Media omission: It’s ironic, in light of Gardner’s Post endorsement, to recall that Gardner’s extremism extends to his view of journalism itself
Colorado senatorial candidate Cory Gardner, like much of the political right, sees himself as a victim of liberal media bias. On a day when he was endorsed by The Denver Post, and Gardner is tweeting about how “honored and humbled” he is, I thought I’d point back to a few of the many times he’s trashed the news media with sweeping, unsupported accusations of bias that serve only to accelerate the decline of professional journalism.
In 2011, Gardner told Grassroots Radio Colorado:
Gardner: “The press likes to blame the Tea Party for a lot of things, because there’s a bias in the media against people who believe in smaller government.”
Worley: “You mean people like us.”
Gardner: “People like us.”
In January of last year, Gardner said:
Gardner: “Look, the media is going to criticize the Republicans every time we turn around, because we are not in lock-step with the President.”
After Romney’s self-inflicted election loss in 2012, Gardner blamed the media:
Gardner: “When the American people were watching the news with their family at the dinner table, they saw a media that is gung-ho for the President. So not only were we running an election against the President of the United States, we were running an election against TV stations around the country and inside people’s living rooms.”
Some progressives are so angry at The Post for its Gardner endorsement that they’re threatening to cancel their subscriptions.
By doing this, and forsaking the last gasps of Denver’s by-far best news source to survive, we’d reduce ourselves to Gardner’s own level of extremism that, for some reason, The Denver Post failed to see in Gardner across the spectrum of issues from global warming and immigration to abortion and journalism itself–and beyond.