When it takes a Hollywood actor to call them (the media) on it, we know there’s a problem.
It’s worth noting when someone as distinguished as actor Jon Voight directly warned media Saturday to quit lying in this election, if only for the sake of democracy. But lying is exactly what’s been stepped up.
The latest manifestation of media bias was a bizarre Associated Press “analysis” claiming racism in Sarah Palin’s warning over the weekend about Barack Obama’s long association with Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground terror organization.
AP reporter Douglass K. Daniels claimed that Palin’s questioning of Obama’s association with the white radical child of privilege was “racially tinged.” The verbal stink bomb keyed off Palin’s statement that Obama “is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see it as a force of good in this world.” To Daniels, this was the same as saying Obama is “not like us.”
It was the latest instance of increasingly undisguised media efforts to act as an unofficial branch of the Obama campaign.
Actor Jon Voight, who was at the Palin rally in Southern California Saturday, pointed this out as the media clamored to interview him ahead of the event.
“What I would like to see is the press put partisanship aside,” Voight said. “This is crucial, because it otherwise does not allow people to make informed voting decisions. Somebody’s got to be able to report things properly. Every slander and every rumor ever produced, they report like news!”
…Was the “racial tinge” given to Palin’s remarks a warning to the new Republican voters to get back to the Democratic fold? Or was it a way to silence discussion about Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist whose reemergence in the news is panicking the Obama camp?
In contrast to the cheering at Saturday’s event, reporters in the two press sections grumbled about hating Palin and assured one another they were only there only by assignment. Just being professional, some may argue, but we saw plenty of cheering from the press at the Democratic Convention in Denver.