Say what?: Sen. Kerry blames the media

In a recent appearance, Sen. John Kerry gave his analysis of why he lost the election for the presidency.

He offered two reasons. The first: “My people did not get out the vote.” That must have been a disappointment to those who worked so hard in his behalf — and a surprise to many who followed his campaign on television and in the nation’s newspapers. Everywhere the senator and John Edwards went they appeared to have been greeted by crowds of screaming, exultant citizens convinced that the choice was between Kerry-Edwards and Armageddon.

And he garnered the biggest vote ever accorded a Democratic candidate for president!

But the more intriguing explanation Senator Kerry gave for his loss was “the media.” The media!

Down through the years, losing candidates — at local, state and national levels — have tried to salve the trauma of their losses by blaming bad press. That unquestionably beats having to look in the mirror and simply accepting the fact that they failed to sell the people on their ideas or themselves.

But for John Kerry to suggest that the “media” were to blame for his downfall flies in the face of the fact that not only Dan Rather of CBS — whose documentable bias disgraced American journalism — but that ABC, NBC, The New York Times and even the ostensibly sterile Associated Press were patently opposed to “the Bush administration.”

The media might, indeed, have played a part in John Kerry’s defeat. If so, it was because the American public saw through, resented and tired of daily and nightly overdoses of bias transparently disguised as “news.”

Published in Editorials on December 1, 2004 10:13 AM