Archive for the ‘News Media’ Category
Too Dangerous to Print: Liberal University Bias
Thomas Paine once said, “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” How true these words are. One of the most fundamental reflections of liberty is the freedom to question, challenge and debate the world around us. This freedom does not exist everywhere in the United States and certainly not at the university level.
Posted in Is MSM Admitting Collaboration With Obama?
Only someone who has been on a spaceship on a mission to a far away planet for the past decade would be unaware of the nauseous and fawning relationship the mainstream media (MSM) has had with Barack H. Obama since his entry into the political world and the years to date.
Want to Catch the News? Tune into Blogs!
Who could have predicted the explosive growth in the popularity for blogs as news or media outlets? Today, more and more people are tuning into their favorite news blog instead of catching the morning or evening news on the TV or radio. While the majority of those receiving news still get it from the major media outlets, more and more media blogs are becoming the go-to source for news.
Short for “web log,” a blog is a specialized site that allows one or more people to share a running log of events and personal insights with online audiences. Basically, a blog is an online journal.
There are millions of blogs currently out there. In fact, there is probably not one topic out there that does not have its own blog. With topics ranging from food to fantasy, home improvement to hot news topics, college sports to celebrities, or baseball to beauty products, blogs are everywhere. Blogs that are particular to political or current-events themes have especially grown in popularity. These blogs, serving as news outlets, have become “soap boxes” for instant mass-audience commentary.
After all, what is media without criticism or commentary? Who does not want to talk about what they see, hear, or read about in the news? The news is a part of our everyday lives – what we see, hear, or read about largely affects us – worldwide, nationwide, and even community wide. With all of the news stories thrown out there, you can hardly expect people to keep quiet about it.
Hence, this is the number one reason for the ever-growing popularity of media blogs as news and commentary outlets.
US Has Killed 655,000 Iraqis? Soros Funded Lancet Study Debunked
By Warner Todd Huston
The newest update to a study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, claims that 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq. This absurd claim has been hailed around the world as evidence of the evil American empire’s murderous reign in the Mid East. But it turns out that the entire study is not only filled with lies, the creators of the study even tried to hide the fact that George Soros funded the thing.
MSM sources like the AP and the Washington Post, among many others, highlighted the report lending it credence when it came out last month but few of those news outlets revealed the source of the study’s funding. While most did reveal that the study was "controversial," few went into just how far off from the truth the details of this study are.
The real facts, however, are beginning to come out.
Michael Fumento has penned a great expose on how many lies fill the famed Lancet Study on Iraqi war deaths and the UK’s Timesonline also revealed the connection with Soros.
The Times tells of the Soros involvement.
Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.
"The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research," said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
And Michael Fumento has a great run down on all the spurious mathematics promulgated by the study. When comparing the numbers offered by the Iraq Family Health Survey study to that of the study in the Lancet, some startling differences are seen.
So for that last period, while the IFHS daily figure was 2.3 times higher than that of Iraq Body Count, the Lancet 2006 daily figure was a stunning 7.3 times higher than that of the IFHS and 17 times higher than that of Iraq Body Count.
Reuters: CAIR Says They ‘Feel Left Out’ of 2008 Election
By Warner Todd Huston
Proving once again in good European form that they think nothing American is democratic, good or fair, Reuters gives us a pity party for CAIR who is whining that they "feel left out" of the 2008 presidential elections. With the headline blaring "Some non-Christians feel left out of election," Reuters gives us a tale of woe guaranteed to make Europeans shake their heads knowingly that we Americans are really just Christian nuts out to oppress all minorities. One does wonder, however, how CAIR would like it if Muslims did become a focus of the 2008 elections? In light of current events it is doubtful if such a focus would be favorable to them, so, were I them, I’d be happy no one is paying attention to them!
In a U.S. election campaign where presidential candidates from both major parties have talked openly about their Christian faith, some non-Christians feel shut out or turned off.
Listen, this is a majority Christian nation and anyone wanting to get elected is naturally going to talk as closely as possible to that majority. This country is still over 75% Christian, so it is a logical presumption that citizens whose religion represents only a few percentage points would not be a focus of a politician’s efforts!
But not being a focus does not equate to oppression or their rights being squelched, it must be pointed out.
And here we go with the tsk tsking:
"Non-Christians are concerned that they will be excluded from the process," said Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Naturally, Reuters gives the perpetual whiners in CAIR the upfront chance to let Europe know how disappointed they are that America is so hateful. Where, though, is the American Buddhist organization that is constantly "concerned" that Americans will "exclude" them from the process? Nowhere to be seen. No, it turns out that the "some non-Christians" end up being mostly just CAIR to so many in the MSM.
