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easymoney101

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easymoney101

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Saturday, 03/26/2005 4:21:32 PM

Saturday, March 26, 2005 4:21:32 PM

Post# of 475016
The 'biased' N.Y. Times exposes widespread right wing bias
By Hannah Selinger / RAW STORY COLUMNIST

When Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. James Guckert, reporter for the right-wing media outlet Talon News was revealed to be (gasp!) a fake and (double gasp!) a proprietor of the Internet hot spot hotmilitarystuds.com, most of us hoped that he was the exception to the rule. Because, like, media is always to be trusted.
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Right-of-center pundits have long since accused the media of having a “liberal bias.” Ann Coulter, that dashing anorexic that liberals love to hate, once said, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building,” implying that the country would have been better off had the paper, rather than Oklahoma’s Murrah Federal Building, been bombed. Coulter has also called the Times—which is still, to her dismay, the country’s most esteemed paper—a “liberal rag,” claiming that the newspaper is more of an outlet for leftist opining than viable reportage. Coulter is entitled to her wacky opinions. That’s the great thing about America.

The problem is, Coulter, and, on a larger scale, the right side of the aisle, is wrong. Print media isn’t liberal, and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. Fewer people read the newspaper on a daily basis than watch network news. Young Americans get their information from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which is, admittedly, liberal; but older Americans turn on the tube after work and watch the 6 o’clock news.

And television news is a far cry from liberal. As it turns out, major television networks have been running short segments that look, feel, and sound like the tidbits shown on the 6 o’clock news. The only problem is, these segments, funded by the federal government, are actually not news. What they are, in truth, are pieces designed to garner American support for partisan programs.

The New York Times, that bastion of liberalism, ran an article on Sunday, March 13 entitled, “Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News,” in which they cited several instances of paid propaganda masquerading as actual news. This kind of thing has been going on for years and years, but protocol used to be that the government acknowledged their role in the mock-segment. Usually, a reporter mentioned what organization he was reporting for, but the Times found that recently distributed segments have lacked any of this forthrightness.

So what you see is this: an Iraqi-American thanks the United States for their involvement in Iraq; a reporter speaks of success in the current administration’s “drive to strengthen aviation security”; a reporter describes the administration’s dedication to American farmers. What you see is a bunch of partisan nonsense, extolling the virtues of the Bush Administration.

This situation bears similarity to that of Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist who was paid upwards of $240,000 by the Education Department to push the President’s “No Child Left Behind Act.” For whatever reason, Americans trust network news, and they believe what they see on it, even if it’s a false segment that’s been bought and paid for by the government. And so, failure to acknowledge that the pieces were paid for by politicians is dishonest, unethical, and unfair.

Free press used to mean something. Free press used to offer Americans an opportunity to understand the world and policy without the interference of misrepresentative politics. Clearly, that time has passed.

A columnist named Maggie Gallagher, best known for her hate-filled campaign to prevent gay marriage, was paid off by the government to support the President’s “Defense of Marriage Act”; Armstrong Williams was paid off by the government to support a shoddy and ill-conceived education program; Jeff Gannon was welcomed into the White House pressroom with open arms and allowed to ask the President biased, softball questions, while reporters from real newspapers and media outlets were routinely ignored. So maybe it should come as no surprise that the underhanded dealings of the propaganda machine have made it to actual network news.

The obvious answer to this problem is that networks should require independently funded plugs to state where they come from, so that people know, at the very least, that what they are watching is not news. But newspaper and television journalists alike should also see it as their responsibility to be critical and objective at all costs. The consequence of softball journalism is an administration that is permitted to run amok and create policies that benefit only the very wealthy. The consequence of softball journalism is, as we have seen, war based on half-truths. The consequence of softball journalism is, no matter which way you slice it, the loss of American lives.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” Unfortunately, our waters are sullied every time the press is silenced and, more relevantly, every time the federal government attempts to control it.

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/selinger/nyt_bias_031705.htm

"All truth passes through three states," wrote Arthur Schopenhauer. "First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
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