Media Bias, We report - you decide

Not me.

I heard a report that some enterprising Vandal had removed the C from a CBS sign somewhere. The resulting two letter sign pretty well sums up what we are getting from CBS news.

I've heard a few people comment on this in the news, but no one has really followed it up:

No one seemed surprised or outraged at the content of the now-infamous documents. Yes, they were proven to be forgeries, and it was a slimy move.

But before that, the White House just accepted them as true. To Scott McLellan, it was just another set of damning documents revealing a little bit more about Bush's National Guard service, and his job was to spin them, not deny their validity.

I think what was NOT said that day may be just as important as what was said.


Erik

Brother MacEoghainn, CBS is now "See? BS!"

Brother Deckers, I believe the contents of the documents were as bogus as the documents themselves. Period. Scott McLellan and the rest of the Bush people were caught blind-sided, and probably believed that the documents were correct. To them it was, "Oh geez, where did these come from".

The mainstream media is not going to follow-up on them. They are just as embarassed as CBS is. The entirety of the mainstream media took a black eye on this. CBS, while sometimes is the worst, is not the only one of the major networks to show a distinct bias.

The latest bias from CBS is evolving as well. To sum up:

- For the last week or so there has been an email racing through millions of computers claiming that George Bush is ready to crank up the military draft as soon as the election is over.
- CBS assmued that the emails were true and began their own "investigation".
- The Selective Service had declared that there was no plan to reinstitute the draft and that the emails were proven to be bogus.
- CBS disregarded the Selective Service and continued with their "investigation".
- Never in the story do they identify the emails as being debunked even though they knew this to be the case. Even if the veracity of the e-mails wasn't central to the narrative of the segment, it was surely egregiously irresponsible to report their existence without disclosing their fundamental inaccuracy.
- CBS found some woman named Beverly Cocco who said that she was petrified that her sons would be forced into the service after she got the email saying that the draft was pending.
- Beverly Coco was the president of an organization called "Parents Against the Draft", a group that has publically stated that they want "to bring U.S. troops out of Iraq". She has stated that she is "a one issue [the draft] voter".
- CBS knew that their "random" person had a strong bias, but they played her off as a random woman. CBS did not mention on the program that she is an anti-draft activist.
- CBS is defending the story and the way they reported it. The CBS reporter, Richard Schlesinger, said that whether or not the emails were true was "almost beside the point." The CBS producer for the story told a writer that "the truth of the emails was absolutely irrelevant" to the story, very much akin to the previous forged documents.
- The story was aired almost immediately following recent Kerry-Edwards talking points that were expressly designed to elicit unrealistic fear of a draft reinstatement for political purposes.
- The use of inaccurate supporting material and the selective use of highly relevant facts mirrored many of the exact flaws that crippled the recent 60 Minutes story about George Bush's National Guard service.
- The online transcript of the show has been altered to include the line "Beverly Cocco is so concerned she is involved with the organization 'People Against the Draft'" even though that line did not appear in the actual broadcast.

CBS failed to achieve common journalistic standards by failing to disclose Ms. Cocco's position and activism, failing to disclose the Selective Service's explicit statement denying the impending possibility of the draft and failing to disclose that the circulated e-mails in the story contained false and misleading information. These omissions - along with the story's questionable timing and dramatic tone - combine to create a blatantly misleading piece.

Why did CBS run the story anyway? There can be only one reason: because they felt that the story would harm George Bush. That, my friends, is textbook bias. CBS knew the story to be false, they knew their reference person to have a strong bias, they acknowledged that the falseness of their program to be irrelevant as compared to the possibility of having something to scare the viewers and make a statement against Bush.

A culture of ingrained liberalism is responsible for motivating the CBS story, as well as many other stories at ABC, NBC, and CNN (the big 4). CBS news has become one big Democrat infomercial.

