For the past four decades, Accuracy In Media has proven that liberal media bias is real, and it’s spectacular. The public knows it exists; that’s why their media loyalties have shifted over the years to news organizations that are more fair and balanced.
No matter how much evidence we provide, though, we don’t expect liberals, especially liberals in the media, to believe a word we say. The question is whether they will believe a word their own like-minded and occasionally open-minded colleagues say.
The latest example (via Instapundit) is Phil Bronstein, the former executive vice president and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Citing recent fluff pieces by NBC and The New York Times, he ripped the liberal media to shreds for its fawning over President Obama in a column earlier this week.
Here are some of the best sound bites:
- “George Bush needed to be beer-bar likable to get elected. His successor has managed to get a lot of people to want to be liked by him.”
- “This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we’re not.”
- “The Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we’re the girl.”
- “It’s the early 1960s and Camelot all over again.”
Bronstein isn’t the first liberal to notice the fawning press coverage of Obama. The July issue of Vanity Fair includes an essay by Michael Wolff about how Obama’s press team has tamed the liberal media (as if it needed taming) by manipulating the messages it sends through outlets as varied as the Times and Politico, The Huffington Post and “Inside Edition.”
It’s some perfect re-creation of a relationship between president and news media that has not been seen since the White House pressroom was a clubby place with reporters invited into the press secretary’s office for whiskey and cigars. It’s cozy. … It is, curiously, a return to a time when the press was so much more dependent on the goodwill, and susceptible to the care and feeding, of the president.
It certainly helps, Wolff acknowledged, that Obama has “a press predisposed to him.” “These people in this White House are in greater control of the media than any administration before them,” he concluded. “The only thing is, they mustn’t let on that they know it.”
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