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Objective Pretense – Media Bias and the Electorate
Guest Column | By Tom McLaughlin | November 10, 2008
It was a bad week. Couldn’t
start my column on Sunday like I usually do because the hard drive on my laptop
crashed while I was away for the weekend. Monday morning I got it outlined on
my back-up machine before leaving for school, but after school I had to drive a
hundred miles (round trip) to drop my main machine off with the nearest
Apple-certified technician. Tuesday after school I picked it up and hurried
home to vote before the polls closed. Election results were depressing for
conservatives like me. Wednesday morning I was pulled over for speeding on the
way to school. Been driving that road the same way for 31 years, but oh well. I
was going 55 in a 45.
Most of my students are Obama
supporters. I’m not and they know it. I knew they would be giving me plenty of
“I told you so’s” that day and I wasn’t looking forward to it. In the first
class, students asked if I’d heard that Sarah Palin thought Africa
was a country and not a continent.
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Where did you hear that?
“On television this morning,”
said one student and another concurred right away. “She’s pretty dumb,” he
said.
“What news show were you
watching?” I asked. Neither could tell me, but I learned later that the
information came from sources in the McCain campaign and was widely reported in
the Mainstream Media. For two months, students had been repeating reports about
how ignorant and inexperienced Sarah Palin was. I asked each class that day how
many of them had seen reports like that. About two-thirds raised their hands.
Several told me Palin spent too much on clothes, thought she could see Russia from her house in Alaska, shot animals from a plane, had a
pregnant teenaged daughter, or avoided answering interview questions.
“Hmm,” I said. “Let me ask
you a few questions. Did you hear that Obama claimed a few months ago that
he’d campaigned in 57 states and still had one more to go?” In five classes
with approximately 125 students, only one girl had heard it on the radio.
“Okay, how about this one:
When Katie Couric interviewed Joe Biden about comparing our financial crisis to
the Great Depression, he
claimed President Roosevelt went on television to explain the 1929 stock market
crash to the American people. How many of you heard about that?”
Not one had. Several students
said television hadn’t been invented then. I told them it had, but televisions
weren’t being sold because nothing was being broadcast until the late forties.
We’d been studying the Great Depression and several knew that Roosevelt
didn’t become president until 1933 - nearly four years after the stock market
crash.
Then I told them that during
the vice presidential debate, Biden claimed that “Article
One of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United
States” (find it at the 4:00 mark) when actually, the executive branch is
defined in Article Two. Not a single student heard about that blunder either.
Many times during September
and October I’d had students turn to Article II in their textbook’s copy of the
Constitution so they could read about qualifications, duties, and powers of the
president and vice president. They’d also read several parts of Article I which
outlines the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. “Biden has been a US senator for
36 years,” I said. “Don’t you think he should know this stuff?”
Many nodded gravely.
“So what’s the point I’m
making?” I asked each class and waited for them to think it over. “I can show
you Obama and Biden saying dumb things on ‘You Tube,’ but only one girl heard
any of it. On the other hand, most of you heard plenty to make Palin appear
foolish. What’s up with that?”
Students suggested that
television stations don’t like to show bad things about Democrats. “That seems
like a valid conclusion,” I said. “Our broadcast media had plenty of material
on both sides, but only used it against one. Why would they do that?”
“Because they’re biased?”
several asked.
“I think so,” I said. “Their
reporting has certainly had an influence on you. Do you think it’s had a
similar influence on Americans who vote?”
There were nods all around.
“Fox News seems to have a
conservative bias, but all the rest have a liberal bias. The worst part,
however, is that none of them admit it. They pretend to be objective.”
“You’re taking this too hard,
Mr. McLaughlin,” said one boy as class was ending.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Been
a hard week.”
FamilySecurityMatters.org Political Editor Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist who lives in Lovell, Maine. His column is published in Maine and New Hampshire newspapers and you can email: or visit his blog Tom McLaughlin Blog.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
1 Comment | Post a Comment
November 18 at 9:45 pm | #1 | Link
Great article.
I have a feeling this election (sometime down the road) will come down hard on anyone young, old who at one time or another loved America.