When It Comes To Gold Star Families, The Media Only Covers Them When They Help Democrats

Matt Vespa | August 02, 2016 12:45 PM

We all knew this was going to happen. It’s typical for the liberal media to do this, but the Media Research Center has crunched the numbers on how much more time Khizr Khan’s speech to the Democratic National Convention got over Patricia Smith who spoke at the Republican one. Both are from Gold Star families. Both have had their children sacrifice their lives in service to our country. Geoffrey Dickens for Newsbusters (a branch of the MRC) noted that Kahn got more than 50x more airtime on CBS, NBC, and ABC for his remarks, while Smith got a little over a minute in their evening and morning broadcasts:

While all the grieving parents deserve sympathy, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows seemed to only care about the parents that showed up at the Democratic Convention. Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazla’s DNC appearance earned 55 minutes, 13 seconds of Big Three network coverage, nearly 50 times more than Pat Smith, whose RNC speech honoring her son earned just 70 seconds of airtime.

In the days (July 19 to August 1) that followed Smith’s indictment of Clinton from the RNC podium, CBS (3 seconds) ABC (13 seconds) and NBC (54 seconds) gave her speech a total of just 70 seconds of coverage.

In the four days (July 29 to August 1) following Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala’s speech NBC (31 minutes, 39 seconds), offered the most amount of time followed by ABC (14 minutes, 21 seconds) and then CBS (9 minutes, 13 seconds).

This is a textbook case of bias-by-agenda: One of these stories (the Khan story) matched the Democratic agenda, and the partisan media couldn’t push it hard enough. The other (the Smith story) reflected poorly on the Democratic nominee, so it was barely mentioned.

And around and around we go with these games the liberal media engages in on a daily basis.

Kahn ripped Trump for not knowing the contents of the U.S. Constitution, not knowing what sacrifice is, and being incapable of empathy. The latter comes after Trump went after his wife for not speaking at the convention, alluding that maybe her religion prevented her from speaking. That wasn’t the case. For Smith, she blames Hillary Clinton for her son’s death, claiming that Clinton told her a video was responsible for the terrorist attack that claimed the life of her son, Sean. Clinton responded by pretty much calling Smith a liar during the debates. On Sunday, Clinton added that she doesn’t fault these families, who in their grief may have forgotten what she told them about the incident.

It’s a total mess—and it’s repugnant. Again, remember, when the Democrats bring out the family of someone who has died in service to their country—it’s brave, spectacular, and powerful. But when Republicans do it, they’re shameless pandering sociopaths who like to manipulate other people’s grief.