On Wednesday morning, The New York Times released a bombshell story. Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola in Alaska and her staff attempted to locate a second Dan Sullivan to run for a Senate seat to confuse voters in their ranked-choice election.The Democrats lied about it, and Peltola was caught hip-deep in the conspiracy. The "Decoy Dan" Sullivan refused to comment.
The elitist media who reacted to the Times story tried to dismiss the story, that this dirty trick was "legal" and not unlike other dirty tricks. To discuss this and other midterm campaign coverage issues, MRC Director of Media Analysis Geoff Dickens and MRC Free Speech America director Michael Morris joined the show
This displayed a double standard. We know that if Republicans found a "fake" Peggy Flanagan to confuse Democrats in Minnesota, for example, the media would scream "corruption" and "dirty tricks." The elitist "news" networks are all about spinning furiously for the Democrats, even when a liberal newspaper publishes"unhelpful" news.
Just weeks before the midterm elections, a Free Speech America study from Luis Cornelio and Madison Van Zant found Apple News promoted more than 80 stories with headlines that negatively framed the issues Republicans care about most – like immigration and government spending -- a stark contrast to the complete absence of stories with headlines portraying those same issues in a positive light.
“Apple News ran 84 negative headlines on Republican priorities and zero positive ones,” said MRC President David Bozell. “Zero! My dentist finds more good news in a root canal. Millions of voters open that app before they vote, and Apple's editors are in there like a bartender who waters down only one party's drinks.”
Dickens talked about his study of ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts for the past month, which found that they filled their campaign stories with 56 minutes, 44 seconds of bad news for Republicans to just 18 minutes, 53 seconds of negative news for Democrats. Viewers were three times as likely to see negative news about Republicans than Democrats.
The newscasts routinely hammered the narrative that President Trump has a low approval rating and faces rough political headwinds due to high gas prices and the war in Iran. His campaign rallies in red states were cited as signs the Republicans were in trouble in their own supposed strongholds. But when they touched on Democrat scandals -- like potential immigration fraud by Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota -- the framing was still hostile to Trump for destroying the norm of not unleashing federal probes in the closing weeks of an election.
They already forgot two years ago, when Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith uncorked a 165-page legal brief in October on how Trump committed criminal acts around the January 6 riot. Norms are never an issue when it's a get-Trump story.
We closed on which races will we be most interested in on Election Night? Enjoy the podcast below. The audio is here.
