Bush's British support

Washington Times ^ | 11/23/03

[kattracks]

A couple of major stories pushed President Bush's trip to London off the front pages. Until the al Qaeda attacks on British targets in Turkey and the arrest of pop singer Michael Jackson in California, the international media had been focused on English rabble-rousers protesting Mr. Bush's presence in the United Kingdom. Truth be told — there wasn't much of a spectacle in London anyway.

[Young Rhino]

the press regurgitates the press releases of protesters while ignoring the evidence.

This can never be said too often. Bias. Laziness. Stupidity.

[deanjames]

I was in London the day of the protests, the media hyped ths one up to the max. It was no way as bad as they made out.

I'd be suprised if there were even 70,000 protestors.

[deanjames]

I was in London the day of the protests, the media hyped ths one up to the max. It was no way as bad as they made out.

I'd be suprised if there were even 70,000 protestors.

[jazzlite]

"I was in London the day of the protests, the media hyped ths one up to the max. It was no way as bad as they made out."

Is this kind of misrepresentation not just plain old lying and is there no consequence at all for reporters who distort events like this to suit their own political views? I think reporters should lose their jobs if they distort a number where it is known for sure what the number actually was because the inference has an effect on the behavior of societies in war time. It also can give comfort and courage to the enemy. Thanks for your personal observations..At least your posting has informed thousands of people that the numbers were hyped.

[I still care]

I watched part of Tim Russert the other night. He had on a reporter from the BBC and the Washington Post. They were both so prejudiced against Bush it oozed from them. Russert sounded as if he were impressed with Bush's visit and they totally fluffed it off. They just weren't interested in anything positive about Bush.

The media has done it's job well. I find it amazing to think that people actually think Bush is dumb. The man is sharp as a tack.

[Right_in_Virginia]

The media's got to be grateful for the Michael Jackson story. If it hadn't broken when it did, they would have been forced to say something positive about the President.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

  . . . more British are worried about losing fox hunting than ending the U.S.-Anglo-led war in the Middle East.

. . . The explanation for the misconceptions about the supposed unpopularity of Mr. Bush and the war is that the press regurgitates the press releases of protesters while ignoring the evidence

In the long run there is really only one issue in my mind: "Is it possible to have a free press, and yet actually to have a government which is distinct from it?" And that is actually to ask, "Is it possible to have a free press at all?" For if the government cannot be distinct from the press, that implies that "the press" is itself unitary--not a cacphony of competing voices but actually a single voice.

To state the question in that way is to sound absurd; I actually agree that we have a multitude of competing institutions such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the broadcast news media. Yet there is, operating in plain sight, a de facto conspiracy in restraint of trade in "the press."

That is, journalism defines itself as "the press," even though "the freedom of . . . the press" covers books which are not journalism at all. And journalism defines itself as "the press," despite the fact that broadcasting is not recognized as a right in the way that printing is. If broadcast journalism is part of "the press" under the First Amendment--and thus has "unabridged freedom"--then you have just as much right to start up your own broadcast news operation as WABC does--without so much as a "by your leave" to the government.

Not only is it true that journalism defines itself as "the press," the judiciary branch of the government declines to maintain independence from journalism. Were it not so, such a blatant contradiction could not possibly stand in law. The First Amendment as written would, if enforced, keep the government entirely out of judging whether any form of "speech" is "objective journalism"; the FCC is itself root and branch a negation of that sort of freedom. Say nothing of "Campaign Finance Reform" which proposes actually to regulate the printing of political newspaper ads.

The truth is that "the press" as it self-defines has no interest in the First Amendment as written. It does however love "the First Amendment" as they pretend it to be--a stricture against independent voices (especially freedom of religion) rather than against the enforcement of uniformity in speech, press, and assembly/petition. See my thread dedicated to this issue:

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

[VOA]

Heck, the anarchists and the real terrorists couldn't even pull off a bombing in
England/U.K. during Dubya's visit.

Not to be over-confident, that's probably a good sign...