Media Fans Flames of GOP Religious Divide
By Warner Todd Huston
In an article that is ostensibly supposed to be about the many Iowa homeschoolers that are supporting Mike Huckabee, the Washington Post pins the reason to the fact that homeschooling parents must hate Mormons! This has easily become the MSM’s favorite theme as they try to divide and anger portions of the GOP primary voting base against each other. In this MSM meme, anyone who votes against Romney or questions the relative Christian merits of the Mormon faith is a bigot who hates Mormons and won’t vote for Romney merely because he is one. They are also unanimous in pinning support for Huckabee to an anti-Mormon sentiment. The MSM is doing their level best to start a religious war on the right.
In the Post’s article, religion is the central theme of pro-Huckabee homeschool advocates. Here the Post reveals the efforts of a homeschooling Mother named Julie Roe (bet they chose her for her familiar name: Roe) who has stumped for Huckabee by making homemade buttons and making numerous phone calls.
Julie Roe, an early believer in Mike Huckabee, worked with what she had… With no buttons, no yard signs and no glossy literature from his nearly invisible Iowa campaign, she took a pair of scissors and cut out a photograph of the former Arkansas governor. She pasted it on a piece of paper, scribbled down some of his positions, made copies and launched the Huckabee for President campaign in rural Hardin County.
So, why Huckabee? (My emphasis added throughout).
Huckabee’s name is no longer a mystery to Iowa’s Republican voters, in large part because of an extensive network of home-schoolers like Roe who have helped lift his underfunded campaign from obscurity to the front of a crowded field. Opinion polls show that his haphazard approach is trumping the studied strategy of Mitt Romney, who invested millions only to be shunned by many religious conservatives such as Roe, who see the former Baptist preacher from Hope, Ark., as their champion.
But, even the Post contradicts this religious basis only a few paragraphs later.
Newspapers Are Guardians of Truth, so say ‘Journalists’
By Warner Todd Huston
Last Sunday, from the pen of editorial page editor of the Seattle Times James Vesely, we got a pretty good indication of why the new media of the Internet is so swiftly taking over the traditional role of the old, dead tree media. One word describes it; arrogance. It is an arrogance of the assumed supremacy of the old media and the air of entitlement that it holds dear. It is the presumption that what they write is "truth," that newspapers are the arbiters of that truth, and that journalists are "democracy" personified and that without them we are naught but a "banana republic." And it is the sneering, discountenance with which they look upon the reading public as the great unwashed that has finally caught up with them. However, some are beginning to notice it and unless the dead tree media realizes this truth staring them in the face, they truly are a doomed industry.
Mr. Vesely wrongly imagines that Americans are not abandoning his beloved, old media in favor of the Internet because of the failed content of the old media. Vesely imagines that people are not "willingly turning from fiber to cyber" as a "replacement of … the methodology of reporting and editing" of the old media. Vesely thinks people are only turning to the Internet because it is faster and more "modern." He imagines that newspapers are "carefully edited" and that they speak truth and, that being true, people can’t possibly be turning away from his fellows because of content.
Here is is deluding himself. People are leaving the dead tree media in droves because they simply do not trust them anymore, their "methodology" has become corrupt and self-serving as well as ideologically homogenized all across the industry offering few avenues for differing opinion.
So, why are newspapers in decline? Amazingly, Vesley seems to imagine that the only reason newspapers are declining in circulation is because they are delivered by "a 13-year-old on a bicycle working after school." He thinks the method of delivery is the only reason the old media is in decline.
But what about that Internet, doohickey, anyway? What does Vesely think of it? It turns out he feels it is all just "opinions" that would "befuddle the finest espionage organization" to figure out. Vesely imagines that the Internet is nothing but "rumor."
Foremost, a decent newspaper is the enemy of rumor and a citizen of its place. Blogs are not the enemy of rumor, nor is talk radio or cable television. Rumor is not the substitute for truth, and it takes journalism to sift for truth.
Talk about clueless.
Yes, Vesely imagines that his beloved newspapers have cornered the market on "truth." At least what "truth" is on any given day, change as it may, because "truth is fleeting," or so he claims.
Reporters know that truth is fleeting, and that it changes in the palm of the hand like mercury. For just a moment, something is true. It is true because it is verifiable by other sources and true because of the checks and counterchecks that look for truth amid the haze of events. It was that verifiable truth that kept newspapers coming to the kitchen table.
No, Mr. Vesely, truth is not "fleeting." Interpretations may be, but truth is fixed in fact. But, this claim that truth is "fleeting" is not one that "journalist’s" even subscribe to because as a rule the "legitimate" media seems to bend all stories to fit their own base line of "truth" grounded in their leftist ideology. So, in the way the media practices journalism, only facts seem fleeting because they change early and often to fit their greater ideological narrative.
