Media Bias, We report - you decide

Nobody else refer to "Zionist disease". The Republicants advocate bombing EVERYBODY.
Perhaps THEY should be banned from campus.

At the end of 2004 I have to admit that I am grateful for one thing: media bias.

?!?!

For many generations, Big Media represented the interests of the dominant political and business elites - the Fat Cats of the US.

Some of those interests were good, and some were very bad. With the arrival of the civil rights movement, journalism slowly began to reform itself and to work overtime to represent underrepresented political and social points of view. There developed a great tolerance for viewpoints and perspectives from ideological minorities, and a great hunger to represent those views in direct contrast to their former Fat Cat mentors.

The new recruits to big journalism and their new mentors did not work overtime to assure that, in the elevation of tolerance of ideological minorities, there would remain representation of majoritarian points of view. In fact, majoritarian points of view became suspect, and the focus of pervasive hostile reporting and analysis. The pendulum had swung completely the other way - and one extreme is no better than another. In modern language, this is when mainstream journalism no longer represented the Red States.

By the time the new millennium arrived, legacy media was populated at its elite levels by as homogeneous a group of reporters-producers-commentators,
all of minority ideologies (or better put non-majority ideologies), a self-replicating echo chamber of left, overwhelmingly anti-Republican, anti-Christian, anti-military, anti-wealth, anti-business (and really anti-middle class).

Sometimes being with the "majority" is certainly a bad thing. One has to look no further than Nazi Germany. But sometimes being with the "minority" is certainly a bad thing too. Look at militant Islam today.

Today's journalists have no tolerance for majoritarian points of view (look at all the dismay when state after state turned red in the last election), and they consider themselves somehow "above the fray" for having such philosophies. Down here in Georgia we simply call them "snobs".

The majority of listeners/viewers grew tired of the exclusion of its views from the media. When Rush Limbaugh arrived, he prospered because at last there was a voice reflecting majoritarian points of view. The same welcome greeted Drudge, Fox News, and the blogs. Look at any Nielson numbers - conservative outlets are cleaning house against the long-establshed media, and the trend shows no sign of abating. CNN's ratings over a decade are in a freefall, as are those of CBS, and the others are not looking healthy.

People are now, for the first time in 40 years, having the opportunity to see multiple sides of the news. People now have the ability to decide for themselves who is telling the truth and who is lying - something the media was supposed to be doing all along.

How can it possibly be that 80-90% of journalists vote liberal election after election, while such a trend is not seen among the general population? That's easy: it's because journalists simply have a very different philisophy from "middle America". Today's journalists are far more closely aligned, in philisophy, with the new-euro-Socialists.

The blogosphere is intensely partisan, just as old media has been. But, unlike the old media, there is truth on the Internet. On the Internet you can easily Google practically any story or subject and find both fact and fiction, again something mainstream media has not done for 40 years. This is a significant advantage going forward in the competition for credibility and trust. If old media does not develop some level of tolerance for the majoritarian points of view in the United States (and yes, I do mean Republican, Christian, pro-military, pro-wealth, pro-business, and pro-middle and upper class), it will continue to decline in reach and authority. And it could happen to a nicer group of people. The departure of Dan Rather is far more symbolic than just an old guy retiring.

Rush Limburgher "majoritarian"? Only if the majority are religious right extremists.
The media is rapidly coming under the "command" of it's extreme right-wing owners. More and more you have to access international sources to find out what is REALLY going on. Anybody who watches FOX and thinks they are getting a true picture is wearing blinders.

I have found a news source on the web that is not only non-partisan, it bills itself as having "nothing to hide": www.nakednews.com
NOTE: You need to be 18 to access this.

I've "heard" about www.nakednews.com. It's been out for a year or two. Great "commentary".

Nah, Rush is as wacko as Rather. But the nice thing is that Rush today has an audience comparable to Rather, as well as all the "shades of grey" between.

Today mainstream media is entertainment and agenda, not journalism. World News Tonight with Peter Jennings is no more news than Sesame Street.

BUT ...

With the advent of blogs a formerly silent voice can be heard. Without blogs we would never have heard from the Swiftees or Rather's bogus documents. And without those two events Kerry would have been elected. So "independant media" is having a real effect on what happens in the world, at a time when viewership of the "big three" is declining rapidly. And with the decline of entertainment and agenda we just might get to see the truth - something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want. Anybody who watches ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/FOX and thinks they are getting a true picture is wearing blinders.

Outside of a half dozen large urban areas the rest of the country got colored red this past election. This alone tells you something about the attitudes, morals, and desires of the "majority". Those voices need to be heard just as much as the half dozen large urban areas. This country is a lot more than just New York City or Los Angeles.

