HILLARY ISN’T JUST FIGHTING BERNIE AND THE GOP. SHE’S FIGHTING THE MEDIA TOO.
As I have noted earlier, Hillary Clinton holds a number of political distinctions. In all of U.S. history, she is the politician who has been attacked for longer than anyone else, even Nixon: forty years of anti-Hillary smears. Likewise Hillary is also the most investigated public figure in the history of our nation, which is why we can say with confidence that she is also the most honest in Washington: the endless investigations proved it.
There is another distinction. Hillary is the first politician in our history who has been attacked relentlessly by every faction of the media: the right-wing media, the left-wing media, the mainstream media in the center, and social media. Every single faction of the press is gunning for her: there is literally no place to go, to find reporting which is reliably fair in its coverage of Hillary. The media are increasingly willing to report unverified nonsense that makes Hillary look bad and makes the fight for the nomination a close race, and they have been caught many times deliberately trying to start fights between the candidates.
The right-wing media has of course made attacking Hillary and Bill an entire industry: Fox News, Rush, Drudge, Breitbart, World News Daily, Newsmax, the Washington Examiner, the Free Beacon. When Hillary said there is a vast right-wing conspiracy, everyone laughed, but she was proved right.
Meanwhile everyone on the left has drunk the Bernie Koolaid and is dutifully attacking the woman standing in Bernie’s way. The Huffington Post has been known to run twenty stories in a single day, slamming Hillary and praising Bernie: one of their “reporters”, a fantasy novelist name H.A. Goodman, is a full-time Hillary-basher and is so over the top that even other liberals hesitate to quote him.
And of course MSNBC, apparently bowing down to its corporate masters who dislike the Clintons and want to see Bernie compete well against Hillary. Pro-Hillary voices have been driven off the air. Rachel Maddow, once the best reporter in America, has been muzzled. Lawrence O’Donnell can always be counted on to cherry-pick polling data to cast Hillary in the worst possible light. Chuck Todd stages Hillary Hate Central every Sunday morning. Andrea Mitchell hates Hillary so much you’d think the two of them fought over Prom King in high school: she’s Maureen Dowd with a spray tan.
Daily Kos? Let the record speak for itself.
Even in the center, the old mainstream media. The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN have all been caught going way, way over the line in tilting their coverage in Bernie’s favor. The New York Times was caught so many times printing false attacks against Hillary that they had to fire their Washington bureau chief, to save what credibility they had left.
And of course social media are dominated by unemployed Bernie Bots, many of whom seem to come from southern climes, which suggests that some of the Bernie Bots are actually Rove Bots.
One pattern has emerged strongly: a willingness by formerly responsible news agencies to report stories that are obvious garbage, without checking them first. Gone are the days when the Washington Post would beat on doors every night, hoping to find two accurate sources for every reported fact. Now they just find total crap on the internet and reprint it.
Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have eagerly scooped up outright lies about Hillary which had been reported by the far-right media, reported them without verification, and then were forced to retract because the lies were so obvious. One smear attack from the New York Times, regarding Hillary’s emails, was withdrawn with a “retraction” which was itself so loaded with nonsense that it had to be retracted too. Chris Hayes of MSNBC, once proud of his factual accuracy, was caught in an egregious selective edit of a Bill Clinton statement and had to retract on the air.
Another pattern has emerged which may help us to see why this is happening. A tight, angry race that lasts all summer is an entertaining show and attracts readers and viewers: no one wants to cover a boring blowout. So they actively try to start trouble. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tried over and over to get Hillary to say Bernie was unqualified to be President. The New York Times tried to stir up trouble by falsely claiming Hillary slammed Sanders in an MSNBC interview.
Of particular note is CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny. Zeleny was caught on camera, coaching Bernie Sanders at a debate, telling him how to attack Hillary. Bernie had completely blown a debate question when he couldn’t name a single time Hillary had acted to help the banks. Zeleny urged him to raise the completely discredited claim that Hillary’s action on a bankruptcy bill was aimed at helping the bankers, when in fact it was aimed at moving money AWAY from the bankers to moms awaiting child support. So Zeleny got a double-score, using a completely discredited anti-Hillary smear to try to pick a fight between the two candidates.
Zeleny is the same reporter who tag-teamed with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to falsely persuade Sanders than Hillary had called him unqualified, thus stirring up an entertaining fight between the candidates.
So how many of you people out there approve of this ceaseless bullying, and its toxic effect on the democratic process?