Opinion

MEDIA CRITICISM: Big Three Networks’ Bias Conceals Facts About NSA Leaker Reality Winner

Screenshot via ABCnews.go.com

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Will Ricciardella Social Media Strategist and Politics Writer
Font Size:

The establishment media’s reporting on NSA leaker Reality Winner has been skewed at best, and egregiously biased at worst.

NBC, CBS and ABC’s newscasts largely ignored the myriad tweets from Winner — highlighting her radical left-wing beliefs — with the intention of making her seem apolitical, bolstering the validity of the Trump-Russian meddling narrative.

Winner, a 25-year-old intelligence contractor working at the National Security Agency, allegedly leaked top secret documents to The Intercept. Just over an hour after it was published, Winner was arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act.

When news broke, so did the evidence of her resentment for President Donald Trump surfacing in past social media posts, with her going so far as to say that “being white is terrorism.” If you thought it stopped there, hold on to your hats.

Winner was more than explicit about her distaste for President Donald Trump in recent tweets, referring to him as an “orange fascist” and a “cunt.” She also tweeted that Trump’s appointment of “Confederate General” Jeff Sessions to the Attorney General post is “racism.”

Sending a tweet in response to an Iranian official, claiming they will only act militarily in “self-defense,” Winner proclaims that if war was initiated by our “Tangerine in Chief” with Iran, Americans will “stand with [Iran]!”

Perhaps her anti-Trump sentiments and rhetoric is so openly blatant and hostile that only the establishment media could miss it. It doesn’t take a politically savvy genius to spot it, much less understand the importance it may have on Winner’s motives to leak top-secret info to hurt the Trump Administration.

Or so you would think.

If the evening news broadcasts on ABC, NBC, or CBS weren’t glossing over her political viewpoints entirely, they were eliding their powerful tendentious tone entirely.

On “CBS Evening News,” Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett briefly mentions her “sharp criticism” of  Trump before cutting into a clip of her stepfather saying she’s a “good person” and does what she can to “make the world a better place.”

Networks deliberately chose to frame the story as either a crackdown on leakers or as yet another strident voice resisting Trump’s presidency. Both support the general conspiracy they’ve consistently floated about Trump’s collusion with Moscow.

No less accurately, though, these networks could have reported her as a blind political ideologue hellbent on damaging an administration with which she simply disagrees, to the point of criminality.

The bias, in other words, is in selection. The worst offender, “ABC World News Tonight,” failed to mention anything about Winner’s anti-Trump social media tirades, only describing her as an “army veteran” (mentioning it 4 times) and a “language specialist.”

ABC’s Justice Correspondent, Pierre Thomas, spoke glowingly of Winner, and the closest he came to discussing her social media accounts was to comment on her Facebook videos “discussing yoga instruction and competing in weightlifting.” Thomas certainly didn’t fail to mention her Air Force commendation medal and that her family describes her as a “patriot.”

In a similar tone, an article on NBC highlighted how “terrified” and “scared” Winner is, framing the story as if “something bad might happen her.” The only tweet they mention on “what is believed to be” her twitter account, is her referring to Trump as an “orange fascist,” hidden at the end of paragraph describing her as a veteran and yoga instructor.

The omission of Winners’ fierce opposition to Donald Trump by the “big three,” reeks of a coordinated effort to frame Winner as a an apolitical, patriotic American doing her duty to expose the Trump administration’s Russian ties. The media’s concern with reporting felicitous narratives as opposed to the truth should be concerning to us all.

Will Ricciardella is co-owner of Unbiased America and a contributor to Occupy Democrats logic, he has degrees in political science and economics from Long Beach State University.

Follow Will Ricciardella on Twitter and Facebook

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel