Shocker, Stunner, Surprise! How the media is destroying its own credibility.
The mainstream media has been writing its own obituary for years now. We who observe Cuba very closely have documented how the press has made a Faustian bargain with the castro regime, surrendering its independence for "access". Any reasonable person would ask, "if they can't report what's really going on, what are they doing there?"
Despite the fact that I have friends and family that work in the mainstream media I've come to the conclusion that most of the industry is biased and dumb. As Bernard Goldberg has documented in his great books, the media is a herd of lemmings that follows the New York Times and Washington post. That's why we get such a uniform view of the world from most of the media and why alternatives such as the conservative internet and Fox News have been so successful.
All of the media is trumpeting this election as very close. That's the story of the day and they keep repeating it. I'm not so sure. I went out on a limb about a month ago and predicted a 5-7 point popular vote win for Mitt Romney. I'm still convinced that Romney will win by a sizeable margin. I have documented how the polls are showing this race as very close despite the fact that Romney is winning independents in those polls by great margins. My thesis is that with that kind of lead among independents, Obama needs an incredible turnout among Democratic partisans to win, a turnout he's unlikely to get.
There's a lot of reason to think that many Obama voters from 2008 will switch to Romney this time around, one of which is the newspaper endorsements that Romney has garnered. Now I don't think newspaper endorsements amount to anything in terms of votes but I'd argue that it would by hard to find a more liberal cross-section of America than the combined membership of editorial boards of the country's newspapers. I've documented how many of them have jumped off the Obama bandwagon and the New York Daily News and Newsday are just the latest. If people of their political stripe are jumping ship imagine how many ordinary voters have had enough of this president.
If I'm wrong, critics of this blog will laugh and point fingers at me. Fine, I'm willing to put up with that. But what if I'm right and Romney wins a decisive victory? How will the media cover it?
I expect that they will bill it as a "huge surprise." Bold headlines will proclaim how Romney pulled off a "stunning" surprise victory. Of course it will be surprising to the journalists because they haven't been objectively looking at the facts. They've been living in their bubble, unquestioningly listening to their soothsayers like Nate Silver.
But it won't really be a surprise. Gas is at $4 a gallon. Officially unemployment is just under 8% and the underemployment numbers are far, far worse. We've added more than $5 trillion in debt in the last four years. Real median household income is down. Thousands of weapons were allowed to go to drug cartels which caused a bloodbath along the border, killing a border patrol agent and there's been no accountability. Iran is four years closer to being a nuclear power. The greater middle east is in flames and our Ambassador to Libya, along with three other Americans, is dead with no explanations as to how this could have happened beyond blaming the creator of a supposedly offensive YouTube video. Even the president's signature accomplishment, Obamacare was and remains unpopular with a majority of Americans.
The ONLY reason the polls look close is because the pollsters are getting substantially more responses from Democrats than Republicans, Democratic response rates that exceed even the high water mark of the 2008 election. I trust the polling industry to lick its wounds and make corrections to better forecast next time around. But what of the news media that clung to those polls to the exclusion of every other piece of evidence including the abandonment of Obama by many of their own editorial colleagues? They won't be so eager to learn from their mistakes.
The earth is moving under our feet and the news industry will be the last to know. So when you see those headlines about the "shocker" on Wednesday morning you'll know that they are just more words in the obituary of the country's liberal media.
You look at the polls coming from the MSM and then you look at the voting blocks that went majority to Obama in 2008 and now have switched their majority to Romney and then you realize that the numbers simply don't stack up in Obama's favor, not matter what the MSM and the Democrats say.
You look at the substantial number of endorsements Obama got back in 2008 that now have gone to Romney (including the liberal NY Daily News) and a clearer picture emerges regardless what the MSM and the Democrats want you to believe.
Plus we are witnessing higher voter's enthusiasm among Romney's supporters than Obama, and the picture clears even more.
What we cannot predict yet is what those final numbers will be...
FFC, the one distinction I would make is that many of the blocs Obama got in 2008 he will still win in 2012, just not by as much. Erosion.
Understood Henry, but it looks like the independents/undecided are going in greater numbers to Romney and this is the group that will ultimate decide this election.
Add the erosion you just mentioned to these numbers and it becomes more obvious that Barry has to be behind in the total numbers.
Look at the Drudge site and see that it just posted both Gallup and Rasmussen Romney up by one percent just a day before the election.
I hope you're right Henry, I just don't feel good about tomorrow. Perhaps it is the pessimist in me that has watched Cuba for 40 years ... I'm always fearful of dumb people in large groups.
It’s really astounding that the MSM could stray so far from what is clearly supposed to be its job and its obligation to the public, because even apart from moral or ethical considerations (which it has evidently rationalized away), the fraud was bound to become inescapably obvious eventually, and only idiots would bother with bogus journalism, let alone support it financially.
The key factors in this degenerative process, which has been progressing steadily for many years, are the adoption of leftist ideology as a virtual religion and the astonishing, ironclad arrogance of its practitioners. Both factors are based on delusional reasoning, if I may be allowed that oxymoron. This explains the dismissal of any and all evidence that contradicts the leftist narrative or agenda, whereby such evidence is either ignored, covered up, denied or distorted.
As Henry notes, Cuban exiles have long been exquisitely sensitive to media bias due to suffering its consequences for over half a century, but our crying foul has been largely ignored, because we were seen as too peripheral, and the media has deliberately marginalized us as much as possible for obvious reasons. The fact remains, however, that Cuban exiles are exceedingly well qualified to detect left-wing fairy tales as well as leftist smears and hatchet jobs, and the same goes for creeping socialism.
I hope and pray that, for the sake of all Americans, enough people wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late. I don’t believe most of the usual media suspects can ever be trusted again, but I suppose if the status quo is rejected forcefully enough, they may have no choice but to “straighten up,” however grudgingly. Still, the worst offenders are clearly too far gone to be salvageable, and they fully deserve to be unequivocally rejected. The story of cleaning up the Aegean Stables definitely comes to mind.
When 50 % of the population decides they can vote for $$$ from the other 50 % then democracy doesn't work. It's 2 wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner.
Democracy may end up killing our REPUBLIC. I hope I'm wrong.
For instance, nobody would say that 60 % of the population should be able to vote to enslave the other 40 % ... it begs the question then, is having the most votes always what is best?
If you and your wife have 5 kids, should all 7 of you vote on what to have for dinner, and the majority wins, even if the 5 kids want doritos every night. Now this is not to excuse a dictator POS like Castro because he is the opposite of what I believe - but why should the "masses" be the best judge of what is right? That is why you need a constitutional republic with very limitied powers that NOBODY can take or vote away.
Democracy without pluralism is worthless. You can vote yourself right into sharia law.
Sandy Lyon is a former reporter for Ted Fonda's Communist News Network. She has gone public to expose the fact that CNN accepts money both from the white house and foreign nations' regimes to suppress unflattering truths and report only those 'facts' which make them look good.
Thirty something years ago the metro-marxist media's relentless attacks against President Reagan and the Second Ammendment made it clear they'd lie about anything and suppress any truth to push their leftist agenda.
I kicked them out of my living room and have yet to miss them.
Kudos to Ms. Lyon, as mentioned and linked to on www dot Marshallfrank dot com 'frankly speaking' this week in his article re Hillary should come clean.
Which she won't, of course, and the press will continue to cover for her and her husband, just as they lied their way thru the 90s.