Pirate's Cove

John Podhoretz discusses at the NY Post

Why Bridgegate made headlines but Obama’s IRS scandal didn’t

Most government scandals involve the manipulation of the system in obscure ways by people no one has ever heard of. That is why George Washington Bridgegate is nearly a perfect scandal — because it is comprehensible and (as they say in Hollywood) “relatable” to everyone who has ever been in a car. This is the reason this one is not going to go away so easily, even if one accepts the contention that Gov. Chris Christie had nothing whatsoever to do with it. (snip)

And yet, you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents. (snip)

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

The obvious difference is, as we all know, Obama’s a Democrat, Christie’s a Republican. Podhoretz goes into even more detail, including the intimate links between the media and people who work for Team Obama. Obviously, liberals, and squishy “Republicans” who tend to help Democrats more than Republicans, disagree. They say there’s not bias. Here’s Steven Taylor and the Liberalized Outside The Beltway

To begin with, I reject the premise because the IRS story did make headlines.  In fact, not only was there extensive reporting on the IRS story, there were congressional hearings.  As such, the notion that the IRS business was ignored is simply incorrect.

It continues on in that foolish liberal fashion, but, let’s note that there were headlines for stories like the IRS. But to quibble over the article headline, which Podhoretz may not have written (standard practice in the media), while ignoring the reality of the headlines of those stories being minimized is foolish. A goodly chunk of the articles over the Obama scandals were intended to reduce the impact of the scandals, to protect Obama, his team, and Democrats, while excoriating Republicans, marginalizing them, making the scandal about them, while reducing the actual scandal itself. That’s much different coverage than with “lane closures”.

Taylor further fails to note the difference in the amount of coverage.

The reason that Fast and Furious, the IRS controversy, and Benghazi have not resulted in the outcomes that many conservatives would like is not because they have not received adequate attention in the media (they have—as well as congressional attention), it is because those situations are not what many conservatives want them to be.

How would we know, when only a few brave reporters did their job? Folks like Sharyl Attkinsson, who has done great work investigating, and been subjected to foul mouthed abuse by the White House. Univision, which produced a report on Fast and Furious, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths, plus woundings. There was a collective yawn in the American media over the report.

All one has to do is ask a simple question: if Bush was president, or any other Republican, how would the media cover these same scandals? Consider the wall to wall, breathless, over the top coverage over Abu Ghraib, where low level soldiers somewhat abused prisoners in their care. This was blamed in the media by the media solely on Bush and Rumsfeld. Were any of Obama’s scandals treated in this manner? There’s your answer to media bias.

Crossed at Right Wing News.