Let's apply the logic of CBS: Dan Rather is a child molester. I mean, that is what the rumor is, according to a mass email I got. And the actual truth of it is irrelevant, right? Because the issue is not the facts of Dan Rather?s child molestation, it?s the rumors surrounding Dan Rather criminal felonies with little kiddies.

Are you getting the picture yet, Dan?

If you include the fact that he tries to inculcate this mush minded crap into their vulnerable minds, then you're not far wrong. Is anything worse than "mind molestation"?

That's my point. McLellan and the White House staff believed them to be true. No one said, "You know, that sounds pretty far out, even with everything we've heard so far." They all sort of said, "uhhhhh, sure, whatever you say," NOT "This seems pretty far-fetched."

Personally, I'm glad that the fraud was exposed. That's pretty slimey, and uncalled for. That's the part of politics I hate -- the dirty tricks and underhandedness. I'm not real wild about the wild accusations and stretching of the truth by either candidate, but the out-and-out lies and life-ruining tactics used to get their guy in power should be met with firings and possible criminal or civil charges.


Erik

While we're on the subject of CBS' liberal bias, as per Dan Rather and the now-infamous "Bush National Guard documents," I wonder if Brother Shamalama will stipulate that FOX has a conservative bias, since they were duped by a group calling themselves "Communists for Kerry."

It seems Fox News posted an interview with the group, which presents itself as a legitimate, pro-Kerry group. Fox quoted group member Komoselutes Rob as saying, "We're trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office." The Fox report said, "it is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists' endorsement."

What Fox failed to mention is that CFK is a parody by a pro-Republican 527, Hellgate Republican Club. Fox News retracted the article and said they weren't at fault, because their website reporter asked Rob whether they were legitimate (he said they were).

However, if the reporter would have actually visted the obviously satirical website -- www.communistsforkerry.com -- and clicked on the "About Us" link, he would have discovered this information:

"Communists for Kerry" is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy "527" organization that exists for the purpose of; Informing voters with satire and irony, how political candidates make decisions based on the failed social economic principles of socialism that punish the individual by preventing them from becoming their dream through proven ideas of entrepreneurship and freedom."

So does Fox News and their website earn the distinction of being biased since they fell for an obvious fake, and failed to investigate it by clicking the one link that would explain who they are?

I'll admit to mine if you'll admit to yours.


Erik Deckers

That sounds kinky, but let's go for it.

Oh yes I believe Fox News has an equal amount of conservative slant to any of the liberal media outlets. I didn't catch the www.communistsforkerry.com bit (wonderful website, by the way), but it is laughable.

And this ain't the first time Fox News has been caught red-handed.

But considering how very liberal 85% of the broadcast media is, I start to worry that the average American is showered with liberal half-truths and lies. Sure, Fox News "balances" a portion of it, but the average journalist, talking head, producer, and writer is still liberal and reports "facts" with a liberal slant. Therefore I can use the phrase "liberal media" with some accuracy (the accuracy of a shotgun).

If the two CBS "stories" has appeared on Fox News or Drudge then we'd all be laughing at them. But since it was CBS they're somehow insulated from criticism, and that any complaints against them are simply "partisian".

Wasn't it Brokaw that called such complaints a "jihad" this weekend? Jihad? Geez guy, we're simply pointing out that "your people" made an obvious mistake showing obvious bias towards one side of the political spectrum, and we're upset about it. Has responsibility now become jihad? The mainstream media has "circled the wagons" now, so maybe we'll actually start getting some honest reporting of facts - but I doubt it, not when 90% of the media always seem to vote one way.

The bloggers are now watching everything any talking head says now, and I bet we see more exposing in the short term. This is going to be fun!

One of the most obvious anti-Bush biases in the mainstream media is their almost refusal to cover one of the most important, and most amazing, stories in years: free elections in Afghanistan.

The first presidential elections in Afghanistan's history will be held Saturday, and the media couldn't care less.

