Ever since former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani stated on Thursday that “I do not believe that the president loves America,” the people in the “mainstream media” have produced more than 8,000 articles on the comment -- which was made at a private Manhattan dinner for 60 or so political donors -- in just a few days.
That led Sean Spicer, communications director for the Republican National Committee, to release a statement on Tuesday in which he noted: “Coverage has been fueled by reporters grasping for new angles or asking any Republican in range of a microphone to respond to his comments and other unrelated questions.”
He began by indicating:
A review of news coverage from the last week using the TVEyes media monitoring database reveals that the controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation’s foreign donations, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s plot to paint president Obama as anti-Semitic and anti-woman, and Vice President Joe Biden’s Somali cab driver gaffe have generated just over 1,300 TV and radio hits combined.
Remarks made by Rudy Giuliani tallied over 8,600 hits Monday afternoon, and that number is still growing.
“Yet while the media forced potential Republican presidential candidates to weigh in on that story,” Spicer noted, “they did not do the same for potential Democrat candidates when it came to any of their party’s controversies of the week."
Not a single Democrat candidate “has been asked: 'Do you think it’s anti-Semitic to remove Wasserman Schultz as chair of the DNC?'”
Also, Spicer noted that “Hillary Clinton was not asked: 'Do you think it’s anti-woman to remove Wasserman Schultz as chair of the DNC?'”
“Likewise, when it was revealed was that Wasserman Schultz tried to sell her support for marijuana legalization in order to silence critics, prominent Democrats weren’t bombarded with questions,” he added. “And remember: This is the chair of the party and a sitting Congresswoman.”
And Joe Biden was not questioned about the appropriateness of the actions of his party’s chairwoman,” Spicer stated. “Clearly, there is a double standard.”
He then added:
And, of course, nowhere in the frenzy of the past few days has there any mention of the first person to question president Obama’s roots or patriotism: Hillary Clinton. … In the 2008 primary campaign, she wouldn’t take a stand on the president’s religion. Her campaign sought to highlight his “lack of American roots.”
“This is all just par for the course,” Spicer indicated. “A Republican former office-holder says something, and they think every Republican must answer for it. A current Democrat party leader does and says something, and it’s no one else’s problem.”
“Likewise, if a conservative commentator says something controversial, the media say it’s a reflection of the Republican Party,” the GOP official noted. “When Al Sharpton or Chris Matthews says something offensive or jaw-dropping, they draw no link to the Democrat Party.”
“Yet another example: [T]here was hardly a single headline over Bill Clinton’s travels with (registered sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, something we learned about only recently,” Spicer stated.
“There’s a pattern here, and it’s time to treat the parties equally,” the Republican stressed. “I look forward to Hillary Clinton and other potential 2016 Democrat contenders to have to answer for the actions of their fellow Democrats.”
However, Evan McMurry of the Mediaite website sharply criticized the RNC spokesman's conclusions by stating that the GOP doesn’t have a “liberal media” problem, it has a “constituency problem.”
The columnist referred to the survey Spicer quoted as “a back-of-the-napkin study” that is “the start of a major 2016 effort to finally repel the forces the right believes continually hobble its electoral chances.”
McMurry also stated:
For all the talk of liberal media bogeymen, a structural disparity between how the GOP conceives of itself publicly versus privately may be the party’s real media problem.
Politicians and their staffers saying one thing in public and another in private is as old as politics itself, … but it was toxicized in 2012, when Republican candidate Mitt Romney was recorded at a private dinner writing off 47 percent of the electorate as government-dependent moochers.
“The 'liberal media' talking point can be effective damage control in intervals, but it ultimately dead ends against the self-authored nature of these errors, whether at a dinner or on Facebook,” he noted.
Actually, the Democrats still feel they can count on the “meanstream” media to avoid or bury embarrassing things, a practice the GOP can't depend on. Thank goodness for the Fox News Channel, which is far more “fair and balanced” than any other news outlet, a fact that causes liberals to gnash their teeth at regular intervals.
