Media

Last week, the Culture and Media Institute released a report entitled "Baptism by Fire" which complained that media outlets were covering the faith issues as they relate to the Republican primary battle in a different manner then it was covered during the Democratic primary battle in 2008:

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion.

ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage.

The Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field.

The obvious response to this allegation would be to point out that the media probably writes a lot more about the faith of Republican candidates because Republicans candidates regularly use their faith as part of their campaigns.

After all, Rick Perry just released two ads about his faith and organized a massive public prayer rally earlier this year, while Michele Bachmann was just on James Dobson's radio program talking about the importance of a "biblical worldview."  For his part, Newt Gingrich regularly uses his faith as part of his campaign while Mitt Romeny's Mormonism continues to be an issue to various Religious Right activists.  In fact, just last month, most of the Republican contenders gathered for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" hosted by several Religious Right groups where they spent several hours discussing nothing but their faith.

So the reason the press writes more about the faith of Republican candidates probably has a lot to do with the fact that Republican candidates make faith a large part of their campaigns ... but admitting that would pretty much undermine the entire premise of CMI's report, which is why, when CMI's Matt Philbin was on The Janet Mefferd Program yesterday and she raised this rather obvious point, he struggled to explain that it was still a double standard because Democrats are "supposedly" just as religious as Republicans:

Mefferd: Now I wonder if that fact that you have a number of GOP hopefuls who are very, you know, open about their faith - you have Michele Bachmann, you have Rick Perry, you have Herman Cain (you have Herman Cain,) you have Mitt Romney - could it be construed that faith is more of an issue in this election because they are more candidates talking about it?

Philbin: Well, in any GOP primary battle, they do talk about it more, certainly, then Democrats do. In Iowa, they're going to evangelical conservatives and they certainly are not going to be reticent about their faith. But the problem is that the Democrats are, supposedly, just as religious, they have a need to appeal to almost the very same people, so for the networks not to cover the religion of the Democrats while they are covering the religion of the Republicans is a strange double standard.

One of CMI's recommendations in this report is that "reporters should refrain from injecting religion where it doesn't belong" ... but apparently reporters should also be writing a lot about the faith views of Democratic candidates even if those views tend not to play nearly as prominent a role in their campaigns as compared to Republicans. 

Last night, Politico broke the news that during Herman Cain’s tenure as director of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s, two women left the trade association after settling sexual harassment claims against Cain. Cain has since denied the charges, accusing the media of leading a “witch hunt” against him and responding to one reporter by asking, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

Like clockwork, the Right’s major media critics are rallying to Cain’s defense.

Brent Bozell of the Media Research Council even tied the allegations against Cain to the discredited accusations that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick when he was attorney general of Arkansas. Bozell argues that while the Cain story is a “hit piece,” the media should have given more coverage to the Broaddrick allegations:

Sadly, Herman Cain’s predictions have come true. In May he stated that he was ‘ready for the same high-tech lynching that [Clarence Thomas] went through -- for the good of this country.’ That's what Politico is doing with its unsubstantiated and thoroughly hypocritical hit piece against him. Anyone in the press that gives this story oxygen is equally hypocritical.

In the eyes of the liberal media, Herman Cain is just another uppity black American who has had the audacity to leave the liberal plantation. So they must destroy him, just as they tried destroying Clarence Thomas. The richest irony here is that the same media that refused to cover evidence of an alleged rape by a state Attorney General who became President now are running stories based on unnamed sources, about offenses that aren’t a fraction as grave. But one was a liberal Democrat, the other a conservative Republican -- hence the double standard.

Rush Limbaugh is also using the Cain case to attack Clinton. Limbaugh said that coverage of the charges, which were originally made in the 1990s, amount to a racist media trying to bring down a black conservative:

You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you drag a dollar bill through a trailer park, you get Paula Jones.' I have everybody defending me and they're going after this black guy, and they're going after him with some of the ugliest racial stereotypes I have ever seen. That's how our side does it; we get away with it. I just love it. I love watching it."

What's next, folks? A cartoon on MSNBC showing Herman Cain with huge lips eating a watermelon? What are they gonna do next? No, Snerdley, I'm not kidding. The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us? It tells us who the real racists are, yeah, but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody. Something's going on out there. Herman Cain obviously is making some people nervous for this kind of thing to happen.

Not to be outdone, Ann Coulter said on Fox News that the left is twisting civil rights laws that were meant “to protect blacks from Democrats from the South” to help “white women from Scarsdale”:

“It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” she told Geraldo. “This is another high-tech lynching.

…

Nothing liberals fear more than a black conservative. Ask Allen West. Ask Michael Steele. Ask Clarence Thomas. And even what the allegations are here, I mean, just shows you how the civil-rights juggernaut has gone off the rails. The idea of civil rights laws to begin with ironically was to protect blacks from Democrats from the South who won’t protect them. Now it’s you know, white women from Scarsdale who say, ‘Oh, I don’t like that he called me honey.’” Coulter also questioned some of the details of the report and if they merited the definition of harassment.

“It’s not groping, it’s not touching or demanding sex,” Coulter said. “It’s that he had remarks that they found inappropriate. One is he had inappropriate gestures that were not overtly sexual. Well, what were they then? This isn’t dropping your pants and saying ‘kiss it.’ This is an outrageous attack on a black conservative who is doing extremely well and will be our vice-presidential candidate.”

On The 700 Club today, following a program on the impact of Muslim immigration in Norway, Pat Robertson went on another tirade about how the media treat Muslims. Earlier this month, Robertson and guest Robert Spencer discussed the media’s supposed anti-American and anti-Christian bias, and today Robertson attacked the media for allegedly promoting radical Islam because of their hatred for freedom and democracy and love of communism. Robertson added: “I don’t think these media people realize what they’re getting into because they’ll be the first ones to go when it’s all over with.”

Watch:

Robertson:The left-wing media are anti-Christian, they’re anti-democracy, they’re anti-the government they live in, they’re anti-the United States, anti-Norway, anti-freedom. Whether it comes out of communism I don’t know. But I don’t think those media people realize what they’re getting into because they’ll be the first to go when it’s all over with. Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t something we’re just waving a flag about. It’s real, this is real.