The easiest layup in proving the "mainstream media" is hyperpartisan is to study how they cover congressional hearings. After two years of obsessive media promotion and congratulation and live coverage of the Pelosi-picked panel on Jan. 6, the network "newscasts" can't locate a hearing now with two hands.
On March 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland for the first time in the new Congress. The hearing was not devoid of newsworthiness. The New York Times headline was "G.O.P. Senators Fire a Barrage of Intense Questions at Garland." They placed it on page A-18.
That almost deserves a cupcake. There was nothing that night from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS or NPR. What this hearing exposed is that Garland's Justice Department is immensely political and partisan, a law-enforcement bully for the Biden White House.
Sen. Ted Cruz hammered Garland for his department's complete failure to do anything about leftist protesters outside of the homes of Supreme Court justices, despite a federal law that bans "picketing or parading" near a judge's residence. Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki endorsed those protests. Garland prosecuted a pile of Trump die-hards for merely "parading" inside the Capitol, but not in this case. Garland claimed this was a local law-enforcement matter.
Cruz noted: "You spent 20 years as a judge and you're perfectly content with justices being afraid for their children's lives. And you did nothing to prosecute it."
The networks don't want any focus on Nicholas Roske's sick assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- especially NPR, which has never, ever aired a story on it, despite aggressively pushing the leftist media fake-rape story during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing.
Sen. Josh Hawley grilled Garland about his department's abusive treatment of Christian pro-life activists arrested outside abortion clinics compared to their complete inaction against pro-abortion radicals firebombing pro-life offices and crisis pregnancy centers and vandalizing churches.
Hawley cited the infuriating case of Mark Houck, the Catholic father of seven acquitted in January of federal assault charges over an alleged shoving of an abortion-enabling "escort" outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic. Houck was arrested at gunpoint in front of his terrified family in an FBI raid.
The senator asked, "Why did you send ... a SWAT-style team to this guy's house when everyone else had declined to prosecute and he had offered to turn himself in?" Garland said the local FBI "made a decision on the ground that was safest and easiest." How on Earth was that a "safest" option, and for who?
Once again, no one in this alphabet soup of red-hot abortion-pushing networks has ever touched the Houck outrage. You can see why they'd want to skip this hearing.
Hawley also questioned Garland about a Jan. 23 memo issued by the FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, advocating "the exploration of new avenues for 'tripwire and source developments against traditionalist Catholics' including those who favor the Latin Mass." In this case, Garland tried to say he totally disagreed with this effort. Hawley instructed him that the FBI was following tips from the radical Southern Poverty Law Center.
Again, no one at the networks reported for one second about this FBI chatter about investigating Latin Mass Catholics like they're an insurrectionist threat. Now imagine Trump-era FBI people talking about "tripwire and source developments" inside mosques, and envision the exploding network heads.
All of this aggressive ignorance exposes the lie that these media outlets should be seen as the people who keep democracy from dying in darkness. Congressional hearings are dying in darkness, at least in their "news" rooms.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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