Cast of Characters: Part IV

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This year's elections are not only contests between Democrats and Republicans, they are contests in which the mainstream media are not simply observers and reporters but active partisans.

Remember how the media carried on for weeks about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident? How a Time magazine reporter had a temper tantrum at a White House press briefing because the news wasn't released soon enough -- as if this hunting accident had any significance for the nation, beyond those in the media who were frustrated at being deprived of a Sunday talk show feeding frenzy?

Remember how long we were told that the Bush administration had committed a crime by revealing the identity of a CIA "agent" as revenge for her husband's having attacked administration policy? Indignant editorials in print and on the air practically salivated at the prospect of seeing Vice President Cheney, or at least Republican strategist Karl Rove, frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

It was a terrible crime, as portrayed in the media, when they thought it would discredit the Bush administration. Now, very belatedly, it turns out that the leak did not originate in the Bush administration after all, but with a critic of that administration, Richard Armitage.

Suddenly it was no longer a scandal, a crime or anything, as far as the media were concerned. There were no cries that Armitage should be frog-marched anywhere in handcuffs. Some in the media belatedly acknowledged that it was never a crime because the CIA "agent" was actually someone sitting behind a desk in Virginia.

Remember how absolutely certain the mainstream media were that Terry Schiavo was for all practical purposes already dead because she had been classified as being in a "vegetative" state?

Just recently a woman in a "vegetative" state was discovered by scientists to be able to respond to statements. But have you heard anything about it, much less anything about its relevance to Terry Schiavo?

If the media had been on the opposite side of this issue, it would have been front page news across the country and on TV 24-7.

Reporting the news is very different from filtering the news or spinning the news. Too many people in the mainstream media have become filterers and spinners, especially during an election year.

While Senator Kerry's recent controversial remarks have been spun in the media to mean something different -- and better -- than what he plainly said, talk show host Rush Limbaugh's recent remarks about actor Michael J. Fox have been spun to mean something different -- and much worse -- than what he plainly said.

After seeing a political ad by Michael J. Fox, urging support for a candidate who favored embryonic stem cell research, Rush noted that Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, looked to be more visibly suffering from that disease than he has in other appearances that were not political.

Rush then surmised that either Fox was not taking his medication or was acting for political effect. It turned out that Rush was right, that this was very different from the way Michael J. Fox was in other public appearances. Moreover, Fox admitted that he had avoided taking his medication when appearing before Congress.

The fact that Rush's surmise proved to be correct cut no ice with the mainstream media, where he has been roundly denounced by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, who said that Rush Limbaugh "attacks a scandal-free actor who has a terrible disease," as if that makes Michael J. Fox exempt from criticism.

Diane Sawyer of ABC News said "If you have Parkinson's disease and you believe embryonic stem cell research is the, is the answer, a possible answer, a possible cure, don't you have a right to speak up?"

This is unbelievable confusion, even for Diane Sawyer. Neither Rush Limbaugh nor anybody else has ever said that Michael J. Fox has no right to speak up. The question is whether nobody else has a right to reply.

These are the media filterers and spinners who are seeking to affect the outcome of this election. Heaven help us if they succeed.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of author of Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy.

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The American "Mainstream Newsmedia" is the Propaganda Machine for the Left. Sowell is absolutely right. It is not impartial, and it has abandoned any pretext of truth for its own sake.

The basic immorality of the Left is untruth. For so long, the "Media" and its so-called "journalists" have lived in a paradigm of propaganda and scorn for truth, that many of them can no longer tell the difference between truth and falsehood.

This is very dangerous, especially in a representative republic such as ours, where a truthfully informed electorate is essential.

Truth has its own power. It is the nature of people to crave it.

It is the basic untruth of the "Media" and its "journalists" that have brought about such intense scorn for them and will in the future.

Future generations will view the mendacious contemporary "Newsmedia" with disgust--as millions of people do today.

Remember how the media carried on for weeks about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident?

The ABC affiliate here in Pittsburgh made a big deal about Cheney going off to hunt (shoot somebody) this day before the election.

Plainly, the old media BLOWS!!!!!

Remember how the media carried on for weeks about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident?

The ABC affiliate here in Pittsburgh made a big deal about Cheney going off to hunt (shoot somebody) this day before the election.

Plainly, the old media BLOWS!!!!!

It is the basic untruth of the "Media" and its "journalists" that have brought about such intense scorn for them and will in the future.

Future generations will view the mendacious contemporary "Newsmedia" with disgust--as millions of people do today.

Not so. Journalism has never been above politics; indeed you can look at the papers that Hamilton and Jefferson sponsored as prototypes of political parties. Jefferson said that the advertisements were the only thing in the papers that you could believe. So the best we can hope for is that future generations of wiser people than we will look back at us and marvel at our gullibility.

The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith

Yes, you are right, and Adam Smith's remarks are valid. However, I insist that words from the past--and the present--that have the ring of truth, we respect and honor. I suppose disgust may be too strong a word, though maybe not, but words that are obviously designed to manipulate and distort truth, we consider less than honorable. Thucydides, even today, fills us with honor, respect, and a sense of truth and beauty. Julius Caesar's writings were obviously designed for effect, and, even today, scholars are trying to figure out how much is truth and how much propaganda. I expect that future generations will recognize the propaganda of the "Mainstream Newsmedia" for what it is.

I expect that future generations will recognize the propaganda of the "Mainstream Newsmedia" for what it is.

From your lips to God's ears. But when I read Ann Coulter's Treason and realized how my youthful instincts in 1952 have been born out in the light of historical information such as the Venona Transcripts, and when I realize that "McCarthyism" is a liberal smear of patriotism which still works today, half a century later . . .
It forces one to wonder just when "future generations" will figure out that Edward R. Murrow was a tendentious leftist just like Walter Cronkite was and Dan Rather still is. Surely they will have to do that before they can figure out how tendentious today's journalism is?

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