Media Bias Obvious During Coverage of VP's Shooting Accident, Says Media Watchdog
by Chad Groening
February 22, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A media watchdog organization says it is amazing how the mainstream liberal media ignored important news stories around the world recently, choosing instead to engage in a "feeding frenzy" on Vice President Dick Cheney.The Media Research Center says there is no doubt that the vice president's accidental shooting of a hunting partner earlier this month was a major story. But MRC spokesman Rich Noyes says the "Cheney-hating" Washington press corps went crazy because the VP did not give them the story.
"They don't like the fact that he doesn't need them, and I think it sort of all came to a head with these White House press briefings [last week]," Noyes says. "They've been ignoring the big issues going on in the world -- the Iranian nuclear program, for example -- and they've been going in on when did the White House know that Dick Cheney had shot a hunter and why didn't they tell NBC?"
That fact -- that they were not told about the accident right away -- was almost as important to them as the shooting itself, he says. "There are hurt feelings about this news coming out through a Corpus Christi newspaper instead of [via] a big, full-blown press conference at the White House where the liberal media elite could flex its muscles," Noyes says.
"I mean that seems to be, to them, some kind of huge scandal all by itself. And I think it shows that what they're really most upset about is any indication from this White House that maybe the media elite is not as significant as it used to be." Noyes says he has news for the news gatherers. "[T]he truth of the matter is, they're not as significant as they used to be."
Noyes confesses that it was likely no accident that when Cheney finally did make a public statement, it was an exclusive for the Fox News Channel. "It's just one more finger in the eye, maybe, of the old liberal media establishment that he went to Fox, which wasn't even around ten years ago [sic]," the MRC spokesman says. "I think it's just another signal that their media monopoly is crumbling."
As for the media pre-empting other noteworthy news stories for the Cheney episode, Noyes offers the following:
"Al Gore was in Saudi Arabia at a forum [that was] partially paid for by the bin Laden family, basically doing al Qaeda talking points, saying that Arabs in America had been indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa, or held in conditions that are just unforgivable," he explains. "He is sort of indicting America in Saudi Arabia [in the speech]."
But the liberal media, observes Noyes, seemed to be focused on Dick Cheney. "I can't imagine the media's silence on this," he exclaims. "They at least should be giving [Gore's speech] some airtime -- but instead, all their attention is given, really, towards Dick Cheney and his press management tactics, and not Al Gore going overseas to badmouth America."
And the media, he adds, has been going "wall to wall" whenever conservative commentator and CBN founder Pat Robertson says something the media considers controversial. "[They] justify [coverage of Robertson] by saying that he ran for president in 1988," he notes.
Evidently, he says, it makes no difference to the media that Al Gore was vice president of the United States for eight years and came within 500 votes of winning the presidency in 2000. "And I would think that remarks that he makes ... are more controversial than anything Pat Robertson has said."
Noyes says such biased treatment demonstrates that the mainstream media is in the "business to impugn Republicans and conservatives" while at the same time to "apologize or conceal Democratic gaffes."
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
