Bernard Goldberg provided a valuable service to his country back in 2001 with “Bias.”
The book’s subtitle said it all – “A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.” Goldberg broke down how the press tilts the scales in favor of Democrats and progressive causes.
To say the problem got worse since then is to belabor the obvious. And while Goldberg continues to fact-check the news very few fellow journalists have joined his cause. Those who do take up Goldberg’s fight — Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Sharyl Attkisson rush to mind — get pummeled by their peers.
Enter Adam Carolla.
He’s not a journalist by trade. He’s a carpenter turned podcast sensation, a comic who follows the funny wherever it leads. And, lately, he sees plenty of funny business from the modern legacy media.
He’s turned his secondary podcast, “The Adam and Dr. Drew Show,” into a one-stop shop for debunking media lies. He and his former “Loveline” partner, Dr. Drew Pinsky, break down the latest headlines and explain in terms everyone can grasp how the media has lost its way.
And he’ll use any other platform to make sure listeners know they’re not getting the truth from today’s press.
His 2020 interview with Kirstie Alley, the “Cheers” alum who now questions Hollywood’s progressive groupthink, found the podcaster taking a page from the Trump playbook.
The legacy media is often the enemy of the people, and he brought some receipts.
“I know really decent people and I see what the media tries to do to them, not trying to fact check them but take statements they made and turn them, intentionally, into a bad human. Not a human you disagree with but a bad human … I realize that it works on a large portion of our society and it poisons them….”
Carolla cited how press outlets twisted his friend Dennis Prager’s views into a pretzel in order to demonize the Salem radio talker. Defamed high schooler Nick Sandmann, dubbed a racist by the press after video of him in Washington, D.C. went viral, is Exhibit B.
“They’re actually getting dangerous now because of the s*** they’re saying. They’re gonna get people killed.”
Carolla addressed the so-called “Big Lie” that President Trump actually beat Joe Biden at the ballot box in 2020, noting how the legacy media’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story sunk President Donald Trump’s re-election chances during a chat with Dave Rubin.
“It’s not that the election was rigged, per se, by the states or the vote counters or mail-in ballots. It was essentially rigged by CNN, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, most all legacy and mainstream media and then Big Tech, all the Googles and Twitter … If you think about just the Hunter Biden story as an example … forget it’s Hunter Biden and what the allegations are … there’s a story that’s a credible story and it would hurt one candidate. I don’t know if it’s three points or seven points … it would definitely be damaging to one of the candidates.”
And polling suggests Carolla had a point. He’s only grown bolder since then.
Last year, Carolla shredded media outlets for over-hyping the Jan. 6 “insurrection.”
“If you say, I saw a lot of the footage, I’ve seen a lot of the data, I’ve heard a lot of the stories of what went on January 6. That did not look like an organized attempt at an insurrection by a white supremacist group. It seemed like a bunch of people rioting who were rogue and untethered.”
The “Truth Yeller” comic raged for weeks about one of the culture’s most notoriously Fake News stories — U.S. border agents whipped Haitian immigrants as they crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Except nothing of the kind happened. The picture that started the kerfuffle didn’t reflect actual events, something even the photographer quickly admitted. That didn’t stop the press or President Biden from clinging to the phony narrative.
A fair, honest press would have shredded that narrative in 24 hours and, later, excoriate officials like Biden for promoting it.
Neither happened, leaving Carolla enraged. And rightly so.
“When is this bulls*** [media bias] gonna end? When it’s gonna end is the two border patrol guys … they gotta f***ing sue CNN. That’s where it ends.”
Carolla delivered the rhetorical kill shot to the legacy media recently. He recalled an ‘80s era Biden scandal in which the then-Senator aggressively lied about his academic record. The media at the time may have leaned to the Left, but reporters often held both parties accountable.
TV networks called Biden out on his lies, and the future president meekly admitted to incorrectly remembering those details.
That would never happen today, Carolla said. And, if anyone has seen Biden’s recent press appearances where he spits out outrageous fibs about gasoline prices, inflation and more, sans fact checks, you know he’s right.
Carolla and Dr. Pinsky also played clips of CNN’s Jake Tapper lobbing deflated beach balls to President Biden over Hunter Biden’s scandals.
Tapper’s blistering follow-up question? “You’re about to turn 80 next month, Happy Birthday, ahead of time.”
Goldberg, despite his Herculean efforts to shame corrupt journalism, couldn’t stop the industry’s corruption from getting worse. Carolla tackles the subject from a different angle, making him a powerful force for journalistic integrity.
He’s not a talking head or political pundit. Nor is he trying to score points for one team or the other. He only leans right these days because the Left checked its sanity at the door.
Carolla’s ability to mine laughs from journalistic malpractice gives him another valuable weapon.
Carolla is doing the work that august platforms should be tackling. Think the Columbia Journalism Review, The Poynter Institute or news stations across the country. They all collectively stand down, letting a professional comedian do their jobs for them.
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Daily Wire.