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Media Bias Tag

Donald Trump's accusation that the Obama administration "wiretapped" his phones and/or Trump Tower, continues to reverberate. The accusations have refocused the argument over Trump's alleged Russia ties, which amount at this point only to innuendo, into a discussion of Obama surveillance practices. As discussed in my prior post, which is getting a lot of attention, the focus on the term "wiretap" and whether Obama "ordered" surveillance under FISA, may be a distraction, Some curious language in both Trump’s “wiretap” accusation and Obama’s defense. The media, however, is being dragged into another direction, one focusing on Obama administration surveillance practices. This morning Donald Trump, through Sean Spicer, called for a congressional investigation of Obama administration election surveillance.

We spend a lot of our time correcting misreporting, slopping reporting, and reporting presented as objective when it clearly is not. Increasingly, it's apparent the attempt to oust newly-minted Attorney General Sessions was a good, old-fashioned media hit job. Who was behind it, we don't know. These things seldom happen on their own, especially in the age of a completely incurious press. The good folks over at the Media Research Center studied media coverage of the Sessions incident and compared it with the amount of coverage previous Attorney General Eric Holder received when he was in contempt of Congress. The results? Well, they're pretty much exactly what you'd expect them to be, sadly.

CNN is upset Trump misled them about his plans to support a pathway to legalisation for DREAMers. Before his Joint Address Tuesday night, Trump met with reporters and talked about the need for "compromise" in the coming immigration legislation. CNN reported Tuesday:
President Donald Trump wants to pass an immigration reform bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US.

I didn't watch the Oscars. Why would I want to watch smug people who hate me congratulate themselves on how great they are? I'd rather vomit blood. Maybe that's not a fair analogy. I'd rather crawl on my stomach over hot coals covered with broken glass. Yeah, that's the ticket. I wasn't alone, as viewership hit a 9-year low, just a little more than half the audience in 1998. I was aware, however, that the NY Times planned to run a pretentious ad called "Truth" as a retort to Donald Trumps hits on fake news and, particularly, the NY Times.

The White House Correspondents Association annual dinner is referred to by the members as "Nerd Prom." Is there possibly a more annoying title in the world? They are not nerds. But they do think of themselves as being smarter than their readers and viewers. It's a disgusting spectacle of insiders patting insiders on the back, and the in-the-know crowd rubbing of self-important elbows. Inevitably, "conservative" correspondents hoping to be accepted into the fold attend. Philip Bump of WaPo nailed it with this 2015 post, ‘Nerd Prom’ is a gross, self-congratulatory name for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Stop.:

Democrats and the progressive left have a propensity for using children as political props to push for everything from carbon taxes and gun control to illegal immigration and transgender bathrooms.  There seem only two domestic issues that the left refuses to consider in relation to children:  abortion and the national debt. Hillary used children in her "role model" ad against then-presidential candidate Trump, and now NBC News has compiled a video entitled "Dear Mr. President" in which they present children expressing their fear of President Trump. This anti-Trump ad hard-hitting news segment, however, is being called out as propaganda.  Mostly because it is.

Offering no explanation, the White House excluded CNN, Buzzfeed, the LA Times, the New York Times, and several foreign outlets from its informal press gaggle Friday. Fox and other network outlets were permitted attendance, as were larger right-learning outlets like the Washington Times and One America News Network. Naturally, excluded outlets are less than thrilled. Jake Tapper is one of the better offerings from the cable news world, but he's wrong that the White House stonewalling overtly hostile press is "Un-American."

Huffington Post hates Donald Trump. Af first, it refused to cover his primary campaign in the Politics section, putting coverage instead in the Entertainment section. Of course, the joke was on HuffPo, since that move proved it wasn't a serious news organization. Then, HuffPo added a "disclaimer" to the end of each column about Trump: "Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.” That didn't stop Trump from winning the presidency. How far will HuffPo go to hurt Trump? Far enough to delete a post that credited Trump with being right in his comments about Sweden having problems due to mass immigration and migration.

The MSM is falsely portraying President Trump as having alleged on Saturday that a "terror" attack had occurred the night before in Sweden. Take, for example, this NBC story headlined "Donald Trump Explains Sweden Terror Comment That Baffled a Nation." In addition to the misleading headline, the story includes a video clip of President Trump making his remarks. The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads "President Trump appears to refer to a non-existent terror incident in Sweden." But if you listen to the president's remarks, you'll see that he never mentioned terror. He said: "The bottom line: we've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden! They took in large numbers, they're having problems like they never thought possible."

In a rare appearance on FOX News Sunday, Rush Limbaugh addressed a number of Trump related issues including the reasons for his loyal support, his battle with the media, and who's obstructing him in Washington. Here are some details from FOX News:
Limbaugh blasts news media attacks on Trump as pointless, 'kind of comical' Conservative radio star Rush Limbaugh on Sunday assailed the news media, suggesting its efforts to “destroy” Republican President Trump are “comical” and dismissing stories about Russia purportedly influencing the 2016 White House race in Trump’s favor.

Fresh off a seventy-minute press conference where he leveraged national media coverage to berate and skewer the national press corps, President Trump kicked off the weekend with another shot at political media, only this time, he used Twitter. Trump tweeted that many "fake news" outlets were not his personal enemy, but instead an "enemy of the American people." Shortly after the initial tweet, Trump deleted it, leaving many to believe he'd reconsidered his inflammatory social media post. The original tweet:

President Trump used his press conference to skewer the national press corps Thursday. He lectured the media on their ratings -- suggesting they'd fare better with consumers if they pared back the "hatred" and just presented the news. Trump coached them on the types of questions they should ask, joked about classified information saying they all have copies, and lambasted their love of "fake news." He not so politely reminded members of the media that their national approval rating is collectively lower than Congress's.

I don't know whether Donald Trump or his aides had any improper contacts with Russian Intelligence officers. Neither do you, or the media. The Intelligence Community might know, but they have provided zero facts either officially or through leaks to prove any improper, much less illegal, conduct took place. Instead, we have trial by innuendo based on there being "contacts" between Trump campaign aides and Russian intelligence.