Attention CNN: “unbiased reporting” does not mean giving equal weight to democratic facts and republican lies

CNN and other “balanced” media outlets strike again. When did the definition of unbiased mean giving equal weight to the proven truths told by one guy and the obvious lies told by another? Mitt Romney runs a TV ad falsely claiming that Obama gutted welfare, which the basic facts of the matter prove Romney to be telling a Pinocchio-style lie, and yet the typical CNN headline is “Romney claims Obama gutted welfare, but Obama fires back.” The entire story then consists of Romney’s lies and Obama’s truths being given equal weight, without the journalist in question making any effort at investigating the truth of the matter. I’d call it lazy journalism, but this goes further and appears to have a different motive: rather than getting to the truth of the matter, which would undoubtedly offend some potential viewers, these “balanced” networks are simply attempting to pander to both sides within the same story for the sake of maintaining the largest audience size possible…

The problem traces back to, not surprisingly, the likes of Fox News. The network figured out that conservatism is based on the wealthiest one percent telling convenient lies which the most gullible forty-nine percent willingly swallow because it’s what they want to hear, whether it sounds in any way realistic or not. It’s why Fox News has the highest ratings of any cable news network, despite spending the day broadcasting propaganda stories built on obvious lies which only the most conservative half of the population can manage to stomach. Somewhere along the line the more honest news outlets saw that phenomenon and got tempted to find a way to tap into it. As liberalism is based on inconvenient truths, the idea of a news network which broadcasts phony stories aimed at pandering to liberals is neither desired by liberals nor a practical concept; honest and factual coverage of any news story is going to have a “liberal bias” by definition. But CNN its colleauges are trying to split the difference by structuring their news stories to play to both sides…

A typical CNN news story now reads like this: “Republicans today claimed that the sky has turned purple and blamed President Obama for allowing it to happen. Obama replied by claiming that the sky is in fact still blue, and that the republican claim is merely an attempt to undermine his reelection efforts. However, Mitt Romney repeated the republican assertion today, stating that he went outside and saw for himself that the sky is in fact purple. We have yet to see how this blue/purple sky issue will affect the election in November.” And apart from perhaps turning to two pundits, one of whom argues that the sky is blue and the other of whom argues that the sky is purple, that’s the end of the reporting. It doesn’t matter that the reporter (and for that matter both pundits) can see out the window of the CNN tower and confirm for themselves that the sky is indeed still blue. What matters is that as long as the network reports the liberal facts and the republican lies in the same story, it believes it can appease all potential audience members…

Sane viewers already know the sky is still blue and 100% of what the republicans say are liars, so they’ll ignore the insane parts of the story and focus on the truthful parts. Insane viewers have already been told by Fox News that the sky is purple and they choose to believe it because it gives them an excuse to hate a successful black president without having to admit that they hate him because he’s black, and CNN is apparently hoping that these loons will flip over during the commercial break and sit through a story which contains the real truth because it also happens to contain the lies they’ve chosen to believe. CNN’s falling ratings suggest that the strategy doesn’t work, and perhaps they should return to broadcasting truthful stories while leaving the lunatic hijinks to the fictional news networks.