Did You Witness the Death of Journalism?

The Presidential election of 2008 lasted more than a year and marked a very important historical point for the journalism industry. It’s death.

If you hadn’t noticed, the “mainstream media” or so it’s called has openly leaned left for a long period of time. For much of that time they were able to plausibly deny that they held a liberal bias, but over the past few years it has become more generally accepted and even admitted that major news outlets hold a left leaning bias. For example the term “liberal media” has deservedly gained legitimacy over the terms of the Bush Administration.

But somewhere during the 2008 Presidential election a change occured in journalism that went beyond bias into the territory of actively working to get a specific candidate elected. And not only did the mainstream media work on behalf of Barack Obama to get him elected, but they also actively attempted to destroy the character and career of his most visible opponent, Sarah Palin.

Filmmaker John Ziegler has documented this occurance in a film that I would recommend every American watch, Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted. In it he takes viewers through the timeline of events detailing how, when, and why the media decided Obama was their nominee over Hillary, how helping the Democrat nominee (whoever it would be) was a pre-conceived notion, and the disparity of the coverage between Obama and Sarah Palin upon her arrival on the national politcal scene.

Ziegler does a fantastic job of putting together relavent news clips, headlines, and interviews to illustrate how far the media was willing to go to get their man elected and to damage Sarah Palin. The most anger inspiring moments deal with major news stories that were purposefully withheld by the media out of fear that it would damage Obama, while stories that were not even true about Palin got reported (e.g., that her youngest son was actually not hers). The movie ends with clips of Ziegler demonstrating the effects of this irresponsible reporting on people who ended up voting for Obama and Biden. It is undeniable that the effect was favorable to Obama and hurt McCain/Palin.

This movie will make informed people angry when they see how the media can manipulate an election cycle so profoundly, keeping a large portion of voters in the dark regarding vital information on some candidates while spreading rumors about others. My hope is that people all over the country start gathering together to watch this movie and discuss their feelings on its message. If we are to alter this course that the liberal media has set, it will start with people assembling and coming up with ideas for change.

You can order Media Malpractice here: http://mediamalpracticemovie.com/order-media-malpractice.asp