RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number three. Mark “Maxi” Shields was on Inside Washington this Sunday morning on PBS. You know what I love? These media guys, they know that the deck is stacked and that they are the ones dealing from the deck. They know that they’re in the tank for Obama.
They know that there’s not even a pretense of objectivity in the media now. I saw another story. What was this? I didn’t print it out. I wasn’t even gonna mention it because it’s not technically show prep. But it was a story I read over the weekend about when the media changed, and it was said it was 1980 and Reagan’s election. That’s when the media changed. I think it’s 1989. I think the media monopoly began to evaporate in 1989. I’ve said that to you people, and I don’t say this to brag.
This not braggadocios. Besides, as Babe Ruth said: It ain’t bragging if you can do it. But I’m not bragging here. I’m being objective. Sometimes I blame myself for all this angst in the country. Up until I came along and then the New Media followed, this competing, real, sizeable competing media came along… I mean, the media was always left-wing and it was always in the tank for Democrats. But they tried to put forth the illusion that they were nonpartisan, that they were unbiased or at least objective and fair.
That’s all gone now.
There’s not even any pretense of that anymore, and I think that’s because of competition. And as their monopoly has blown up, they continue to try to prove to themselves that they do have the power to move public opinion, to shape it and to achieve electoral victory for their side. I think they’re trying constantly to prove that they still have their power that they once had. Hannity had Brokaw on during the Democrat convention. He happened to mention the Democrats used to have a media monopoly, and Brokaw lit up.
“Oh, yeah!” He was very happy but wistful at the same time. (paraphrasing) “Yeah, we used to. We used to. There’s no question about it, Sean. Yeah, we used to.” They’re bugged that they don’t have it. But I really think that it all changed (they decided to give up the pretense of objectivity) with the evolution of the New Media, and it became a competition. They finally were forced into revealing their preferences.
Instead of using the word “bias,” I’ll use “preference.” They were forced into revealing and openly stumping and campaigning for what they always wanted but used to be able to achieve with a raised eyebrow. You know, Peter Jennings could raise an eyebrow and affect public opinion. Those days are gone now. Now they have to actually go out and behave in the way they do now. It’s funny to listen to them deny it.
It’s funny to listen to them pretend that it’s still 1980 or 1984 or 1970. It’s funny to listen to them act as though they’re all the same; they haven’t changed. They’re doing their jobs the same way they always did. Everybody knows that isn’t the case. The respect people have for the media continues to plummet in polls of that nature. So here’s Mark “Maxi” Shields, and he’s on this PBS Sunday morning chat show talking about me and my comments on the polls…
SHIELDS: We’re into conservative “whine” country now. Uhhhh, you know?
TOTENBERG: (snickering)
SHIELDS: It is a miracle that Ronald Reagan won 44 states one time, 49 states the other, without a Fox News, without Rich (sic) Limbaugh, without Drudge Report, without all right-wing radio, and with the networks dominant and the Washington Post and the New York Times ascendant. And yet here’s poor Mitt and he’s being done in by a conspiracy at some 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Virginia, of the polling companies?
TOTENBERG: (cackling)
SHIELDS: I mean, this is right out of science fiction!
TOTENBERG: Woo-hoo-hoo!
RUSH: That’s Nina Totenberg laughing. I don’t… I must confess, I don’t get the 7-Eleven and Falls Church reference. Do you know what that possibly means? (interruption) I don’t, either. But that was the greatness of Reagan. Reagan did do all that without a fair media. The only favorable media that Reagan had was probably National Review. Bill Buckley. That was probably it. But Reagan had the ability to go over the heads of the media. He did not rely on the media filtering.
There hasn’t been anybody like him since. But for all of you, Mark and the rest of you, I’m not saying Romney is done in by any of this. We’re just chronicling what is. For you guys to deny that you’re in the tank for Obama, for you guys to deny that you’re not doing everything you can to tell us where he is and what he’s done and how he’s come to believe what he does and examine his policies honestly and so forth? It’s obvious to anybody that pays ten minutes’ attention every day, much less wonks.
And to deny it is what’s funny.
I don’t know about anybody else but I am not whining. I’m not crying. I’m optimistic. I’m simply pointing out what’s happening. You guys are doing polls with samples of Democrats plus 13, plus 12, plus 11. And we have people all over the spectrum who are saying, “Yeah, that’s probably not the way it’s gonna end up on Election Day.” So why are you doing the samples that way? For you guys to deny that you’re trying to suppress the vote is laughable.
