Fair and Balanced: The Role of Conservative Media

The White House has been trying since Obama’s first term to silence dissent, targeting conservative media outlets and conservative commentators. Why? Because they seem to be the only ones asking the hard questions. Who else is asking what really happened at Benghazi and why four of our citizens were left there to die? Who else is asking why the drone program is killing U.S. citizens with impunity? Who else is asking what the long-term effects of Obamacare will be, and why the national debt is being allowed to spiral out of control?

Mainstream media outlets, which are run and staffed by liberals, are not researching facts to make sure government officials are telling the truth and acting in our best interests. If you’ve ever watched the president being interviewed on a major news program, you’d think it was set up by a public relations firm that fed him softball questions in advance. Networks choose which stories to report and which to bury, and then decide how to “spin” the stories they run. Here’s just one example: when the liberal media couldn’t discredit what Marco Rubio was saying in his rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union address, they made a big deal about him stopping to take a sip of water. Was that journalism?

In October 2009, David Axelrod, who was then the White House senior advisor, said on a national news program that Fox News is “not really a news station” and that much of its programming is “not really news.” That same month, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Fox News “a wing of the Republican Party” and said, “Let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

The administration has been trying to discredit conservative outlets for years. The White House kept Fox News off conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, maybe because Fox was the only outlet asking tough questions about what happened. They even tried to blame conservative journalists for Congress’ failure to pass legislation at year-end 2012. In an interview in The New Republic, Obama said, “If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

Freedom of the press is a basic tenet of the U.S. Constitution. The administration may not like what conservative media outlets say, but they don’t have the right to silence them. I don’t like what some of the liberal media writes or broadcasts, but I’d defend their right to express their opinion. It’s called the First Amendment.

Fox News has been criticized for its motto of being “fair and balanced”, because for the most part it does express a conservative point of view instead of a “balanced” one. But when you think about it, Fox News and other voices of conservatism play a vital role in trying to balance the liberal bias of the rest of the media by presenting a different point of view. If you hear only one side of a story, you’re not hearing the whole truth, and that’s not fair, to you or to the country. So, “fair and balanced” information is the end result.

It’s time to admit that the mainstream media has a not-so-secret agenda to support the Progressive, socialist programs that Obama, Reid and Pelosi are trying to shove down our throats. Liberals don’t want us to think for ourselves or to question what we hear. Someone has to hold the current administration accountable instead of trying to sweep things under the rug. We need whistleblowers like Fox News and conservative commentators to give us the other side of the story.