Conventional Wisdom Bias
PoliPundit.com
Democrats have it way too easy when it comes to getting their message out via the MSM. Half of the claims they make against Republicans are accepted as conventional wisdom and never even questioned by reporters. Before liberal readers (yes, I know you are out there) have rolled their eyes completely around in their heads, let me cite an example.
Yesterday I caught a few minutes of Inside Politics on CNN. One segment featured a Judy Woodruff interview with Senator Pat Leahy on the topic of judicial confirmations.
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WOODRUFF: Senator, we just heard Senator Orrin Hatch, your Republican colleague on the committee, say Democrats are really unprincipled here. He said, because what they’ve been willing to do is say, OK, even though we may disagree with these people, we’ll let some of them pass, but we’re not going to let others pass. In other words, he’s saying there’s just no principle involved.
LEAHY: Oh, heavenly day. I – you know, it’s interesting, I told Orrin the other day, he’s amazing – he can say such things with a straight face. This is the man who single-handedly blocked, by pocket filibusters on behalf of his caucus, 61 judges under President Clinton. We’re talking about holding up the three or four of the most radical judges. You know, the Senate supposed to be about checks and balances. The two places in this country that have checks and balance, independent judiciary, and the U.S. Senate.
WOODRUFF: Well, Senator – Senator Hatch was saying – I mean, I wrote down. He said there have always been people left over and he said under President Clinton, he said, with a less favorable Congress, he got as many through as President Reagan did.
LEAHY: He had 61 that were left over, actually about 69 – several pulled their names out. Left over? We had a brilliant Hispanic from California who was held up for five or six years. We had one woman who was blocked. They said they wanted to keep the seat open on the – she wasn’t qualify. She’s now the dean of the Harvard Law School. He held these people for years and years and years and years.
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One thing I learned from the interview is that blocking black, hispanic and female judges must be taking its toll because there is a new talking point about the various demographic groups represented by those that were blocked in the past by Republicans, but that is off topic.
Regarding the issue of the current battle over judicial confirmations, Woodruff followed up and questioned Leahy on some claims he made, especially regarding specific numbers.
What she didn’t ask him, however, is what I find so infuriating about watching political interviews. When Leahy claimed that they are only blocking “three or four of the most radical judges” several questions screamed out to me, but they never made their way into Woodruff’s mouth. I wanted to know which of the President’s nominees are “radical” and what specific thing they have done or said in their careers to deserve being branded as “radical"? Is parental notification for teenage abortions radical? When something is supported by the majority of the population, it cannot, by definition, be radical.
So what are the nominees’ radical, extremist views? Isn’t it more accurate to say that the nominees don’t adhere to the policies supported by liberal advocacy groups, who can be said to be “radical” since the majority of Americans do not agree with their agendas?
I understand that interviewers cannot think of every possible followup question. Often when they have heard a politician repeat a frequently stated talking point they ignore it because it is part of the party line that has been repeated ad nauseam for months. What I fear happens all too frequently, though, is that claims such as Leahy’s about radical judges are not questioned because they are part of the liberal conventional wisdom. Why would Woodruff question the basis upon which Leahy declares the judges radical and extreme if she believes that it is a settled point?
Imagine how the tenor, and the content, of recent interviews would be different if everytime a Democrat accused the President’s nominees of being radical extremists, that the interviewer asked for examples of that extremism. Questions like that if asked by reporters would change the entire focus of the debate.
What I raise here is a somewhat different criticism than the one many of us on the right side of the aisle often raise. This is not the palpable, visceral bias that can literally be seen on the face of Katie Couric who often appears as if she just stepped in dog poo anytime she has to sit down and interview a Republican at any length. This is the criticism those like Bernie Goldberg often make when talking about the bias that so many liberals in the media have without even being aware of it.
On this specific example of the constant references to Bush’s judicial nominees as radical, extreme, or controversial, I propose a little unscientific experiment. From now on I will keep a running list of the times that a politician on television refers to the President’s judicial nominees as radical or extreme, and I will note whether or not the interviewer questions the basis for that branding. It would be immensely helpful if Polipundit readers would email similar examples that they find to me. I will report back in a few weeks with my findings.
-- Lorie Byrd
polipundit.com
transcripts.cnn.com |