On Sunday, January 02, the Iraqi Arabic newspaper 'Nahrain' had the following press release by the Iraqi ministry of defense:

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1. At 1 am Iraqi National Guard (ING), the Mahmudih division, arrested 217 individuals suspected of being terrorists and confiscated a large cache of light and heavy caliber weapons and ammunition.

2. At 2 am the same ING division arrested Hatem Alzobaae, a suspected terrorist cell leader.

3. At 2:30 am ING in Hillah arrested the terrorist Ali Mehsan Ghnajar. In his possession were 19 grenades, three 28mm mortars.

4. At 4 am, based on a tip that he had returned from Syria, the criminal Ali Latief was arrested by the ING. Four men who are part of his cell were also arrested.

5. At 4 am 10 terrorists were arrested after returning from Mosul by the ING Mahmudiah division.

6. At 4 am ING raided the Hai Alaskari area based on a tip. As a result of the raid the ING arrested 10 terrorists one of which resisted and was wounded and arrested.

7. At 4 am terrorists attacked the Hadbaa police station and were repelled with 2 terrorists killed and their weapons confiscated.

8. At 5 am ING started a security clean sweep of Bab Shams. They confiscated a large number of hand grenades and mortar weapons and rounds.

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Now time for the bias.

(1) Check your local newspaper from this past weekend and see whether these successes by the Iraqi National Guard have been reported.
(2) Then ask yourself whether any successful terrorist attack, whether via car bomb, attack on a police station, kidnapping, or whatever, has ever gone unreported in your local paper.

Why?

Here's a bit more Academia Bias from Ahmad Al-Qloushi.

One of the liberal's most passionate lies is that of intellectual diversity, which is only allowed if it's liberal - conservative or moderate thought is generally not tolerated.

Well, Ahmad's story made it to the internet, and more than a few people could easily see the blind bias against America by, gasp, a professor of American Government. Then the local media picked up the story. So what did professor Wookcock do? He filed a grievance - an ?act or threat of intimidation or general harassment?. What a loser, a wimp, and a neo-Socialist liberal.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/12...prweb187767.htm

Joe Woolcock
Political Science Instructor (Honors Instructor)
Business and Social Sciences
(650) 949-7485
[email protected]

Oh, and Foothill College is in California. Not surprising.

Here's an example of liberal bias from the BBC, as reported by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../09/nbook09.xml
(scroll down towards the bottom of the page)

Ranting by an extreme right wing columnist to try to prove that the BBC is biased just won't work. Nice try, though.

Why not? Everyone believed it when Dan Rather, a clearly-defined left-winger, said that the mainstream media isn't biased.

And his political affiliation is not important if you can actually find evidence that the BBC includes mentioning the primary aid force (the US and Australian military) as an integral part of any tsunami reporting. The BBC doesn't mind often quoting a few lines from the few UN officials over there.

Which brings me back to King Dan. Ahhh, this couldn't have happened to a "nicer" person and a "nicer" network. January 10, 2005: the day that CBS News decended into the abyss.

Everybody remembers it. On September 8, 2004, the show "60 Minutes" ran a story apparently showing documents that proved that Bush lied on several accounts regarding his Texas Air National Guard service. The only problem was that these documents were fake, and CBS knew at the time that they were fake and ran them anyway.

The investigation into what really happened was released yesterday. It's called The Thornburgh report.

Oh, and the very day that the CBS Fake Documents report was released was the very day that Dan just happened to take a day off? Yeah. CBS News veteran Don Hewitt called Dan Rather's disappearance from Monday's Evening News "really stupid" during a damage control meeting on Monday. There are rumors that Rather was told to stay off the air on Monday.

And Dan is not simply "retiring" in 2005. Les Moonves, CBS chairman, for the first time seemed to link Mr. Rather's decision to step down from the anchor position to his association with the discredited report. Yep, Dan was shown the door. "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken responsibility for his part in the broadcast. He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down from the 'CBS Evening News' in March of 2005. We believe any further action would not be appropriate." Bye bye, Dan.

The Thornburgh report is being quoted and misquoted all over the media. But the one thing that no one will mention is that the fundamental problem that led to the downfall of 60 Minutes and, perhaps, CBS News, was the fact that no one involved in the reportorial or editorial process was a Republican or a conservative. If there had been anyone in the organization who did not share Mary Mapes's politics, who was not desperate to counteract the Swift Boat Vets and deliver the election to the Democrats, then certain obvious questions would have been asked:
- Where, exactly, did these documents come from?
- What reason is there to think that they really originated in the "personal files" of a long-dead National Guard officer, if his family has no knowledge of them?
- How did such modern-looking memos come to be produced in the early 1970s?
- How can these critical memos, allegedly by Jerry Killian, be reconciled with the glowing evaluations of Lt. Bush that Killian signed?
- Why haven't you interviewed General "Buck" Staudt, who is casually slandered in one of the alleged memos?
- Why didn't you show the memos to General Bobby Hodges, rather than reading phrases from them to him over the telephone?
- Isn't it a funny coincidence that these "newly discovered" memos are attributed to the one person in this story who is conveniently dead?

