by Carrie Sheffield
With the GOP presidential primary gearing up and Durham report bombshells evaporating into the liberal media’s thin air, anti-conservative media bias still rears its ugly head.
Since launching his presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis has already been labeled a “toy-sized Mussolini” and an “authoritarian” by MSNBC and an arbiter of “extreme policies” by CNN.
The damning Durham report condemned both the FBI and the Department of Justice for failing to uphold the law through their investigation into allegations that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Special counsel John Durham charged there was insufficient evidence to launch the investigation.
Yet the same networks that spent years hyping this collusion myth gave scant attention to Durham’s conclusions.
Author Steve Krakauer unravels just how deeply embedded liberal media bias runs in his new book, “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People”
As he notes, the so-called “Fourth Estate” was designed to be a voice for the people and a check on power. But it’s evolved into a collection of bubble-dwelling, geographically isolated, introspection-free, cozy-with-power, “journalists” eager to advance a left-wing worldview.
Krakauer’s media analysis starts around the media maelstrom in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014 and ends around April 2022 — most of his reporting and analysis occurred during the Trump White House.
Currently executive producer of The Megyn Kelly Show and co-founder and editor of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast, Krakauer’s a media veteran of CNN, TheBlaze, Mediaite, and NBC — along with the highly-ranked journalism school at Syracuse University.
While Krakauer’s critical of the press, he says “I also love the media, and don’t want to tear it down. I want it to get better.” Krakauer generally disagrees with press granting anonymity to sources for carte blanche takedowns. So his book only features on-the-record interviews – 26 total – ranging from Ben Smith and Piers Morgan to Salena Zito, Olivia Nuzzi, and Ali Velshi.
Uncovered correctly identifies both the conceptual and real-world problems with today’s media–which suffers from an enormous trust and credibility gap among conservatives
One example he gives is the problem of “Geographic Bias,” a problem quantitatively identified by Pew Research proving that Middle America is grossly underrepresented in journalism.
Krakauer skewers the broken financial incentive structure, which rewards sensationalizing. A case study Krakauer examines is the deluge of sensationalized media coverage following the sad death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
“In March 2015, the Obama justice department would issue their report on the incident, and the Ferguson police department generally,” Krakauer writes. “They cleared [Police Officer Darren] Wilson of wrong-doing, concluding Wilson’s version of the events was accurate: Brown punched him, tried to grab his gun, started running away, then turned and charged at him. And most notably, there was no evidence that ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ was ever uttered.”
Yet, the damage to our national discourse was already done. As Krakauer notes, thanks to an irresponsible media, many Americans still bought into the lie of the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative,” and this further corroded racial trust.
Krakauer also lays out the problem of what he calls “Anti-Speech Activism” by the media, perhaps best illustrated by the unholy alliance between Big Tech and Big Media during the 2020 election, when both entities colluded to suppress the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop.
“Fox News host Tucker Carlson told me he knew instantly the laptop was real, because emails between him and Hunter Biden were on it,” Krakauer writes. ‘The second those emails started circulating among reporters, someone sent me one from me, because I had known him,’ he told me. ‘He had quit drinking. I had quit drinking. I was talking about sobriety. He was struggling with it, you know, and I still feel sorry for him actually.’”
A whopping 67% of registered voters said they believe Hunter Biden selling access to his father is an impeachable offense for President Joe Biden, according to polling by Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and Harris, a firm run by Democrat Mark Penn. Unfortunately, the liberal media wasn’t committed to letting voters hear evidence around this case.
Interspersed throughout Uncovered are deep dives on topics like the Cuomo Show, the Tom Cotton op-ed, and Jeffrey Epstein all worth examining.
Krakauer’s book should be required reading for every journalism student aspiring to public service journalism. The Left’s media allies frightfully claim America’s democracy is under attack.
But democracy’s Greek root demos means “people.” If members of the liberal media refuse to accurately portray millions of conservative people — even though they claim to be enlightened and tolerant — who is the threat to democracy?
“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” The Washington Post preaches. That should include their darkness about half of America’s citizens.
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Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice and Tony Blankley Fellow for American Exceptionalism at The Steamboat Institute.
Photo “Donald Trump Stops to Talk to the Media” by Trump White House Archived.
