Judge Garland and the Left's Disdain for Truth
Why the media's coverage of Obama's Supreme Court nomination should serve as one of the most blatant examples of left-wing media bias.
March 23, 2016
Dennis Prager
The mainstream media — that is, the liberal media — share all the views and characteristics of the left. Among these is the left's view of truth. There are honest individuals with left-wing views, and dishonest individuals on the right. But truth is not a leftist value. Everything the left believes in is more important than truth: social justice, economic equality, reducing carbon emissions, expanding the power of the state, battling sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and above all of these, destroying its conservative opposition.
The media's coverage of President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court should serve as one of the most blatant examples of both the left-wing orientation of the news media and their willingness to play with truth.
On March 16, the day after Garland's nomination, every major mainstream news outlet, both print and electronic, depicted the judge as a centrist.
The first sentence of The New York Times front page read: "WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick B. Garland to be the nation's 113th Supreme Court justice, choosing a centrist appellate judge."
Similarly, the Los Angeles Times front-page headline said: "Obama's choice of popular centrist Merrick Garland for Supreme Court puts GOP to the test."
Another headline, seen in the Washington Post, read: "Merrick Garland's instinct for the middle could put him in the court's most influential spot." That same day, the Post published a second article mentioning how "Garland's deep resume and centrist reputation appear to have positioned him well to earn the president's nod."
Two days later, the Los Angeles Times featured a news analysis on its front page, in which a reporter wrote that Garland may actually be "the most moderate Supreme Court nominee anyone could expect from a Democratic president." The reporter also calls Garland "a superbly qualified judge with a cautious, centrist record."
There is no truth to any of these reports — something easily proved by both Judge Garland's decisions and, amazingly, by the newspapers' reports themselves.
Take the Los Angeles Times' front-page "news analysis," for example. After describing the judge as a moderate and centrist, the LA Times reporter writes:
"If the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative, is replaced by a moderate-to-liberal Justice Garland, the court would tip to the left on several key issues, like abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gun control, campaign spending, immigration and environmental protection."
In other words, the very same author who describes Garland as a centrist believes that Garland votes left on essentially every major issue confronting the nation and the Supreme Court.
Additionally, that very same day The New York Times headlined that Garland is a centrist, it published an article on the nomination noting that "If Judge Garland is confirmed, he could tip the ideological balance to create the most liberal Supreme Court in 50 years."
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Judge Garland and the Left's Disdain for Truth
