Media Reality Check. “By 20-to-1, Nets Apply Ideological Labels to Republicans Over Democratic Presidential Candidates

The truth comes out which a lot of us have long suspected.  The mainstream media doesn't like to label Democrats liberals because they either know that label won't fly well in most of America or it would be an acknowledgement that they have labeled their fellow democrats for what they are -- liberals.

What they don't understand today is that being conservative is not being the boogeyman.  Being conservative means we believe the Government should live within their means and stay out of our every day lives.

Liberal Democrats like Obama, Pelosi, and Reid want to fundamentally change the way we live to a more socialist leaning Country so the people depend on the Government but you won't see the liberal media saying that.  Their reporting on anything that is liberal out of this group is in the back of the paper if reported at all.

The mainstream media has been in the tank so long for liberal Democrats that the questions comes to mind if they were ever fair to conservatives starting with Barry Goldwater.  Most of the national media seems unable to deal with conservatives who want less intrusion of the Government in their lives as the media are big government supporters themselves -- the bigger the better.  Their lack of investigation into Obama's associates tells the whole story -- they wanted Obama not McCain so they did everything they could to make Obama look like he walked on water and pulled the wool over a lot of voter's eyes.

Very easy to see bias in the national media with these numbers of how they label people.

Email from the Media Research Center CyberAlert:
3:35 PM EDT, Tuesday August 16, 2011 

Media Reality Check. “By 20-to-1, Nets Apply Ideological Labels to Republicans Over Democratic Presidential Candidates; MRC Study: ABC, CBS and NBC Pile on 62 Conservative Labels This Year, vs. a Mere 3 Liberal Tags in 2007” 

Below is the text of a Media Reality Check, researched and written by the MRC’s Research Director, Rich Noyes, which was posted earlier today. 

To read the Media Reality Check online, with a bar graph: http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/realitycheck/2011/20110815050640.aspx
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This year’s crop of GOP presidential candidates includes strong conservatives, just like the top Democratic candidates four years ago — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — were all staunch liberals. But a major, glaring difference between today’s campaign coverage and the early coverage of the 2007 Democratic nomination race is the impulse of journalists to repeatedly brand the 2012 GOP candidates as “conservative” despite offering extremely few “liberal” labels four years ago. 

Media Research Center analysts reviewed the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs from January 1 through July 31 and found 62 “conservative” labels for Republican candidates or those talked about as potential candidates. A check of the same broadcasts for the same time period in 2007 found a paltry three “liberal” labels for the Democrats running that year, a greater than 20-to-1 disparity. 

In fact, reporters four years ago used the “liberal” label more freely with Republican candidates than Democrats. ABC’s Jake Tapper (World News, March 5, 2007) called Rudy Giuliani a “former big city mayor with liberal views on abortion, gay rights, and gun control.” But Democratic candidates such as Edwards and Clinton, whose views were to the left of Giuliani, were not once called “liberal” on any of the networks during the period we examined, while 

CBS and NBC never tagged Barack Obama as liberal. 

With this year’s crop of Republicans, however, the networks aren’t being nearly as stingy with the ideological labels. On the March 22 edition of NBC’s Today, for example, Natalie Morales told viewers about former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy: “The 50-year-old conservative announced on Facebook Monday that he was forming an exploratory committee....” 

On the June 13 Early Show, correspondent Jan Crawford called former Senator Rick Santorum the “strongest social conservative in the bunch.” 

ABC’s John Hendren, on the May 14 Good Morning America, described former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as “a conservative’s conservative who last held office when Seinfeld was a hit TV show and Michael Jackson was still on tour.” That night, Hendren revised his script for ABC’s World News to describe Gingrich as “a family values conservative who’s had three wives since he last held office....” 

Rick Perry, according to Ron Claiborne on the May 28 Good Morning America, “has strong conservative credentials.” On the June 27 Good Morning America, reporter Jonathan Karl described Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as a “take-no-prisoners conservative.” Earlier, on the May 27 World News, he compared Bachmann with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: “Politically, they appear to be soul mates — unbending conservatives who fire up Tea Partiers like no other Republicans.” 

Indeed, the most-labeled candidate this cycle is Michele Bachmann, who accounted for more than a third (23) of the ideological descriptions we tallied. On ABC’s World News on June 14, correspondent John Berman called Bachmann “one of Congress’s most conservative members.” Later that month, ABC’s Jon Karl described Bachmann as having “unyieldingly conservative views (June 26) and as an “uncompromising conservative” (June 27). Over on the CBS Evening News, Jan Crawford tagged Bachmann as “unapologetically conservative” (June 26). 

On the June 27 NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell said Bachmann was “known for her firebrand conservative style.” The next morning on Today, co-host Matt Lauer asked Bachmann: “Are you at all concerned that your socially conservative views, that make you very popular in Iowa, might not play as well down the road?” 

Four years ago, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards espoused the most stridently liberal positions of the major Democratic candidates, but drew no liberal labels from January 1 through July 31, 2007. (Then-NBC reporter Chip Reid, however, did supply a single liberal label on the December 28, 2006 edition of Today, as Edwards prepared to announce his candidacy: “Critics say Edwards is too liberal and, with just one term in the Senate, too inexperienced.”) 

Viewers only heard two liberal labels for then-Senator Barack Obama, who, like Edwards, espoused strongly liberal positions as a candidate. The labels came in a single flattering story by ABC’s Jake Tapper that was aired both on the January 16, 2007 World News and the next morning’s Good Morning America: “Obama has drawn raves for presenting fairly traditional liberal views as fresh and inspiring....” 

As for then-New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who led the Democratic field throughout 2007, she was also never termed a liberal. In fact, network analysts busied themselves refuting the notion. “People think she’s a liberal, even though she’s hawkish,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asserted on NBC’s Today on January 15, 2007. 

The only other “liberal” label in 2007 was assigned to then-Democratic candidate Chris Dodd, referred to by NBC Nightly News correspondent John Yang on February 4, 2007 as part of “a small group of liberal Democrats” who wanted to cut off Iraq war funding to block President Bush’s proposed troop surge. For its part, CBS failed to attach a single liberal label to theDemocratic candidates during the first seven months of 2007.

It’s neither inaccurate nor impolite to describe this year’s GOP candidates as “conservative” — most of them wear the label proudly. But if the networks are going to treat both sides fairly, they should have been just as ardent in pointing out the liberalism of the Democratic field that produced the most liberal President in American history. 

Visit MRC for the full August 16 Media Reality Check