For you guys to deny that you are doing everything you can to harm the reputation and the credibility of Mitt Romney and any other Republican that comes along is laughable. You know you are. We do, too! The gig’s up. You just can’t admit it, and you have to laugh at us being paranoid or what have you. Which is not the case at all. We’re simply doing what you used to do. We’re telling people what’s happening, and you happen to be a news story now. The media is a news story for us.
Because you guys are not what you say you are. You know, if you guys would just come out and say that you’re a pack of leftists and that you have every vested interest in Obama winning, everything would be cool. Nobody would complain about you, and nobody would point out your errors, and nobody would point out your hypocrisy. But because you won’t admit that ’cause you want to hold onto some long ago sacred concept of “objectivity,” you’re laughingstocks.
Not us.
We do the job you used to do. Where’s your story on Fast and Furious? Where’s your story on Obama’s economic policies leading to current economic circumstances? Where’s your story on that? How do you get off lying to the American people that Romney takes a trip to three foreign countries and it’s one gaffe after another when there wasn’t a gaffe? We can all see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears what is happening.
Republicans win every election they win without the help of the media. And that is because their message resonates with a larger number of people than the Democrat message no matter what you guys try. Let’s go to the Accuracy in Media conference over the weekend in Washington. Here is Pat Caddell, a former pollster, and he worked for Jimmy Carter.
CADDELL: We’ve had nine days of lies over what happened, because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack. And the press won’t push this. Yesterday there was not a single piece in the New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies yesterday are under attack. None of that is on the national news! I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush [who] had a terrorist incident and gotten on a airplane after saying something and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified. It is one thing to bias the news or have a biased view. It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know.
RUSH: That’s nine days ago.
That’s Pat Caddell at the Accuracy in Media conference, and he’s talking about the terrorist attacks in Libya. You guys in the media, Mr. Mark “Maxi” Shields? The regime lies to the American people and says it’s a video that caused Benghazi. Well, the next day everybody knew it had nothing to do with the video; it was a terror attack. It’s Al-Qaeda. They’re not dead. Bin Laden may be, but Al-Qaeda’s not. You guys think you’ve got a great slogan: “Bin Laden’s dead, GM’s alive!”
Al-Qaeda is alive and killing, and our ambassador is dead and three other Americans are dead because there was no security in Libya. Obama says it’s a video; you say it’s a video. You guys follow suit. Obama says this guy that made the video needs to be in jail; you follow him and make sure he gets in jail. You chronicle his arrest for something on a parole violation, on bank fraud or some such thing. And even after it’s known that Susan Rice and Jay Carney and everybody else that the administration sent out in the days after, lied about this?
Caddell’s right! You can’t bring yourselves to report the truth about this until the story is over, when it no longer matters. But for the five or six days that matter right after the story, you carry the regime’s water. Whatever Obama says or Carney says, that’s what you report. There were two exceptions: Jacob Tapper at ABC and somebody else. Everybody else just got in lockstep and fell right in line, and that’s common. It happens with every big story.
It’s still happening out there! They’re still running with this notion that it was a video that led to what happened in Benghazi. Obama goes to the United Nations and delivers one of the most sophomoric, embarrassingly naive, inane speeches a president has ever given at that body, and you guys treat it as though it’s one of the best. The great speech this year at the United Nations was Benjamin Netanyahu, who you guys join in mocking and making fun of because the regime does.
Who is it that’s doctoring 9/11 tapes in the Trayvon Martin incident? That was NBC, right? “Well, that was just done for time purposes? Oh, right, that was just done for time purposes, Rush.” It was done because you’d chosen sides on that story. The New York Times calls George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic”? It’s the first time in 50 years they’d ever used the term “white Hispanic”? Here’s more from Caddell. This is Accuracy in Media, their conference on September 21st.
CADDELL: The press’s job is to stand on the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and they go to serve on the side that they will now become active and participants; when they decide that their job is not simply both to tell you who you may vote for and who you may not, but worse — and this is the danger of the last two weeks — what truth that you may know as an American and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have then made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy. And, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.
RUSH: That’s Pat Caddell, a former Jimmy Carter pollster, and we’re coming right back.
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