Concentrated Media Bias At Reuters

This is a short post, but full of crafty cheerleading for President Obama.

The bias begins with the headline:

Analysis: In speech, Obama pushes activist government and takes on far right

The none-too-subtle implication is that anyone in the GOP who opposes what is surely to be the mother of all overreaching second terms is an “extremist”.

Here are a few more narrative pushing gems from the article, with italicized interpretations following each.

In a spirited defense of government’s role as a protector of society’s most vulnerable people, the Democratic president signaled a determination to protect costly social programs that have been targeted by Republicans seeking to reduce growth in the $16.4 trillion U.S. debt.

Oppose the agenda and you hate poor people.

In a series of implied jabs at uncompromising conservatives who have fostered gridlock in Congress and cast him as an un-American socialist, Obama essentially portrayed such critics as being outside the mainstream of U.S. politics.

Despite only controlling one chamber of Congress, Republicans are the only ones responsible for not getting anything done. And they hate poor people.

Cutting back on those “entitlement” programs is widely viewed as a significant part of reducing the budget deficit.

We put entitlement in quotation marks to diminish the people who use the word when referring to these programs. Because they hate poor people.

It goes on and on. They get the word “mandate” in and explain that he has to do this quickly. There’s a dig at Mitt Romney and the perfunctory rear-end covering excuse that Obama only wants to tax “the richest” people in America.

This is how the press assists in crafting narratives that are usually written by someone in the Obama camp. They practice this and they are very good at it.