The senior management of "60 Minutes" had one agenda, and it had nothing to do with either truth nor facts: it was to help deliver the White House to Kerry. And, thanks to the blogosphere, it failed.

The words of the mainstream media has always been, "Yes, we're pretty much all Democrats, but that doesn't influence our news coverage." Does anyone actually believe that anymore?

There was even communication and apparent coordination between 60 Minutes staff and the Kerry campaign. Huh? A "fair and balanced" news agency working with a particular political candidate? Isn't that a conflict of interest? Nope, not if your
agenda is the same as the candidate's.

Did you know that the Democratic National Committee launched its "Fortunate Son" ad campaign, which duplicated the themes of the 60 Minutes program, the very next morning after the program aired. Now what are the chances that such could happen?

And here's another funny item. The primary blog that exposed the forged documents is a little place called Little Green Footballs. It was completely offline yesterday due to a Denial Of Service attack. Seems like the liberals are not overly happy with the news when it goes against their agenda. But thanks to an extensive mirroring system the blog remains active. Nice try, though.

The bottom line is that CBS News is far more concerned with promoting either a liberal candidate or a liberal agenda than they are televising factual news. You cannot convince me that a trained staff of professional journalists couldn't see these documents as fakes but a handful of internet bloggers saw them as fakes in a few hours.

CBS News has seen years of poor ratings and reduced influence. Now they suffered a crushing blow to its credibility because of a broadcast that has now been labeled as both factually discredited and unprofessionally produced. And for lying to the American public for all these years, I say, "Rest In Peace, CBS".

The REAL tragedy about the faked documents is that it obscures the fact that Bush DID lie about his service. A little noted interview with the secretary who typed the REAL memos indicated that, while the memos were fake, the content of them was correct.

I was SO hoping someone would say this. The documents were fake, but what is written on them is true.

Sort of like Clinton's great line, "I smoked marajuana, but I didn't inhale."

Geez. The blatant fraudulence of the documents used to try to alter a Presidental enection IS the issue. This was a victory of the New Media, the Internet, bloggers and talk radio, over the Old Media, the New York Times, Washington Post and, of course, CBS. ABC and NBC also need to watch carefully.

Mary Mapes has been after Bush since he was a Texas Governor. She discovered a fraud, embellished it, coordinated it with the DNC, and rushed it to TV. She is not a journalist, merely a political hack in a position of great power. It's a good thing that she is unemployed today.

Are you really implying that forgeries are OK as long as you believe that the information contained within is assumed to be true? I can write a letter from the Pope, and even put his signature on it, as long as what's inside the document is factually correct? Would you allow me to televise the following:

Now would you be willing to go in "60 Minutes" with the above 'document' and attest to it's validity? The contents are true, and who cares if the actual document is fake, right?

The fraudulence of the documents is the issue. Period.

Not true. Bush is STILL a liar, a draft dodger and a deserter.

The Republicans must not believe in karma.

Everything they said about Clinton is coming back to them .

This one almost got by me. But in the Rathergate's Thornburgh Report there is the following:

"...Dotty Lynch, CBS News? Senior Political Editor....recalled having discussions with Mapes over Labor Day weekend, about the September 8 Segment."

OK, so who is Dotty Lynch, CBS News? Senior Political Editor? Well, earlier in her career she directed polling for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Walter Mondale and the DNC.

In Lynch?s her own words: "From 1972 until 1985 I worked in politics as a pollster for Democratic candidates and liberal causes. Most of the candidates, most notably Presidential contenders George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart, were simpatico with my liberal values and I felt somewhat fulfilled in working through them to build a better society."

She is a self-described "very ardent feminist".

She participated in a December 2004 CSPAN panel. She agreed that the Swift Boat attacks had no basis in fact. To the suggestion that the MSM should have actually investigated what the "facts" were, before pronouncing them to be false, Lynch stated that since the public can only focus on a few sentences of a story, the mainstream media was justified in not investigating this "complex" Kerry story, because it would only confuse the public.

Yep, absolutely no bias in this person. Exactly the person a major worldwide media outlet should employ to inform the populace in a fair and balanced way.

The liars that have the most influence on the average person do not live in the White House.