While the GOP was wandering off the path, losing itself in the wilderness, Democrats capitalized on the opportunity and seized the reigns of power at a time when the media should have been examining the real reasons why our country nearly plunged into an economic catastrophe. Instead, our most revered "fourth branch" breached it's own rules of objectivity and jumped into bed with candidate Obama, accepting his untested proposals at face value instead of doing their homework while ignoring or criticizing proposals worth looking at from conservative leaders who today appear positioned to bring the GOP out of the wilderness and up to speed with the American people.
Lambs led to slaughter didn't act up until the moment of realization was upon them. And as the moment came, they organized TEA Party protests, exercised their rights as citizens at town hall meetings and became engaged in the political dialogue at such a level as never seen before. Those once dubbed "the silent majority" by Richard Nixon were labeled "teabaggers" by media and liberal elites who were stunned that they would dare to speak up against those who control our country politically in Washington, culturally in Hollywood and intellectually in New York.
Rather than look into what the motivating factors were and reporting on them, the media chose to to marginalize the grassroots and the resurgency in the conservative movement as if they could just whisk it a way with their own brand of "facts" and world view. From their ivory towers they were unable to notice that the luster they put on Obama's electoral victory has worn off.
Should Obama fail, it won't be because the media abandoned him. It will be because the people abandoned the media.
The one entity that our Founders thought would step to the plate for "we the people" failed us. Instead of informing us and acting as the watchdogs they traditionally have been, the media simply joined that which it was supposed to be watchdog over and became complicit in the effort to "fundamentally transform America" into something that our Founders would have never recognized.
The reason why the Republican party took such hits in the last election is because the press was a wall they could not get around. In the game of information dissemination, the McCain strategy was traditional: I state my positions, my opponent states his and the stenographer takes it down so the people can read it and decide . They didn't count on the stenographer doctoring the printout in favor of the opponent.
The loser in this of course was the American people who made a bad decision based on bad information. "We the people" figured it out on our own, though. That explains the torches and pitchforks outside the Capitol on 9/12. The media lied to us and we are p-ssed.
Polls show that the wall is crumbling now and the movement is getting closer to storming the castle.
The Pew Research Center found in its polling data that "The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows." In September 2009, only 29% of those polled said the press gets the facts straight and even worse only 18% said they dealt fairly with all sides.
The poster child for this assessment is Sarah Palin. The
Fox News Poll today shows that Sarah Palin has gone from 38% favorable 51% unfavorable in July to 47% favorable to 42% unfavorable today. Yeah, I know, polls are polls; but this one is significant not in how Palin has jumped but why. Her book tour is helping her numbers because people are getting to know her unfiltered. The real question that jumped out was this one: Do you think Sarah Palin has been treated fairly or unfairly by the press? 61% say unfairly.
Elizabeth Scalia writes:
The American people have realized that they were played—by the very press charged with the public trust of information-gathering and presentment—into a bait-and-switch. They are not going to listen to the press, anymore. [...] Palin is that outlet, now Bush is gone, and the putzes in the press can’t mock, spite, roll-their-eyes or seethe enough about her. But their mugging and huffing and mocking is not working, this time.
If Barack Obama was elected with the blessing of the press and now most people think the press is unfair, what does that tell you for his future and the future of the Democrat party?
This underlying distrust of the media has made people turn away from the major networks and newspapers. They now look toward social media and the blogosphere where they communicate freely and unfiltered, passing along facts and debunking myths. Facebook and Twitter have proven to be the big guns that conservatives didn't have in the 2008 election. Now they are firing away relentlessly as they soften the target for the ground assault in 2010.
The Democrats and the elites have a lot to be concerned about.