Ed Schultz Actually Declares: 'The Mainstream Media' 'Want ObamaCare to Fail'

Liberal MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz on Tuesday seriously proclaimed, "The mainstream media, I believe, wants ObamaCare to fail. They look for every negative number they can find." [MP3 audio here [1].] The Ed Show anchor railed against actual criticism appearing. of the health care law's botched rollout.   

Schultz reasoned, "They're afraid to do a positive story, because they're afraid that somebody might not watch." The angry host sputtered, "Why is it that people in the media have a fascination with failure? They will take a number and they will make a negative story out of it." Schultz's comments come a day after Chris Matthews [2] sneered at the "so-called independent media" giving "racist" Republicans a free pass. 

Comparing the situation to his relationship with his dog, Schultz demanded loyalty of all liberal Democrats: 

ED SCHULTZ: We have to be loyal to the cause. We have to hunt the same way every day, no matter how many birds or h negativity is out there. We go after it the same way every time. That's how you win! Now, maybe you're in the locker room tonight, which is okay with me. But I'll tell you what, there has been an onslaught of negativity on health care in this country which just baffles my mind. 

On October 31 [3], Schultz railed against journalists for being too negative about ObamaCare. In reality, of course, a Media Research Center [4] study found a profoundly positive coverage by the media: 

With the ObamaCare exchanges set to take effect today, and polls showing the President’s health care law as unpopular as ever (a September 25 poll from CBS News/New York Times found 51% “somewhat” or “strongly” disapproved of the law), the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks have been reluctant to report the multiple fiascos surrounding its implementation:

On July 2 and 3, all three broadcast networks covered the one-year postponement of the ObamaCare employer mandate as a “surprising,” “significant setback” for the President. But that was it for major coverage of that delay — apart from a few passing mentions in other stories, after July 3 the networks only discussed the employer mandate delay on the Sunday talk shows.

ABC and NBC still haven’t gotten around to telling viewers that the Obama administration had decided to delay until 2015 the requirement that people provide proof of their eligibility for federal subsidies (sort of like those no-document mortgages from a few years ago). The CBS Evening News gave that just 9 seconds on August 13, part of a round-up of delays with the law. [House Speaker John Boehner also brought this up, unprompted by moderator Bob Schieffer, on the July 21 Face the Nation.]

On August 1, Politico reported that the Office of Personnel Management had decided to issue new regulations this week to protect members of Congress and their staffs from seeing their health care premiums skyrocket. ABC and NBC have completely skipped this news, while CBS This Morning gave it a grand total of 18 seconds on Friday, August 2 (nothing on the Evening News.)

A transcript of the Ed Show segment, which aired at 5:01pm ET, follows: 

ED SCHULTZ:  Everybody loves their dog. I'm no different. I want to introduce you to my best buddy. This is Buck. He's nine and a half years old. I call him the Buckster. And let me tell you something. There is no black lab in America that can hunt like that dog. He will hunt the same way every time. There could be one bird in the field. There could be 50,000. But let me tell you something, that loyal dog right there, that Buckster, he gets after it. He knows how to get after it. And he's so great with the grand kids too. I don't know if you like black labs or not, I do. I just think they're fantastic. But this guy has been something special to our family. The only time he gets mad is when somebody is trying to take something from him. You know, if he's got a bone if you even walk near him, he's --[growling sound ] Sometimes we have this trainer.  We have another black lab named Ducky. Well, Ducky comes over and tries to grab the trainer from Buck and that's when he really gets mad. 

He's like a pitbull. He just will not let it go. That's how we have to be. We have to be loyal to the cause. We have to hunt the same way every day, no matter how many birds or h negativity is out there. We go after it the same way every time. That's how you win! Now, maybe you're in the locker room tonight, which is okay with me. But I'll tell you what, there has been an onslaught of negativity on health care in this country which just baffles my mind. 
Why is it that people in the media have a fascination with failure? They will take a number and they will make a negative story out of it. Well, sometimes there's only one bird in the field. But if you harvest in it, you're going to eat good tonight. Why is it that we have people in the media in this country that, as I said, are fixed on failure, or fixated with something negative that they just want to drive it home. But do they understand the human element of this? About how this is hurting people if ObamaCare doesn't succeed? 

Now I want to profoundly point out again, everybody who is in front of the cable cameras and everybody who is in front of the network cameras, they're doing pretty well. They're not on minimum wage. And they have all got health care. Most of them have never had a health care struggle in their life. But yet they're almost like promotional items on negative numbers. We're America. We're Americans. We have done a lot of great things generation after generation. We've called on people to sacrifice, and we have survived as a great nation. Why is it that all of a sudden, we have this huge conflict in this pitbull mentality that we just won't give up? The mainstream media, I believe, wants ObamaCare to fail. They look for every negative number they can find. They're afraid to do a positive story, because they're afraid that somebody might not watch. The media is just cherry picking the bad facts that are out there, repeating them over and over again, and in many cases, they're making stuff up.