By Brad Friedman on 9/22/2004, 12:31pm PT  

Following up on my essay yesterday on the disingenuous and hypocritical charge by partisan Republicans that there is such a thing as a "Liberal" media bias. My article detailed loads of recent examples of bias from the so-called "Liberal" media that were never challenged by Republicans because, as it turned out, those "mistakes" from such "liberal" bastions as The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN etc. actually supported (and in fact drew from) the Republican Talking Points of the moment.

Such numerous mistakes and/or bias was just fine by them when it just happened to support their policies. It's only a problem for them when, as with the CBS story, the errors are in a story that may hurt them. At which time they start yipping and yapping, "See?! That's what we've been saying all along about Liberal medial bias!!!"

What complete phonies these guys are.

Anyway, while the stories I pointed to were recent examples, here's a few more historical examples of same from Gene Lyons (link via Atrios):

I saw pundit Andrew Sullivan on CNN clucking over CBS' mistakes. In 1994, when Sullivan edited The New Republic, it ran a cover story accusing Bill Clinton of corruptly enriching his wife's law firm by changing Arkansas usury laws as governor. In fact, the deed was done by public referendum under Clinton's Republican predecessor.

On Dec. 19, 1995, ABC News' "Nightline" aired a deceptively edited video clip of a Hillary Clinton press conference about Whitewater. It accused her of lying about the very information electronically deleted from her remarks. No consequences followed.

On May 4, 1996, The New York Times published an article with a deceptive Associated Press byline stating that an FBI agent's trial testimony described a $50,000 windfall to Whitewater from an illegal loan. As the actual AP article stipulated, the agent gave no such testimony. Many accusatory editorials and columns followed, helping Kenneth Starr to prolong his fruitless investigation of Bill Clinton's finances for years. The Times has never acknowledged its blunder.

Bob Somerby's dailyhowler.com has documented countless instances of reporters parroting and sometimes inventing nonsensical tales making Al Gore look like a big phony during the 2000 campaign—that he claimed he'd "invented the Internet," for example, or falsely said he'd inspired the movie "Love Story."

Both make-believe, both repeated ad infinitum by pundits who feared no consequences because Democrats don't get it, while Republicans protect their own and savage anybody who gets in their way.

Yup.

Republican phonies (like frequent BRAD BLOG commentors Paul and Ed) may now start clucking their nonsense again here in the Comments section. Or, as is more likely, they'll avoid comment on this article as they are want to do when they have run out of Rush-approved Talking Point explanations, apologies, justifications and outright lies.

(To be fair, it's not just Paul and Ed who are willfully blind phony parroting stooges, they just happen to be the BRAD BLOG's own personal willfully blind phony parroting stooges, so we like to give them full credit where credit is due.)

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