This is what the consumer is responding to. People have become acutely aware that the media is lying to them and that they have an agenda that they hide behind a false veneer of "journalistic integrity" and "balanced" reporting. The American public feels they are being badly served by the agenda journalism hidden behind the stoic claims of "truth" presented to them by the traditional media. And, if they are going to get opinion disguised as "reporting" from the old media, the American public would rather go to sources that they understand ahead of time comes from a particular ideological vantage point.
Honesty is what the American public wants and that is in short supply from the traditional media.
Let us deal with this claim that newspapers and journalists are the guardians of truth via the 1st Amendment, anyway. This claim is a self-serving falsity that really has only gained cachet since the 1960s when journalists stopped wanting to be writers and started imagining that their job was to somehow save the world. It also coincided with the star power of TV news when reporters stopped being the faceless voices behind a mic and became the story. Instead of the news read by Walter Cronkite, we got Walter Cronkite with the news. Instead of an on the scene report by Dan Rather we got Dan Rather on the scene.
There was a day when a town would sport several newspapers that were admittedly lined up behind a Party or even a specific candidate — it was plain to see and everyone knew it. In the early Republic, for instance, candidates actually openly printed their own newspapers to support their candidacy. If you wanted Henry Clay of Kentucky for president, for instance, you read his newspaper. If you wanted the argument of your own party affiliation, you could find a newspaper in your own town that presented that opinion to you. But, then came the idealism of the 1960s when journalism suddenly imagined that it was above such partisanship, when journalists began to imagine they were the truth personified. This shift in self perception is what resulted in the demise of the old media.
Vesely is a perfect example of those who imagine he is the arbiter of truth, fooling himself that he has been able to subdue his partisanship and replaced it with a "professional" approach to the news. He feels that there are special "obligations of journalism" making his work above the mere rumor mongering of the Internet and the great unwashed that people it. In this he is not much different from many of his contemporaries in the field. They all imagine they have shed their own partisanship, yet only they think that this is true. Everyone else sees their partisanship on display fairly clearly. Their self-perception is more like self-deception.
Vesely ends his piece with the further claim that, along with being truth itself, his fellows are also somehow the personification of the "democratic state." That without his brand of journalism, there can be no democracy. This is a claim we hear often from the media and it has a small ring of truth to it. But the truth is not exactly as Vesely and his comrades want to imagine it.
Vesely is right on when he says, "Without democracy — which means not just freedom but the robust life in a democratic state — the free press cannot survive, no matter how rich it gets." A free press was one of the most important aspects of our system passed on to us by the brilliance of our founders. It can neither survive without democracy, nor does democracy survive without the free press. They work hand in hand, neither a dispensable facet of the other.
But, here is the step too far that journalists today make. In Vesely’s piece it is an admiring quote from "Today’s Word on Journalism" that serves to illustrate the error that journalists make.
"While the newspaper is expendable, the tradition it represents and the information it supplies are not. The evolution from Gutenberg to Gates may be irreversible, but as new media replace the old ones there’s no official passing of the torch of responsibility, no automatic transfer of the sacred trust the First Amendment placed upon the free press and its proprietors. In fact, the handoff, such as it is, has been fumbled very badly. As newspapers are eviscerated, marginalized and abandoned, they leave a vacuum that nothing and no one is prepared to fill — a crisis on its way to becoming a tragedy. When railroads and riverboats began to go the way of the passenger pigeon, no one was harmed except the work force and a few big investors who had failed to diversify. If professional journalism vanishes along with the newspapers, this thing we call a constitutional democracy becomes a banana republic."
Vesely’s quote is a perfect example of the arrogance inherent in the mindset of the creature who imagines himself a "professional journalist." This quote assumes the perfection and incorruptibility of the right thinking press. It assumes the general "rightness" of the denizens of the modern media culture and that assumption is neither a necessary part of that healthy democratic state, nor does it even exist. There is no "torch of responsibility" for the old media to pass on. A free press does not require "truth," nor is truth the sole jurisdiction of journalists. Nor is "the press" the guardian of the Constitution. In fact, "truth" is a life long search not one that can be supplied by a homogenized press corps all of whom subscribe to the same ideological precepts. The Constitution is ill served by a press that has no diversity in thought.
Even in his day, Thomas Jefferson was considered a Renaissance man. His search for truth was not one of mere years but one of a life time of study. His ideas changed over time as he grew in his understanding of life. Take his thoughts on religion, for instance. Many mistakenly call him a deist today, but one cannot reconcile the harsh things the younger Jefferson said about religion when compared with the warmer feelings he had about the subject as an aged statesman unless one takes into account his changing understanding with age. The older Jefferson said things about religion that would have shocked, maybe even disgusted the younger. Also consider that Ben Franklin once said that we had a Republic if we could keep it. By that he meant to relay to us all that it is the responsibility of each and every citizen to inform himself on what is going on about him so that he might become an informed citizen able to participate fully in the Republican process. So, one simply cannot read a single paper and get "the truth." One must stay informed and take in as many sources of information as possible, then makes one’s own mind up and act accordingly but that is impossible when "the press" all offer the same ideologically tinged "news." Sadly, there is little diversity in opinion for the most part in modern journalism. The number of conservative papers, for instance, is small compared to the nearly universally left leaning filed of journalism.
