If you still believe that liberal bias in the mainstream print and television news media is a conspiracy theory, then consider the following. 

There were two rallies in Washington last Saturday, one led by Glenn Beck and one by Al Sharpton.  I read and saw extensive news coverage in print and television for both rallies and this is what I noticed.

Beck’s rally was consistently described as tens of thousands.  Factually correct but descriptively inaccurate.  Although half a million people is made up of many “tens of thousands”, a better description would have been “hundreds of thousands.”  The intent was to make Beck’s rally seem smaller.

Sharpton’s rally was referred to as thousands of people.  A more accurate description would have been a few thousand (singular).  The intent being to make this rally seem larger.

Crowd attending the "Restoring" Honor rally, organized by Glenn
Beck, is seen from the base of the Washington Monument in
Washington, on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010 (AP Photo).

In a major, nationally known newspaper, Sharpton’s crowd was described as “mostly” black union members, churchgoers, college students and civil rights activists, yet, with the exception of one, every face show in the accompanying photographs was African-American.  The intent here is to portray a multi-racial cross-section of attendees from different walks of life.

In the next paragraph, Beck’s crowd was described as “overwhelmingly” white conservatives.  Period.  Apparently, there were no churchgoers, college students, non-whites or people who stand up for civil rights.  The accompanying photographs showed many people of color dispersed throughout the crowd from a distance, yet in only one close up can we see a few African-American faces.  Obviously, the goal was to portray Beck’s crowd as nothing more than a group of white racists, which is exactly what liberal news sources want you to think of the tea party people.

I could go on and on about the discrepancies in the portrayals of conservatives and liberals in the mainstream media, but ask yourself this: Does the mainstream media really represent the mainstream?  Unless you’re a liberal, they don’t represent you at all, and according to a wide variety of polls, liberals now make up only about 20 percent of our citizens. 

Is one-out-of-five the way we define mainstream these days?

As a conservative, I don’t demand coverage in my favor.  Rather, what I want is plain and simple: accurate and fair reporting for both sides.  When someone deserves bad press, then go ahead and let ‘em have it.  I'm all for that.  The problem is, if it happens to be a liberal who deserves that bad press, we rarely, if ever, see it until the story gets so big that the media finally has to cover it or appear biased.  If it were not for the non-mainstream, non-liberal media outlets, would you know about anything about who Obama associates with and keeps in confidence?  Nope.  No way.  Instead, you’d be sitting on your couch being told he’s the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln, i.e., "The Anointed One".

Whenever George W. Bush attempted to enact constitutionally questionable policy, we were inundated with coverage saying our rights were supposedly going to hell. Yet Obama and his appointed “czars” have displayed nothing more than a complete disregard for our Constitution and our legislative process - and we don't hear a peep about that from the media.  

Is that really acceptable to you? 

If it is, then don’t be surprised if you wake up one day and have no rights left at all, and see big screen pictures of our fearless leader on every corner to remind you of it.

Guy Caron can be reached via e-mail at: GuyC@GoffstownResidentsAssociation.com

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