I owe a big tip of the hat to Caleb Howe at The Right Scoop today for catching something I entirely missed. Hugh Hewitt was a guest on Morning Joe today, something which generally gets me to check out the segment, but I happened to have the sound down at the time. As it turns out, I passed up the opportunity to watch some fireworks which were totally unexpected. The debate was, yet again, focused on the exposure of media bias toward conservatives and how it might relate to the current vetting of Ben Carson’s memoirs, but it quickly sprawled out well beyond that to a discussion of important topics in Hillary’s campaign which haven’t gotten any attention in the press at all.

Here’s how Caleb describes it.

Joe argues that there is simply no way that the press has failed to cover Hillary’s many scandals, using his own show as the example, while Hugh points out two major stories about Hillary that no one, including Joe, have covered at all.

Hugh also points out that voters really don’t care that much about something that happened 40 years ago, but there is a media frenzy anyway. Republicans face a headwind, says Hewitt, while Democrats have the wind at their backs.

All true, but it really doesn’t do it justice. Hugh is talking about the Teneo letter, (among other things) which we talked about here last week but really should be a bombshell on the political news beat. As Scarborough explains how they have covered one Hillary Scandal after another, Hugh grows exasperated and asks him in slow, exaggerated tones whether or not he’s covered the letter, leading Joe to admit that they have not covered “these two little things that happened last week.” By then, Hugh expresses some regret at how “you folks in the Manhattan, D.C. Beltway media elite” don’t put the two parties on an even playing field. It didn’t really sound to me like Hugh was lumping Scarborough in specifically with the aforementioned elite, but Joe basically hits the roof and demands an apology.

Let’s go to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG-6Tgn-e_s

Hugh is correct, of course, but there’s some nuance missing from the argument as well. As Caleb noted at the Right Scoop, this is somewhat similar to Ron White’s description of why it’s dangerous to hang out in the middle of a hurricane. It’s not that the wind is blowing… it’s what the wind is blowing. Even when media outlets cover some of Hillary’s scandals, there is a very different tone taken on most of the cable news channels.

Any story about Ben Carson is presented from the media as a sort of “ah HAH!! Got him!” moment, while the reluctant coverage of everything Hillary is reported by every network but Fox News with an eye roll and an exasperated sigh, as if to say “ugh, the stupid Republicans are trying another stupid attack against virtuous Hillary.”

Don’t kid yourself into thinking that this moment of media exposure is going to change the overall tone of the coverage. It’s not. But it’s at least refreshing to see the subject brought up in such a frank way someplace outside of conservative blogs.