MRC's/NB's Motley on Fox & Friends to Ponder the Media's 'Culture(s) of Corruption'

By NB Staff (Bio | Archive)
January 7, 2009 - 10:03 ET

Media Research Center Director of Communications and NewsBusters.org Contributing Editor Seton Motley appeared on this morning's Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel to discuss the egregious media double standard when it comes to Republicans and Democrats misbehaving. 

Motley pointed to the media's incessant chant in 2006, the "Republican Culture of Corruption," and noted that no such parallel moniker has been affixed by the press to the Democratic Party despite a great and apparently growing number of their members having become embroiled in scandals.

Motley "defended" New Mexico Governor and recently withdrawn Commerce Secretary designee Bill Richardson, currently under federal investigation for swapping large government contracts for large campaign contributions, saying Richardson was only engaging in his form of commerce, preparing for his (almost) next gig.

(Motley wrote about this on December 9th, 2008.)

 


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Corruption

January 7, 2009 - 10:57 ET by KC Mulville

What strikes me is the brazenness, and the media's willingness to protect them. Barney Frank is at the center of the mortgage problem, yet he lectures others. We hear about how Senator Dodd gets sweetheart deals, and yet he appears on CNN, blaming the administration for not stopping the kind of sweetheart deals that he himself is getting.

  • Corruption has several levels. On one level, you have the outright thieves who know they're stealing, and do it anyway. On the other hand, you have people who don't think they're stealing, but who are simply being "creative" within the moral and legal boundaries of their jobs. They only get caught when their creativity strays too far, and they write it off simply as a mistake, not a sin or crime.
  • Frank and Dodd obviously don't think they've done anything wrong, even though they're involved in incidents that display every mark of corruption. They overlook those appearances of corruption because they expect others to see their motives as unquestionably pure, and if there were mistakes, well, mistakes happen.
  • That's where media bias shows through. When Democrats are caught crossing these lines, the media assumes that the Democrats' motives are pure, so they treat the incidents as mistakes. With Republicans, the motives are assumed to be heinous and evil, so the media treats the incidents as crimes and sins.

The standard media excuse is that only the Republicans are corrupt, because the Republicans rant about values. So, when they get caught in any compromising situations, the Republicans are being hypocritical in addition to being adulterous or cravenly greedy. But given that logic, that means the Democrats are better because they don't impose any values, and therefore can't be accused of hypocrisy. Isn't that a great plan? Ignore values, and you can't be tagged as a hypocrite for betraying your values.

kc,

January 7, 2009 - 11:10 ET by Agnostic

I know what you are saying but even they are even more hypocritical than you are giving them credit for. The liberals due espouse values and then ignore the role of liberals when they break their own set of values. Look at their AGW heroes living in multiple mansions with private jets. Look at their Hollywood supporters that want to raise the taxes to help the poor while all of their private income is sheltered behind corporate taxation loop-holes. Non-violence Vs. Domestic Terrorist. PETA putting more animals down than animal shelters. Etc...

A person may be won over with logic and reason but the masses must be bought with spectacle and platitudes. - 2008 Elections

Agreed

January 7, 2009 - 11:59 ET by KC Mulville

Actually, that's a major theme in Ann Coulter's new book. The Left pushed a new set of values in the fifties and sixties, like the feminist "values" where men are needed as much as fish need bicycles. And look where those values got us ... they drove men from any legal rights within families, which naturally drove them away. Now we have a whole class of single mothers raising children, and Coulter documents how disastrous that has been.

I think Coulter said the other night that 70% of the inmates in prisons come from single-parent families. I'm assuming that the vasy majority of those single parents are female, which shows why fathers are, in fact, needed desperately. (Disclaimer: I'm a father of four, and I consider my role to be just as crucial as their mother.)

Liberal policies consistently trip over the law of unintended consequences, as Coulter says. It's still going on. Want proof? There's an article in Slate magazine from Judy Resnick, a Yale law professor, where she insists that Obama's first move must be to allow "the DoJ [Justice Department] to dedicate a group of its staff lawyers to the task of removing barriers to court for all sorts of people."

A law professor thinks we need more lawsuits. No conflict of interest there, eh?

Does anyone really believe that the problem in our country is that we don't have enough litigation? We need the opposite, i.e., tort reform. But to get that reform passed, we have to get Congress to pass the legislation ... but Congress is composed of lawyers.

I agree, Agnostic, that the Left has plenty of values. And you're right - the values are bad ones.