WRAL Proves Leftist Bias with Intentionally Twisted Hit Piece on Dan Forest

RALEIGH – WRAL is the flagship media organization of the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). The owners of the latter love to write Far Left op-ed’s, official opinions of CBC, that publishing in the former narratives such as the Republican legislature being the equivalent of Kim Jong Un’s murderous communist dictatorship in North Korea.

So it should come as no surprise that WRAL-TV’s political “news” department is more engaged in pushing Leftist propaganda than actually reporting news. A glaring example of this is WRAL bureau chief Laura Leslie’s recent hit piece on Lt. Gov. Dan Forest concerning a video he cut about the ease of voter fraud in North Carolina and why the State needs voter ID.

Right off the bat, the headline  – Want to commit voter fraud? NC’s top Republican tells you how – is a purposely twisted narrative designed to implant in readers the laughable notion that Dan Forest WANTS you to commit voter fraud.

Here is the video Leslie and WRAL are referring to:

What do you get from that video? Definitely that Dan Forest wants people to use this method to commit voter fraud. Wait, no?

Well, that is what WRAL wants readers to think.

“Lt. Gov. Dan Forest released a video last week with step-by-step instructions for “organized groups” to commit voter impersonation, a felony in North Carolina.

Forest, a Republican, is not up for election this fall – his second term runs through 2020. However, he has been a strong proponent of requiring voters to show a photo identification at the polls, and a proposal that would write voter ID into the state constitution is on the ballot.

The video, titled Voter Fraud 101, was promoted on Facebook and paid for by the NC Republican Council of State Committee, a political action committee chaired by Forest and largely funded by Greg Lindberg, a major political donor currently under federal investigation.”

See what they did there? While anyone with half a brain watching that video understands that Forest is making the case that voter ID is necessary precisely because schemes to commit fraud can abuse the current absence of that requirement, WRAL wants to subtly suggest Forest is coaching people to commit felonies.

(They also throw in the Lindberg reference, correctly identifying him as a Forest donor, but curiously leaving out that subpoenas related to the federal investigation seem to focus on his dealings with the N.C. Department of Insurance while under the leadership of current N.C. Democratic Party chairman Wayne Goodwin.)

So for some color commentary on the video, who does WRAL go to in order to present a balanced and non-partisan approach to the story?

Far Left outfits Democracy North Carolina and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

“There is no evidence or record of any such operation having been conducted anywhere in the country, said Tomas Lopez, an analyst with left-leaning voting rights group Democracy North Carolina, which opposes the voter ID amendment.

“The scheme depicted in this video is extremely elaborate and would require a really high level of organization, coordination and execution on the part of the perpetrators and a commensurate level of incompetence on the part of election officials and systems.” Lopez told WRAL News in an email. “[N]ot even the incidents used to justify voting restrictions include something like this.”

Kareem Crayton, interim executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which fought North Carolina’s previous voter ID law in court, was more blunt in his assessment of the video.

“The scheme that he dreamt up in that clip is not something actually that is workable,” Crayton said.

The data scraping would be complex – and traceable – and it would require hundreds of people willing to commit a felony and keep it a secret, he said.

“That you’re an elected official and that you make an argument that is intended to undermine the election system that actually got you in office, let alone could throw you and a bunch of other people in jail for felony convictions, is unprecedented – and, to me, sad,” Crayton said.”

What is sad is that these Leftists, WRAL included, find it necessary to intentionally bastardize the entire point of this video in order to score political hits against Forest. Although, it should tell us how scared they are of a Forest campaign for governor in 2020 against their darling Gov. Roy Cooper.

But just because this narrative is absurd, doesn’t mean it won’t spread. Leftist media loves to parrot each other’s narratives to make something bigger than it is. Already this particular narrative about Forest pushing voter fraud is getting coverage nationally.

Mainstream media types are all too happy to pick up a narrative that they assume damages a Republican threat, and spread it like wildfire. However, their assumptions may be wrong. As they spread this video around, more and more people can see that a simple, common sense measure such as voter ID would be a smart way to protect integrity in elections. All the while they are unintentionally spreading Forest’s campaign message and giving him more and more exposure.