Too much world media coverage will focus on pictures of violence at polling places, not on the big news: lines of courageous Afghans patiently waiting to vote. Tyrants-of-the-day are passing out leaflets in refugee camps promising divine rewards to anyone who kills a poll worker.

Such terrorist acts by die-hard Taliban insurgents may be excitingly pictorial, but images of Muslims, especially women, voting for the first time, and of candidates for office literally taking their lives in their hands to campaign, are deemed not sufficiently mesmerizing. Why is this?

Already, the elections are being minimized in the media. We are told the elections are being "staged" and that democracy there is an "experiment." My heavens, people, democracy in the US was called an "experiment" for our first 100 years. Geez.

Another reason to downplay or dismiss Election Day in Afghanistan is that it is clearly good news for America and its allies, who are directly responsible for this outbreak of freedom in a Muslim land. But remember the template of the mainstream liberal media: if it is either pro-American or pro-Bush then downplay it; if it is anti-American or anti-Bush then run the story every night for a month.

If the mountain people of this war-ravaged nation, whose cash crop is poppies for illegal opium, can stand up to their tormentors and grasp the powers of democracy, their example will offer hope to the better-educated Iraqis sitting on their nation's sea of oil. Afghanistan would be the first good domino to tip over. This is my flower-in-the-desert example that liberals here seem to dismiss as "unachievable".

In the face of assassination attempts on the lives of candidates, over 10 million Afghans have registered, plus 2 million more in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

Afghanistan is doing quite well, compared to where it was. What once was a terrorist state that was harboring Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, is no longer so. The Taliban are either dead or out of power, and much of Al-Qaeda was killed. By any measure, the war in Afghanistan has been a success. The fact that one single person has not been confirmed as deceased in no way diminishes the fact that much of the "machine" that attacked the US is now either in jail or in hell. Osama, you can't hide in a cave forever.

Why isn't this being covered hard every night by Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw? Because they don't want freedom in Afghanistan to succeed (that would imply a Bush victory). They don't want freedom in Iraq to succeed (that would imply a Bush victory). And it's just because they don't like Bush; their hatred of one man is enough to deny freedom for millions of people in the Middle East.

Please tell me which broadcast of Rather, Jennings, or Brokaw you watched where they heralded the possibility of freedom in either Afghanistan or Iraq, because I must have missed it.

Afghans, fighting their unaccustomed way to the polls through feudal fundamentalists and Arab terrorists, will be the most closely watched. But Australians also vote this weekend. Prime Minister John Howard has reaffirmed the traditional Australian-American alliance; he is opposed in the elections by Labor's Mark Latham, the bring-the-boys-home-from-Iraq-by-Christmas candidate.

Then come the U.S. elections, which most of you here have already heard something about.

Finally, Iraqi elections are scheduled for January. These will be influenced by the Afghan electoral example, and by the Australian decision signaling the breadth of future coalition support. Most of all, the U.S. election outcome will tell Iraqi voters to expect U.S. help in building a new life in a federal system - or to worry about helicopters hurriedly leaving the roof of the U.S. embassy.

Fair And Balanced.



Attached Image. (Click thumbnail to expand)

I thought there weren't any more Taliban. That's what Bush said a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, Brokaw is a self-avowed conservative, so he would WANT this to succeed.

They've talked about it with great frequency on NPR since Friday. And I've heard some mention of the elections in both countries. Whether they "herald" them, I don't know, but there have been some brief mentions on some of the newscasts.


Erik

On the October 21 CBS Early Show, CBS News reporter Byron Pitts played a clip of Kerry, during an Ohio campaign appearance. He then "picked just a local Ohioan voter" for their impression. What neither CBS nor Pitts mentioned was that the "random voter" was Kristen Breitweiser. Breitweiser was identified on screen as a "9/11 widow."

