-By Warner Todd Huston
Many of us here, of course, take it for granted that the news media focuses far more on any scandals or troubles that occur with Republicans while at the same time they try their level best to ignore those that are perpetrated by Democrats. Sometimes that claim is open to interpretation, sometimes it seems too obvious to doubt, but that the media favors the Dems seems beyond doubt. The MRC recently had a much talked about media bias report that went a long way toward proving with statistics that our contention is true (Rise and Shine on Democrats), at least as far as morning TV shows go.
But, it’s always helpful to get as many statistics as possible to buttress our case. I have here another small indication of how the GOP is treated unequally with the Democrat Party revealing Media Bias in the form of a Lexis-Nexis* search of two ongoing, but not equally treated, scandals in the news. Our search parameters covered the last 90 days from September 6th back.
The first search result is that of the bathroom sex solicitation incident involving Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho. A Lexis-Nexis search for keywords reveals the following results:
Search Keywords:
Senator Craig 1,598
Senator Larry Craig 823
Larry Craig Republican 1,312
That equals 3,733 mentions of this story in the news sources contained in the Lexis-Nexis database.
Let’s compare that with a Democrat Party scandal. The recent revelations that the Clintons and other top Democrat officials have been getting massive campaign donations by a criminal on the lam — a story that broke around the same time as the Larry Craig story — reveals some telling stats.
Search Keywords:
Norman Hsu 312
Hsu Democrat 316
Hsu Clinton 270
That equals a paltry 898 mentions of this shocking political scandal.
Now, wouldn’t it seem to you that the story of a perhaps closeted gay Senator being “outed” is far less important to the “culture of corruption” in Washington than the story of a presidential candidate who has been taking massive campaign contributions from a convicted felon who is on the run from justice? Isn’t it far more important to investigate illegal campaign donations to a politician than it is to report on the sex life of a politician?
Sex lives are not important, right? Heck, that’s what the media kept telling us when Bill Clinton was pretending he “didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, Monica” isn’t it?
Yet, we have heard this Larry Craig story, this salacious story of prurient sexual interest, just about every which way we turn as we are barely hearing a peep from the story of illegal and criminal political campaign donations.
Why do YOU think that is?
*For those unaware, Lexis-Nexis is a news source search engine similar to, but far more powerful than Google.
____________
Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Comments are closed.