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Art & Creativity Quote by Barbara Olson

"The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys"

About this Quote

Olson’s line is less a lament about press bias than a piece of political jiu-jitsu: it reframes electoral conflict as a culture war in which the referee has already put on the other team’s jersey. “Chosen” is the tell. It casts the media not as a messy ecosystem of outlets and incentives, but as a coherent actor with agency, taste, and a unified agenda. That move collapses disagreement into conspiracy-adjacent certainty, a rhetorical shortcut that turns skepticism into solidarity.

The second sentence does the real work. “They are going to be painted as the bad guys” preloads victimhood, giving Republicans a ready-made explanation for criticism before it arrives. Any unfavorable story becomes evidence of the “painting,” not a prompt to argue facts. It’s a defensive posture that doubles as an attack: by accusing the media of moral caricature, Olson suggests the caricature is the media’s sin, not the party’s problem.

Context matters: Olson was a conservative journalist and commentator in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the GOP’s relationship with major news institutions was hardening into a core identity marker. The quote anticipates a media strategy that would later become standard: delegitimize the storyteller so you don’t have to lose the story. It’s emotionally resonant because it offers clarity in a noisy information environment - and politically potent because it converts accountability into persecution, turning every headline into a rallying cry.

Quote Details

TopicJustice
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Olson, Barbara. (2026, January 15). The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-mainstream-media-has-chosen-their-candidates-149858/

Chicago Style
Olson, Barbara. "The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-mainstream-media-has-chosen-their-candidates-149858/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-mainstream-media-has-chosen-their-candidates-149858/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Barbara Olson

Barbara Olson (December 27, 1955 - September 11, 2001) was a Journalist from USA.

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