Posted on August 19, 2011 by
John Hinderaker in
Media Bias
Darrell Issa Sticks It to the Times
Darrell Issa is a brilliant businessman who made a lot of money the old-fashioned way: he earned it, rather than marrying or inheriting it as so many Democratic politicians do. Which is another way of saying that he is just the kind of man we need in Washington.
The Left, of course, doesn’t see it that way. The New York Times hates Issa because, as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he has launched several investigations of wrongdoing that have embarrassed the Obama administration. So ace reporter Eric Lichtblau, no longer occupied with illegally leaking national defense secrets now that a Democrat occupies the White House, went looking for dirt on Issa.
“Looking” isn’t exactly the right word; let’s say he went “trolling.” We have written a number of times about how the relatively respectable left-wing organs, like the New York Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC, rely on the far-left blogosphere for material. They monitor the crazy stuff that the Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, Think Progress, etc., spew out, and if they see something they think they can turn into a plausible story, they steal it.
That is what happened here. It started at Think Progress, where cub reporter Lee Fang
wrote an article in March claiming that Congressman Issa had secured earmarks for highway construction that benefited properties he owns in his San Diego district. Lichtblau picked up Fang’s “research” and amplified it in a
hit piece in the Times. Of course, as we have often noted, one of the problems with lifting stories from the fever swamp is that they generally turn out to be wrong.
Before getting to Lichtblau’s errors, however, a more basic point: his story in the Times is intended to put Issa in a bad light and to imply some sort of wrongdoing on Issa’s part. But if you read to the end of the article, the question that will occur to you is, What was the point? Where was the wrongdoing? There isn’t any alleged. Lichtblau’s article is sheer atmospherics; it attempts to portray Issa as a shady character without offering facts in support of that characterization...
Could There Be A Better Example of Media Bias Than NYT With This?
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Originally Posted by Kathianne
