What’s News, and What Isn’t

http://www.powerlineblog.com ^ | february 18, 2013 | John Hinderaker

[lowbridge]

The liberal media manifest their bias not primarily by writing things that aren’t true–although that sometimes happens–but rather, by selecting what they do and do not report as news. Major scandals and events of great importance are simply ignored if they do not reflect well on the Democratic Party, while minor stories receive endless attention if they advance the liberal agenda. You could illustrate this every day; here are a few examples from today’s news.

One of the most absurd non-stories of recent years involved a 2011 proposal by Scott Walker’s administration to sell more than 30 decrepit power plants that were owned by the State of Wisconsin and used to heat schools, prisons and so on. Selling the power plants would, with luck, have raised a little money and relieved the state of the need to pay for costly environmental upgrades, but liberals theorized–with absolutely no support of any kind–that Koch Industries, a minor supporter of Governor Walker in his 2010 campaign, wanted to buy the plants and that the proposal represented some kind of sweetheart deal. In fact, no unit of Koch Industries is in the business of operating such plants, and when asked, Koch said that it had no interest in them. Yet the smear, repeated by left-wing spear carriers like Paul Krugman, refused to die. We wrote about it here and elsewhere.

[RetiredTexasVet]

It’s ironic because there is so much news. We have the most corrupt administration since FDR and the MSM trip over themselves to ignore it. They could do a story a week for a year and would still have stories left over. The MSM is worth about one bucket of warm spit!

[Chad N. Freud]

“The liberal media manifest their bias not primarily by writing things that aren’t true–although that sometimes happens–but rather, by selecting what they do and do not report as news.”

Spot on.

Level One in becoming an educated consumer of news is recognizing the spin in what is printed or broadcast.

Level Two is recognizing the spin in the *choice* of what is printer or broadcast.

It’s infuriating that you have to be on your guard all the time.

But, as for what the left tries to keep from being broadcast: there lies the value of FreeRepublic. The stories get out there. And not only that, but we can confirm there is a community of like-minded people out there, too.