It is a lie, and it has been a lie for some time. The Republicans trot it out every time one of their candidates or issues gets into trouble. They did it again this year, and it works. They whine "the liberal media is picking on us," and any questions or criticism dissolve.
Well, I am moderate. I disagree with the liberals as much if not more than conservatives do. But I am also sickened by the conservative control over the content of our national news.
What liberal voice can compare with the Fox News Channel, where conservative commentators play spin the story 24 hours a day? The channel might as well have been programmed by the Republican National Committee. And to tell you the truth, at times I'll bet it is.
Liberals do not sit next to the anchor of CNBC news, as do conservatives, playing objective journalist for one moment, and then sharing an on camera joke about Hillary Clinton's sex life with their conservative friends the next.
Cockie Roberts on ABC Sunday Morning is not a liberal. George Wills is not a liberal. And neither is Sam Donaldson. And he's not good at pretending to be one. And George Stephanopholis is just another lap dog that got rich biting that hand that trusted it.
Where on CBS are the liberal voices? Where on CNN are the daily supply of unchallenged liberal viewpoints, the way the conservative voices drum out day after day after day?
And then there is the myth of the liberal press. I grew up in Indiana, a state with only one newspaper, The Indianapolis Star. I knew it was conservative but it wasn't until I left that I realized how much news I never got to read. The same is true of cities and states like Atlanta, Georgia, and Billings, Montana, and Kansas City, Kansas. There is not a single market liberal newspaper to match the conservative ones that stretch from New Hampshire to Washington state.
And in competitive markets the situation is almost worse. What liberal multi-millionaire owns and runs a newspaper the way the Reverend Sun Yung Moon runs his right wing Washington News?
In New York City Mr. Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Fox News Channel, owns one tabloid paper and used to own the second. Then there is the Wall Street Journal, as rabid a conservative attack dog as ever. And even The New York Times has become hooked on conservative sources, even when such stories turn out over and over again, to be false.
It was the Times that labeled Dr. Henry Lee at Los Alamos, as the greatest traitor in fifty years, implying the Clinton administration was responsible for lack security. And they also produced article after article on the great "crime" of Whitewater. Liberals at the New York Times? Influencing the news in what way?
Here at home I shall always remember the Los Angeles Times as the paper that in 1992 sent a reporter to Little Rock, Arkansas for six months to track down sex rumors about Bill Clinton, and the paper which in 2000 ran not a single story on George Bush's disappearance for 2 years from his service with the Texas Air National Guard.
When you consider the extent to which corporate and ideological conservatives control what we see and hear about our world, the wonder is not that George Bush was elected. The wonder is he didn't win by a landslide.