Media's Murder Bias

Its pretty obvious that the media leans to the mainstream left these days. It's a very widespread and heavily documented public perception, and interestingly enough, it has been for a while. But going through my news crawl today really spells out just how media does their slanting. Their methods aren't particularly diverse.

Just repeating the hate, instead of saying it themselves, absolves them of actually being called hateful; they let other people do that and write up a story, and you're just covering it. Exhibit A: Sarah Palin Effigy Hung in Halloween Display.

As illustrated, the public is big enough that someone will always step forward to do the jackass dance and make the rest of us look like morons. But, it's only speech and that of course should be protected, however asinine. If it's not liberals in West Hollywood joking about the murder of republican candidates, then it's Exhibit B: Skinheads' Obama Assassination Plot Foiled. See how one seems whimsical and the other seems terrifying? Well, let's look at the horror of that skinhead plot more closely:

The men planned to wear white tuxedos and top hats during the assassination attempt, which would have involved driving as fast as they could toward Obama and shooting him from the windows of the car.

The plot did not appear to be very advanced or sophisticated, the court documents showed.

I think that's probably a safe bet. White tuxedos are rarely a good idea. But that's not going to stop media outlets from piling on the scare to make you think that this hate is more mainstream than it is. Even FOX joined in on this, knowing that you're going to read the headline and not the part where they're a couple of rednecks who want to dress up like The Penguin and execute a plot that would be beneath even his least-skilled henchmen. But the effect of the stories is that thinking about Palin's lynching seems whimsical, while thinking about Obama's seems shocking and horrible. That's not an accident; the stories are from the same source and don't run without an editor's approval. The impact of each story is intentional.