Now let me make a prescription for the Newspaper industry. If papers want to regain some modicum of their circulation, perhaps they might jettison this absurd claim that they are "balanced" and jump feet first back into the world of raucous opinion and staunch, open and honest advocacy. Bring back the sort of opinion that once existed in the media that has made the Internet the place to be today. If you want to be liberal, be honest in that role. If you want to increase circulation, serve conservatives who are leaving you in droves for talk radio and the Internet.
Above all, your "journalists" out there, come clean. If you want to be a leftist, admit it openly. You aren’t really fooling anyone that you aren’t a leftist, anyway and this subterfuge is the single biggest reason why you are losing the battle for the public’s attention.
After all, no body likes a liar.
Warner Todd Huston is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
New Media Alliance Television (www.nmatv.com)
New Media Alliance Blogs (www.thenma.org/blogs)
www.therealitycheck.org
Vacated Memory: Anti-W media forget about Bill
by Daniel Clark
You can tell that things are looking up in Iraq, because President Bush's enemies are having to delve deeper into the mothballs to come up with reasons to criticize him. One example of this is an Aug. 9th Houston Chronicle story by Julie Mason, in which she revives the fatuous argument that Bush spends too much time on vacation.
Citing numbers that had been compiled by a CBS reporter, Mason writes that Bush is only a couple weeks away from breaking Ronald Reagan's record for vacation days taken by a president. This assumes, ridiculously, that the President of the United States is no longer on duty when he leaves the White House. In reality, there is seldom any particular reason that the president must stay in Washington when Congress is out of session. It stands to reason, then, that Republican presidents would leave town more often, rather than remain in the midst of a hostile Washington press corps.
From the way that liberals talk about Bush's "vacations," you'd think that when he moved operations to his Crawford ranch, his work went undone. One imagines him returning to his desk to find one of those pink "While You Were Out" slips, saying something like, "Putin called. Said it was urgent, but you know how he is. Told him you'd gone fishing."
The headline of Mason's story dubs Bush "the vacation president," but the truth be known, President Clinton was more on vacation in the Oval Office than Bush has ever been in Crawford. For all we know, one of Clinton's many sordid trysts might have even involved a snorkel.
It was Clinton who said that the one thing he'd miss most about being president would be the White House movie theater. Any other president would have said something about the privilege of serving the American people, or maybe the dedication of his staff and secret servicemen, but leave it to Bill Clinton to take that question as an opportunity to audition for MTV's Cribs.
CNN’s Obama Infomercial
by Bob Parks
Those of you who’ve read my work over the years know I don’t trust what we loosely refer to as the "mainstream media." As we’re talking about human beings, we’re talking about people who have opinions on various issues. The problem is that those in that media have the power to shape an issue to suit an agenda based on those personal opinions. The discipline should be that personal opinions have no place in traditional news reporting.
Then again, reality is another thing.
A few years ago, USA Today came out with a piece that posed an interesting hypothetical: When is it okay to lie? Surely it would be okay to lie to avoid hurting people’s feelings. Tell your woman her outfit looks okay when you’d rather the outfit revealed more. Tell your kid the scribble that’s supposed to be your portrait looks great, and so on. It seemed like a genuine thought piece.
However, being the overly suspicious person I am, the events of the following weeks threw up some red flags.
The Clinton—Lewinsky scandal broke and people then said they understood why Bill lied under oath. He was sparing his wife the embarrassment. He was sparing the nation the embarrassment. The only fallacy with the reasoning was that Bill was supposedly thinking of someone other than himself.
John Kerry: Latest Perspective on Iraq
by Thomas E. Brewton
The ever-changing (aka flip-flopping) Senator Kerry gives us his latest straight scoop on Iraq.
In a December 24, 2006, Washington Post article, Senator Kerry shares his insights after literally having been on all sides of the question in the past. His latest thoughts originate in the visit that he and Senator Christopher Dodd made recently to Iraq.
The Senator's conclusion is: The only hope for stability lies in pushing Iraqis to forge a sustainable political agreement on federalism, distributing oil revenues and neutralizing sectarian militias. And that will happen only if we set a deadline to redeploy our troops.
We'll look at that in a few paragraphs down, but first let's indulge in the fun of a few pot-shots at an easy target to hit.