{"id":511776,"date":"2021-05-15T16:06:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-15T20:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=511776"},"modified":"2021-05-15T16:06:09","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T20:06:09","slug":"graham-america-declines-the-media-obsess-over-gop-squabbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/graham-america-declines-the-media-obsess-over-gop-squabbles\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAHAM: America Declines. The Media Obsess Over GOP Squabbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgraham-america-declines-the-media-obsess-over-gop-squabbles%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=511776&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/321F8051-4FC4-4D79-8505-B526E935F213-1200x800-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>The front page of the May 13 Washington Times was sobering. \u201cPresident Biden\u2019s second 100 days are off to a woeful start, including a gas shortage for much of the East Coast, a surge of inflation, a slowdown in hiring despite a record number of job openings, renewed fighting in the Middle East and an unresolved border crisis,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n<p>But the rest of the news media? They\u2019re obsessing over how terrible (and terribly split) the Republicans are. One party is engaged in a \u201ccivil war,\u201d and the other is forever portrayed as a placid pool of calm.<\/p>\n<p>This is how you know the \u201cnews\u201d today is whatever narrative the Biden-coddling \u201cmainstream\u201d media decide to adopt. They\u2019re never going to sound like Ted Cruz, who says, \u201cBiden policies are failing across the board: economically, domestically and abroad.\u201d They\u2019re going to sound like humanoid robots programmed by White House press secretary Jen Psaki.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not even entertaining to imagine how the media would cover these developments if Donald Trump were president. He would be blamed for all this. But it\u2019s also safe to assume they would be doing a large chunk of what they\u2019re doing now: obsessing over the dangerous Republican Party, championing the protests of Rep. Liz Cheney, wallowing in \u201cnew\u201d footage of the dreadful Jan. 6 riot.<\/p>\n<p>The media pretend that they exist to moderate our democracy and hold public servants accountable and explain complicated policy matters. Instead, they focus on food fights and clickbait and exacerbating the nastiness of social media.<\/p>\n<p>Curtis Houck of the Media Research Center studied CNN coverage for 12 hours on May 12 and found that the network spent 151 minutes obsessing over Cheney\u2019s ouster and only 55 minutes and change on multiple mounting economic problems in the country. That\u2019s almost a 3-to-1 disparity.<\/p>\n<p>The government reported that 178,622 immigrants were apprehended at the southwest border region in April, an increase from the then-record-breaking 173,348 in March. But even as the surge went up 3%, Media Research Center\u2019s Rich Noyes found that the ABC, CBS and NBC evening-news program coverage of this issue dropped dramatically from March to April, by 61%.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s worse than just numbers. \u201cPresident Biden and his policies were completely shielded from blame in a majority (48) of the 88 stories aired during these two months, as less than one-third (26) included any reference by the reporter that the surge had anything to do with Biden,\u201d Noyes wrote.<\/p>\n<p>In preparation for the president\u2019s 100th day in office, CBS News polled just over 2,500 adults. Among major issues in the survey, the public\u2019s worst reviews (57% disapproval) were given to Biden\u2019s border bungling. CBS helpfully excluded that negative number from its broadcast reporting. The networks have this persistent habit of reporting the poll numbers they like and burying those they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>During Biden\u2019s only press conference of his presidency, instead of tough questioning, reporters such as Yamiche Alcindor of PBS buttered him up, saying, \u201cthe perception of you that got you elected \u2014 as a moral, decent man \u2014 is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country.\u201d Biden told his PBS publicity helper he \u201cshould be flattered\u201d by the six-figure immigrant surge.<\/p>\n<p>The media repeat after Psaki that this is not a \u201cborder crisis\u201d; it is merely a \u201cchallenge.\u201d She sounds like Psaki Poppins, urging the press to take a spoonful of sugar to help the liberal medicine go down. The nanny makes us feel vaguely sickened. The wheels are coming off this country, and the journalists are in denial.<\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The front page of the May 13 Washington Times was sobering. \u201cPresident Biden\u2019s second 100 days are off to a woeful start, including a gas shortage for much of the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2278228,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/321F8051-4FC4-4D79-8505-B526E935F213-1200x800-1.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"GRAHAM: America Declines. The Media Obsess Over GOP Squabbles","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/321F8051-4FC4-4D79-8505-B526E935F213-1200x800-1.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"GRAHAM: America Declines. The Media Obsess Over GOP Squabbles","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}