Posted by
Chuck Hakes on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 4:35:54 PM
Today, Dennis Prager wrote an excellent article, the crux of which was that journalists (et al) seek to foster their concept of social justice rather than performing their professional calling, which used to be the reporting of the truth. I don't need journalists to tell me what to think. I need them to tell me the truth so I can decide what to think.
Starting not long before the election I started noticing many liberal responses to Townhall articles. Few of these dealt with logic. Generally they claimed that the Townhall writer was telling lies or they based their counter-arguments on co-dependent nonsequiturs, thus creating a liberal "blog clog" on conservative writers. I recently posted a response to an Ann Coulter article that attracted over 3,000 responses. I decided to read some. Many were nonsense and had nothing to do with issues raised by Ms Coulter. There were jokes (even a couple of pretty good ones) nonsense talk, and blogs consisting entirely of haha repeated hundreds of times. Conservative writers, mainly because they are employed, don't have time to waste by writing such drivel.
I interpret this behavior to signify that liberals don't want to debate opposing views. They want those with opposing views to shut up.
Onward to Prager's points, which a number of liberal responders attempted to discredit:
It has been no secret that the predominant bias in the media has been in favor of liberalism in general and Obama in particular. You need look no further than the liberal Washington Post for documentation and reporting of that, for which the Post should be given credit for honesty.
If the Wash. Post and NYTimes, and other lib media, had pursued and reported the truth about Obama, his birth, associates, beliefs, and qualifications for office with the same tenacity they did Nixon and Watergate American voters would have had much more complete and valid information on which to make their votes.
Instead, a lot was hidden or passed by without comment. Obama didn't come clean with us. He didn't have to. No one in the supposedly truth-seeking media required him to. As a result, Obama lied about his campaign financing, and obfuscated the truth by addressing sticky issues with half-truths and omissions on key points. He hasn't proved he is an American citizen and he willfully broke the law with marijuana and cocaine. The media didn't pursue these Obama issues but did pursue Sarah Palin's wardrobe expenditures, even though those were legal and she was running for VP and not pres.
The media wants us to believe that they are upholding First Amendment rights. If they were, they would have come to the assistance of the reporters for media that were critical of Obama who got heaved from the Obama campaign airplane to make room for more favorable reporters. They would have come to the support of the Tampa-St. Pete TV station that the Obama campaign banned from further interviews because one of their journalists had dared to ask Joe Biden about possible links between Obama's beliefs (based on his utterances) and Marxism. Journalists could have struck a blow in favor of the First Amendment if they would have stopped reporting on the Obama campaign until the campaign stopped abridging the First Amendment rights of others, including those who were running opposing advertising. That would have required guts and a commitment to principles. Both seemed lacking.
I'm not saying Obama wouldn't have won anyway. I'm saying that we were denied information about him. He was sold to us by the media. The "end justifies the means" was a Marxist tenet long before American liberals embraced it. The conduct of the Obama campaign convinces me that he and his associates share that belief with other liberals, as Prager points out.
I have no problem with editorialization by the news media if they present it as their opinion.
However, the news media editorializes in more clandestine ways. They do this by deciding what to report, where to put it, how to feature it, and how to say it. An example of what I mean:
McCain makes a speech. (1) Don't report it; Or (2) Run a small story on page C22; (3)Use no photo; (4) Use a derogatory headline (like "McCain fumbles words"); (5) Be critical in the body text; (6) Feed the little story to an editorial writer to drive home to the reader the deficiencies of the speech.
Obama makes a speech. (1) Page one, featured position with 2-inch high headlines; (2)Devote half of page 1 to it (3)Show a photo of cheering thousands; (4)Use a flattering headline (like "Obama's brilliant oratory enchants hundreds of thousands"); (5)Use glowing prose in the body text; (6)Feed the big front page story to an editorial writer to tell us this is why we should vote for Obama.
Thought for the day: Socialism may put food in a dog's dish. It also puts a collar and chain on the dog.
CNHakes,
Former president, Newspaper Research Council