Kristen Breitweiser has been an active, publicity-seeking Bush-bashing 9/11 widow.
Kristen Breitweiser has spent time on the campaign trail for Kerry-Edwards.
Kristen Breitweiser is featured in a new Kerry-Edwards TV ad.

Random voter, huh? And it seems that CBS has no memory either.

Back on the September 28 Early Show, CBS reporter Jim Axelrod announced, over video of John Edwards on stage handing a microphone over to Breitweiser: "Mr. Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, was joined on the campaign trail by 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser." CBS played a clip of her, identified on screen again only as a "9/11 widow."

Recently an ABC World News Tonight, not CBS Evening News, featured a clip of her new ad for Kerry. ABC's Bob Woodruff explained, over a brief shot of Breitweiser on stage with Edwards at a campaign event, how "yesterday the Kerry campaign released its own 9/11 ad" in which "widow Kristen Breitweiser accuses George Bush of opposing the 9/11 Commission and resisting reform." Wow. This "random voter" really gets around.

Nothing about her campaigning for the Democratic ticket, or cutting a TV ad for them, made it to the "random voter interviews".

Is anyone surprised?

No surprise. This is typical Republicant ranting.

I'll try to make this one easy enough for even Brother Maisky to understand.

Yesterday (Monday) the news broke about 380 tons of explosives that disappeared in Iraq. The International Atomic Energy Agency was raising quite a fuss over this, as was the American mainstream media.

ABC News mentioned the Iraq explosives depot at least 4 times
CBS News mentioned the Iraq explosives depot at least 7 times
MSNBC mentioned the Iraq explosives depot at least 37 times
CNN mentioned the Iraq explosives depot at least 50 times

Boy oh boy, did the media love this story. After all, it really looked bad for Bush, didn't it? Another Abu Ghraib?

Then, of course, we had the Kerry campaign jumping on the story. He called it one of the greatest blunders of Iraq. He slammed Bush for, as he put it, "failing to guard" the stockpile of explosives. And the media gleefully repeated his blatherings.

Then John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president." This too was repeated by the media.

Huh? Are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?

Then last night we got a report on NBC news that the explosives were already missing when U.S. troops arrived at the storage location on April 10, 2003. The last time the IAEA saw the explosives was three months earlier in January of 2003. There is no way to know just when the explosives were removed. Sometime after the IAEA saw them in January and before American troops got there in April. Obviously this isn't a case of Bush failing to "guard" the explosives. By the time our troops got there they weren't there to guard. In other words, nobody failed to guard anything and there was nothing we could have done about it. They were gone when we got there.

An NBC News crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

Did anyone in the media take even a minute to check any facts before broadcasting this "news"?

Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives? NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political." The UN being political against Bush? Nah, you don't say!

CBS's "60 Minutes" executive producer Jeff Fager hoped to break the story during a high-impact election eve broadcast on October 31, but the New York Times simply beat them to it. This was supposed to be the liberal's "October Surprise", with the liberal media attacking Bush only two days before the election.

Yep. This is not a news item. This is petty politics, along with a healthy dose of the liberal media doing whatever they can to get Bush out of office. Not Republican ranting, but rather more proven liberal media bias.

Well, if it works, it will be worthwhile.

But MSNBC and CNN are on 24 hours per day. ABC News and CBS News are on for 30 minutes. Of course, MSNBC is a mostly-conservative station, given their focus on financials and the fact that they're co-owned by two huge multinational corporations.

Of course they don't check the facts! What's wrong with you?!

Actually, the media is to blame for their own situation -- they created this. In a rush to get news out faster, thanks to 24 hour news channels and the Internet, everyone is in a rush to be first.

The stupid thing is that this mentality is left over from the newspaper days when you could be scooped and have a story all to yourself for 24 hours. Being first drove up sales, which drove up revenues. But now, since news breaks in a blur, and every station can be relied on to get the same story out within minutes of each other, there's no advantage to being first. In fact, as we're seeing, there's a disadvantage.



Erik