A voter whose primary source of news is NPR said that, after months of hearing about Ted Cruz on the radio, she had formed an impression of him as an uneducated Bible-thumper. She was shocked to learn from Wikipedia that Cruz attended Princeton and then Harvard Law School and that he had argued cases at the Supreme Court (“Cruz has authored 70 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.[41][47][54] Cruz’s record of having argued before the Supreme Court nine times is more than any practicing lawyer in Texas or any current member of Congress.)
[Note that this posting is not about the merits of Cruz per se, especially given that I think that no Republican has a realistic chance of winning, but rather about how the media portrays Cruz.]
Did your voter friend draw the obvious inference that it is unwise to rely on NPR for all one’s news, or did she simply regard their misleading coverage of Cruz as an unfortunate coincidence?
I call b.s. Here is an NPR profile, among many, that mention Ted Cruz’s Ivy League background and arguments before the Supreme Court.
If casual news watchers think he’s a Bible-thumper, it’s because that’s how he’s been campaigning for close to a year.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/03/23/394719332/what-you-need-to-know-about-ted-cruz
He was a top college debater at Princeton.
Here are some of the debate accolades Cruz raked in as an undergraduate at Princeton: top speaker at both the U.S. National Debating Championship and the North American Debating Championship, speaker of the year and team of the year. His classmates at Princeton remember him, according to a 2013 profile, the way many see him today: smart, confident, firm on conservative principles and polarizing.
After Princeton, he went on to study at Harvard Law; his classmates from that time also remember him as a smart but divisive guy with a hard edge.
He’s argued before the Supreme Court nine times — sometimes in cowboy boots.
From 1996 to 1997, Cruz was a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In 2003, Cruz was appointed solicitor general of Texas, becoming the youngest person in the nation appointed to such a post. In that capacity, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court and authored more than 80 Supreme Court briefs. As solicitor general, he defended Texas’ death penalty, the constitutionality of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the state’s congressional redistricting map.
She may also think Bernie understands economics and that Hillary has moral and ethical standards. Those false media portrayals go both ways.
Quintessential low information voter.
I listen to NPR regularly, and I have yet to hear any Trump supporter, or an explanation of that view. I occasionally hear a conservative or a Republican, but it is always one that hates Trump and Cruz.
I don’t listen to NPR much anymore, but I’ve read about Senator Cruz in supposedly left wing outlets such as the dead tree version of the NY Times and newyorker.com. Articles in such media have discussed his illustrious academic record. One thing that I think Republicans might find interesting is that Cruz was only employed for a year or two in the private sector and much of that work was political in nature. I’m surprised that I haven’t heard Trump bring that up.
Apparently NPR is much better in the south where he has been portrayed as a very accomplished appellate lawyer and academic debater.
One the other hand, one could listen to a full range of media sources and, based on words that come from the mouth of Ted Cruz, conclude that he is an evil madman.
I think the moral of this story is: basing a blog post on one person’s experience about just about anything is inherently unreliable.
As we all know, NPR sets the standard for objectivity, morality and critical thinking.