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Let's have a conversation about media, and their need to drive story narratives with an undeniable political slant.

Beyonce, the very entertaining artist who performed during the Super Bowl Half Time Show, had dancers whose outfits emulated Black Panther outfits from decades ago.  To my knowledge, the dancers didn't do any Black Panther 'dance moves,' or make a plea for all African Americans to join the Black Panther movement, or make a political statement at all.  They just danced, quite amazingly too.

In the days afterwards, you heard the media in this country talk about how Beyonce's performance 'crossed a line,' 'encouraged violence against police,' and 'embraced terrorism!'  When I say media, I'm not talking the fringe hate groups disguised as media, but the real media, the four broadcast TV networks, the main cable TV news networks, and the news services who feed the majority of radio and print media in the country.  They were all talking about the "real" outrage at the NFL's decision to allow such a performance.  They insisted the people were so angry, they were going to have a massive protest at the NFL headquarters on the 16th of February.  

Three people showed up.  Not 3000, or 300, or even 30.  3.

You probably didn't know about the aftermath of this rally, because I guarantee the media in this country didn't report on their irrational narratives, designed to create conflict, not actually creating any.  They just turned off their cameras, ignored the lackluster results of their fear mongering and moved onto the next breaking news story.  No one made any news network or outlet explain where this fake story came from, because there's no one left to question such irresponsible journalism.

The greatest example of made up news was the Ebola crisis.  I'm not saying Ebola's not a serious illness, but for three months straight, running up to the 2014 election, all we heard about was "EBOLA, EBOLA, EBOLA!!!"  Then, the day of the election, the media completely stopped talking about it.  I've never seen anything like it.  It was like all news outlets got together an tried to scare the American people on purpose.  If this was a coordinated campaign to try to get the American people preoccupied with Ebola during an election, it succeeded beyond conceivable expectations, but now, the American people are getting driven like cattle with the media's never-ending creation of conservative crusades.

Many look at the media's made up outrage and either laugh or just shrug their shoulders.  Not me.  This scares me.  The thought we have a media who's so reckless and out of control they're willing, as a whole, to create, fuel and drive a story with a conservative bias, just because they need something to fill the hours and columns, something that's a lot easier than actually going out and reporting on real news, and in turn lying to the majority of 330 million Americans who see, read and hear their product, shakes me to my core.  I'm not sure if we're still in the inertia of the W. Bush controlled media of the last decade, or if that's gone, and the media's just lazy.  The Beyonce story is the latest example of made up outrage, but these hoaxes have been going on for a few years.

After W. left office, one of the first big news stories of 2009 was the birther nonsense.  People standing up in town hall forums with their birth certificate in a ziplock bag, screaming about how the President's from Kenya, was annoying, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so I understand why the media covered the lunacy.  They realized unbridled conservative fury brought in viewers and advertisers.  Soon afterwards, we started to see examples of news reports on 'protests' which never really happened.  Jon Stewart on the Daily Show caught them, mainly Fox News, openly airing different footage from previous rallies to cover up the lack of attendance at conservative events the media insisted was filled with outraged rightos.  It's a simple pattern:  1) Report on how people are outraged about a specific issue, an issue with a conservative slant, usually built around the anger of a handful of individuals they masquerade as a 'movement,' 2) try to fan the flames the outrage by covering the story non-stop for a few weeks, 3) culminate the coverage in a rally or protest march, and 4) either point to the crowd and say, "look at how many people are mad," or ignore the small crowd by either playing footage from a different rally to make it seem like a bigger group showed up, or kill the story entirely, and move on to the next created outrage.

We've seen this locally.  Last year, the media in the Twin Cites featured numerous stories about an upcoming rally in favor of the Confederate Flag, with Minnesotans(?!) irate at the way the Confederate Flag, the symbol of the enemy of the United States (and Minnesota), is being treated by it's detractors.  Okay.  When the rally happened, 6 people showed up.  Six!  Most of the media didn't feel the need to cover the poor showing, but since they were the ones who reported the rally as a news story before hand, they should've covered it.  Instead, with few exceptions, they moved on.

I remember the pro-Scott Walker recall rally they had in Hudson, Wisconsin.  The way it was being reported, beforehand, made it seem like there would be a Taylor Swift concert level of turnout. A little less than three dozen supporters showed up.  The Twin Cites media, not wanting to admit the attendance was a bust, insisted on reporting how 'large crowds' showed up to support Walker.  There were large crowds alright.  The anti-Walker folks had a few hundred people show up, a much larger crowd.  The Twin Cities media reported on a 'counter protest occurring', but that was all.

And with that, a second, even larger problem gets exposed.  This media bias for the conservatives, while wildly and falsely increasing their importance, downplays legitimate protests and issues from the left.  In Hudson, Wisconsin, most of the Twin Cities media magnified a sparsely attended pro-Walker rally, while depreciating the far larger number of anti-Walker protesters.  The Occupy movement in the Twin Cities was mostly ignored.  Unless the report was one which portrayed them in a negative light,  the media turned a blind eye.  Black Lives Matter has a solid turnout for their rallies, but the only time you hear about them is when they violate the Mall of America, or when the media points to one guy throwing a garbage can, or one person chanting something unfortunate, as all BLM protesters.  They do this to dismiss the group as a whole.  When you consider the lack of fair coverage for left leaning causes, to the non-stop, imaginary, conservative, outrage machine, the media's failure at maintaining a neutral balance is complete and total.

Think about all of this as you watch these hacks report on the Presidential races.  Watch how they inflate and legitimize the right, while at the same time dismiss and ignore the left.  It may be part of some conspiracy to try to discourage the left from showing up on voting day, but it's likely just a completely broken media trying to find the most careless, pathetic path, so they can achieve the absolute least amount of legitimacy, all while trying to make the most money for their parent companies.