While I certainly appreciate the sentiment that Conservatives should stop whining about the media and media bias, and the fact that far too many of us conveniently blame their candidate’s own missteps on the media, I think your attitude is going to end up with us on the losing side.

First, most of the media are a bunch of equal opportunity A-holes. They are sharks circling in the water, and when they smell blood they go for it, and they don?t care whether the blood comes from a Democrat or Republican.

No. They are @$$holes – true – but they are quite far from equal opportunity @$$holes. They’ll cover scandals quite alright. But the way they’ll cover the scandal is very different.

An example; when a Democrat is caught in a scandal, you usually don’t see his partisan affiliation until paragraph 13 below the fold and after the jump to page B34. Sometimes they don’t mention it at all and describe the miscreant throughout the article with something like “Patrick James, a 3-term Chicago Congressman”. But when it’s a Republican, it’s right there in the headlines, in the lede paragraph and peppered throughout the article.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has a feature on his blog “Name That Party!” dedicated to just this strange phenomenon. The AP is particularly noted for this tactic.

Another thing about scandals is the level of proof required for a Republican to have an allegation in the headlines versus a Democrat. An allegation simply has to be made against him. Let me illustrate; if an ex-girlfriend of Romney’s just calls up ABC and says that he beat her when they were dating, do you doubt that they would put her on TV with a sympathetic looking Diane Sawyer? Yes, right?

What if it’s Obama’s ex-girlfriend? If you think she would get anywhere near a network camera with anything less than three registered Democrat witnesses willing to go on air and a contemporous police report with the police officer who wrote it (who must also be a Democrat) on hand, then you’ve not been paying attention.

Then there is the level and tenor of the coverage, the way they report the different claims and counter claims, the information that they leave out, the experts they choose to give the so-called objective verdict that they want readers and viewers to take away from the article/news clip. Saturation coverage versus Flash-in-the-Pan coverage, “Republicans claim X … but experts say Y …”

Can you remember the screams and shouts whenever George W. Bush went on a vacation or played a round of golf? Is there any way near as much screaming and shouting now with Obama taking more days off and more rounds of golf in the last 3 years than Bush did in 8?

How often is Fast & Furious in the news? How often was the bogus Plame Affair? Halliburton was constantly in the news for no crime anyone can point out that they committed – how often is Solyndra and George Kaiser?

Equal Opportunity, my foot.

Second, there are plenty of right-leaning media outlets to counterbalance the left-leaning ones. Does anyone REALLY believe that Fox is ?fair and balanced?? Of course not. Fox is ridiculously biased in our favor. That?s why we like watching it. And last I checked, Fox was crushing MSNBC in viewership. And let?s not even get started on talk radio.

This reminds me of an argument I had with a liberal on media bias. It went something like this;
LIBERAL: What about FOXNews?
ME: What about ABC?
LIBERAL: What about FOXNews?
ME: What about CBS?
LIBERAL: What about FOXNews?
ME: What about NBC?
LIBERAL: What about FOXNews?
ME: What about MSNBC?
LIBERAL: What about FOXNews?
ME: What about CNN?
LIBERAL: Yes … But what about FOXNews?

In other words, left-leaning (owned, managed and staffed by liberals) broadcast media outlets; ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC. Against all that, we have FOXNews. Any single one of the three network channels alone reach over three times as many FOXNews viewers on their best day. Add in talk radio listeners and perhaps that number drops to just a little over two times as many.

Let’s not also forget the two most powerful and agenda-setting newspapers in the country i.e. the New York Times and the Washington Post, all owned, managed and staffed by liberals and Democratic Party contributors. Any media observer will tell you that what these two extremely liberal papers carry on their pages in the morning is what gets on broadcast that evening.

Let’s not even get into the AP.

It’s actually a common saying on the Right that we will happily trade FOXNews in for any one of the networks.

Third, who gets their political insight from the nightly news anymore? I sure don?t. I get most of my reporting and commentary from the internet, like I suspect most of you do too.

To reiterate vangoghssister’s point, this statement is a picture-perfect example of politics junkie myopia. You’re assuming that a significant number of Americans actually take the time to go researching politics online. Sorry to burst your bubble but that is simply not true. Outside of our politics-centric circle(s), most people get their news from half-paying attention to the news broadcasts, and glancing through the headlines of newspapers and magazines as they pass through the checkout counter.

Fourth, successful Republican politicians learn to use the media to their advantage instead of complaining about it. Like Ronald Reagan. He was a master at using the media.

Here we are in total agreement.

Imagine a General who explains that he lost a battle because those damn mountains got in the way of his battleplan – in my (personal) Army, he’d be shot. To me, a biased media is part of the terrain and you should plan your political operations (whether it be a campaign or your administration) with it in mind.

The Reagan Administration had some truly brilliant media and communications people helming their communications operation e.g. Mike Deaver. And better yet, unlike both George Bush-es, Reagan – he was called the Great Communicator for a reason – actually knew the importance of communications and how crucial it would be for his Presidency to succeed.

Unfortunately, since he left office, the consensus among our Presidential candidates seems to be that it is somehow undignified and beneath the office of the Presidency to be concerned about media and messaging. I can only imagine what the Reagan Administration would have been able to do had they had the same access to the internet and talk radio that the Bush Administration was given and quite carefully and deliberately squandered.

Fifth, when our answer to every negative fact or bit of bad news is to blame biased MSM, we sound like a bunch of tin foil hat wearing paranoid kooks. Sometimes, bad news is just bad news, not evidence of a conspiracy. The funny thing is, all the lefty tin foil hats are equally convinced of media bias against them, since the news outlets are all corporate owned. Their whining about ?corporate news? sounds just as bad as ours.

Again, I agree that blaming bad news on biased media has become too common but there is an element of truth to it. Lefty tin-foil hats claiming media bias against them simply because media outlets are owned by corporations is just pure stupidity.

You have to realize that to a liberal, “corporate” is a synonym for “evil.” They can’t really tell you what difference it makes that a company is a sole proprietorship, limited partnership or a separate legal entity from its owners. So their whining about the media being “corporate” is based on nothing more than self-righteous anti-business ignorance.

Furthermore, since you seem to think that conservative concerns with media bias are no more credible than liberal concerns with the media being “corporate”, I’m guessing it will surprise you to know that practically everyone in the line of ownership and control of the major networks, and most of the nation’s major newspapers are all major Democratic contributors – the only non-Democrat is Steve Burke of NBCUniversal, every one else, from Bob Iger, Anne Sweeney to Sumner Redstone are all Democrats.

Sixth, as long as we lean on that rhetorical crutch, we prevent ourselves from formulating actual cogent, persuasive arguments for our case. Citing the MSM persuades nobody who is not already persuaded, and takes up brain cells, bandwidth, and copy space that could be used on persuasive analysis.

I submit that one can challenge media bias and formulate cogent arguments for conservatism at the same time. In fact, for greater effect, I think they go hand in hand.

Now, if only we could get elected Republicans to agree.

Finally, only losers complain about the referees.

Unless the referee actually is helping the other side. If you don’t make a whole lot of noise about it, you’re going to lose anyway.