An interesting development emerged not too long ago. Some of the big conservative media outlets, namely Breitbart.com, Michelle Malkin, and Fox News have been coming under fire. This is nothing new, as any conservative news source is going to be hated by the left. Opposing messages need to be discredited so naturally they will face criticism all of the time. What is surprising this time is the sources.
Back in March Scott Walker had his first significant campaign misstep when he fired his Digital Media Strategist, Liz Mair, over her butting heads with the Iowa GOP. The most notable takeaway from this story was some criticism being leveled at Breitbart.com and Malkin, from Leon Wolf at Redstate:
Fresh off of claiming the scalp of Liz Mair (more on that later), The Website Bearing Breitbart’s Name issued another broadside yesterday consisting almost entirely of the fact that Michelle Malkin thinks Scott Walker has a lot of problems. I’m not going to link the piece because I’m done linking to Breitbart, as I view them as summarily unhelpful to the movement. If you want to read a website that performs the function that Breitbart himself would have wanted for the movement today, read the Washington Free Beacon instead.
But I think that the point of what Breitbart and Malkin are doing here needs to be engaged substantively, quite apart from the understandable negative emotional response generated from the fact that they combined efforts to get a political consultant who is widely popular in the online right fired.
At least facially, Breitbart and Malkin are only making the plea that Scott Walker needs to be “vetted,” and that conservatives shouldn’t automatically throw all their eggs in his basket. As far as that goes, I heartily agree. It is far too early in the primary season for anyone to be crowned as the winner and questions do exist about Walker’s viability as a candidate as well as his performance on the job. I trust that, in the final analysis, the debate season and the increased glare of the media will sort out if Scott Walker is wheat or chaff, in terms of Presidential material.
But really, it doesn’t take an especially prescient critical thinker to read the piece in question and come away with the impression that Breitbart and Malkin have already ruled Walker out as unacceptable and are trying to avoid saying so by just claiming that they want him “vetted.”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but I have noticed a decline in the quality of Breitbart over the last few years. It’s not a bad site by any means, but I’ve noticed a dropoff in quality and frequency of posts. Three years ago there was an ugly parting of ways between Breitbart.com and Dana Loesch that suggested that the organization was not moving in a good direction. Robert Stacy McCain did a good job of documenting the entire story.
But on a larger level, the Rebel Base on the moon of Yavin that every leftist despises, Fox News, has taken some fire of its own from… Mark Levin?
On his radio show yesterday, Mark Levin criticized his “friends from Fox News” for secretly supporting Jeb Bush and attacking real conservative candidates like Ted Cruz:
“As you all know I’m a huge fan of the Fox News channel. Particularly certain hosts. But I have to wonder: if Ronald Reagan was running in 1976 starting in ’75 against Gerald Ford, how most of the people at Fox would treat him. Because to my great dismay – as I was preparing for the program, I had my favorite cable network on – and a number of the people were trashing Ted Cruz.
Not enough experience, he’s too young, too conservative, needs a bigger tent, he’s down in the polls… These people are neophytes. Neophytes. They’ve never fought in Republican primaries for conservative candidates. They don’t even take the time to learn the history of this country or the Republican Party. And I am convinced that if Reagan were alive today and Gerald Ford were live today, and we were doing a rerun of 1975-1976, Reagan would be trashed all over our favorite cable channel.”
So, yes, every single thing Levin said yesterday is correct. Fox News does indeed oppose Cruz — and any other real conservative candidate like him. The reason is that Fox isn’t conservative, but corporatist. They support candidates who are pro-amnesty (because it supposedly means cheap labor for businesses) and pro-corporate welfare. Cruz isn’t, Jeb is. So it’s a no-brainer for them.
Pro-corporate welfare? More accurately, it would be Rupert Murdoch’s being pro-Amnesty. Former Daily Caller writer Mickey Kraus wrote a critical post on that site before DC Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson took it down.
The Kaus piece, as it turned out, had been scrubbed from the site by Daily Caller management. When Kaus sought an explanation from Carlson, he received these words: “Can’t trash Fox on the site. Sorry. I work there.” As mentioned before, Carlson works the morning shift on weekends at Fox News. Carlson didn’t return e-mails from the Erik Wemple Blog seeking comment on the matter.
What was it that Kaus wrote that warranted censorship? Apparently he made a case, and backed it up with evidence, that Fox was spiking the issue of illegal immigration amnesty, in a manner not unlike how the MS spikes any stories regarding negative news about President Obama:
On page 424 of his recent memoir, Obama’s former top strategist David Axelrod describes running into Fox chieftain (and immigration amnesty supporter) Rupert Murdoch at a dinner in the fall of 2010:
During the dinner, Murdoch, who was seated beside me, insisted that the president had to move on immigration reform. ….
“But the solution has to be comprehensive,” I said. “We can’t just attack a piece of the immigration problem. And you know, there’s one big thing that you can do to help, and that is to keep your cable network from stoking the nativism that keeps us from solving this.”
Fox didn’t editorialize in favor of Obama. It just covered other issues. This is a proven pro-amnesty posture, pioneered in the spring of 2013 when the “Gang of 8″ amnesty bill snuck through the Senate while conservatives were distracted by a seeming trifecta of Obama scandals (IRS/Benghazi/seizing AP reporters’ phone records). Given the unpopularity of amnesty with a large swath of voters, any publicity given to the issue is likely to result in an intimidating blizzard of phone calls to the U.S. Capitol, complete with threats against Republicans who might be primaried from the right, Cantor-style. Corporate pro-amnesty lobbyists need peace and quiet to work their influence on Republicans in the face of this GOP-base opposition. No stoking!
And I have my own personal bone to pick. I was curious as to what the carbon footprint was of the Earth Day concert was here in DC on The National Mall, just in terms of electricity produced, etc. When I searched all that I could find were posts snarking on overflowing trash cans left behind after the concert was over, like this link at Legal Insurrection to a story at Townhall. Is this really the best we can do? People leaving trash at trash cans that aren’t emptied in a timely manner by the Park Service isn’t the concert goers’ fault. Yes, I get it that trash is being generated by people calling for us to consume less, but if we’re going to snark on the Greenies let’s at least use something where it makes sense, such as the compare/contrast of the Obama 2009 inauguration vs. the Tea Party rally held on the mall. Look, I’m the first one to have fun calling out how wrong the eco-religious zealots are, but just like I agreed with Powerline’s John Hideraker in his defense of Hillary Clinton over the Chipotle non-tipping “scandal”, with so many legitimate reasons to criticize these folks why waste time with petty reasons that really don’t matter?
So what does all of this mean? I think that this friendly fire is a very good thing. We non-leftists get annoyed at the many flaws in the MSM – this is what drove us to sources like Fox News or Michelle Malkin in the first place. As these media sources continue to grow in influence do we want the same flaws that make the MSM a joke manifesting here as well? Of course not, so it’s good that we’re policing our own. It’s not like the left will call out the MSM for similar transgressions – we actually have standards. It’s a long game, and over time keeping our side honest will only help us.
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
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Good points, Bro Bob.
It reminded me about Ronald Reagan’s so-called Eleventh Commandment:
Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
It is far too soon for anyone to put all their eggs in one basket.
That strategy is weak and leads to a couple of outcomes:
1. your guy wins the nomination and you vote for him.
2. your guy loses the nomination so you ”hold your nose and vote Republican anyway.
3. your guy loses the nomination and you sit home instead of voting, thereby allowing the Dems to win.
4. your guy loses and you vote some weak 3rd party guy (or write-in your guy) , thereby allowing the Dems to win.
I kind of like the $100 to apportion among the candidates that Bret Baier uses on his show.
At least his panelists are not putting all their eggs in any one basket….yet.
It sounds like some folks, who rightly complain about the bias and agenda of the liberal MSM, get upset when the remaining media will not promote or demote a specific story. What we want (or should want) is the full story and all the stories. The last thing I want, after defending its non-bias for years, is an incident that reveals that Fox and other engage in just that.
The battle is with the agenda-driven, biased, left wing liberal media that has already picked the Democrat candidate and, they hope, the next President AND will be busy working to bury bad stories about the liberal they have chosen and juke up bad stories about the competition. The battle is to get facts out that are otherwise kept from the general public.
@Nanny: I like the $100 apportionment example too – it also gets us thinking along the lines of backup plans in case our preferred candidates don’t win.
@Bill: I don’t agree that Fox is unbiased, but I don’t have a problem with it since they serve the needed purpose of balancing out the MSM bias. When they start taking up the leftist position to bury an issue like Amnesty that becomes a very real problem. Ideally I’d love to see another conservative news network or two or three rise up to give Fox some competition.
@Brother Bob: Fox, I believe, as unbiased as we are likely to see. With the amount of specific, targeted attacks from the left (ever notice who is always busy trying suppress opposition views?) one would not blame them for swinging as far right as the MSM is left, but that has not happened.
@Nanny G: I too am taking a wait and see attitude before saying that anyone is THE person. Well except for Sarah, we know where she stands and she’d had the hell pounded out of her and she’s still pissing off the Left. So, I too will be dividing up my $100 and watching and listening and hoping get past the fog of BS.
I concur. FOX mainly supports the Washington establishment Republican crony-capitalist elite viewpoint. They are definitely NOT a conservative news outlet. FOX too has done a number of hit pieces on conservative candidates and tried to marginalize their campaigns. There really isn’t a television news agency that presents the voice of Constitutional conservatives.
The mission statement of Fox News, from the early days, is don’t insult the intelligence of the audience; the let them decide what to take away from the programming. I know it rankles many of us when we hear something stupid from contributors Juan Williams or Lesley Marshall or Bob Beckel. Or, when Shepard Smith goes off on a bender. By the same token, just because you’re a conservative does not prevent someone from saying something stupid … like when Eric Bolling suggested nearly every postal employee is earning the same amount in retirement as they were on the job. If that were the case, someone didn’t tell that my dad when he retired from the USPS with 25 years after retiring from the Army. Bolling also forgot to mention that most USPS employees are veterans.
If Mickey Kaus and Mark Levin expect Fox News to be the conservative news channel, they’re making the same mistake when the Dems co-opted the MSM.
Fox News is probably the closest to what we expect a real news organization to be doing, including telling us the things we don’t want to hear or we disagree with.
@David:
I might agree with you if it wasn’t for all the pro-establishment Republican bias that tends to undercut or discount conservatives, and that FOX also plays the “conventional wisdom” manipulation game. But no, FOX has far too much commentary even on it’s supposed “news segments” for me to consider it as being what a “real news organization” should be.
I also disagree with the all establishment Republican’s on Fox’s assumptions that being a “fiscal conservative” allows one to wear the mantle of “conservative.” Even their far left twit Geraldo Rivera calls himself a “fiscal conservative” but at least honestly recognizes himself to be a social “liberal” progressive on all other issues. Bill O’Reilly amusingly, and somewhat hypocritically on his “No Spin Zone” (as with the rest of his program,) tries to pretend he is a conservative, all the while while he continually bloviates and spins to the establishment view.