Posted on 05/18/2005 8:03:33 AM PDT by Quilla
The Newsweek magazine story falsely reporting desecration of the Koran by American military interrogators in Guantanamo, Cuba, where terror suspects are being held, is the fourth major false report printed or aired by a highly respected arm of the Anglo-American journalistic establishment in the past year.
Each of those inaccurate stories has roiled the political waters and threatened to inflict colossal damage on either President Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair and on American and British efforts to defeat terrorists and the regime of Saddam Hussein.
It is high time that the American people got the point: The organs of establishment journalism are slanted and biased toward the left and disregard the standards of fair and accurate reporting, with impunity, when an election is on the line.
The list of false stories is telling:
• In the spring of 2004, the BBC reported that Blair had ordered his intelligence people to “sex up” reports of the Iraqi program to make weapons of mass destruction. For months, Blair was on the defensive because of the report, and the intelligence operative who was the alleged source of the story committed suicide.
It took a parliamentary commission to debunk the story and to force a BBC retraction. The ongoing damage to Blair’s credibility likely helped to account for his marginal showing in the most recent U.K. election.
• In September 2004, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” television program used forged and phony documents to try to besmirch Bush’s record in the Texas National Guard. It was only the careless error of the forger in printing the suffix “th” above the line that led to the truth.
• In the week before the election, The New York Times, the citadel of journalistic accuracy, ran a front-page story alleging that 370 tons of explosives had disappeared from an Iraqi storage site during the American occupation. The implication was that the carelessness of the Bush administration had put into the hands of the insurgent terrorists the very weapons now being used to kill our troops. But the Pentagon soon established that the weapons either had been removed early in the U.S. occupation or had never been there when our troops arrived. The Times story led John Kerry to change his TV ads and focus his endgame campaign on the allegation.
• And now Newsweek has published an inflammatory story that has led to massive anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan — the first since the war — protesting the seeming defilement of sacred texts. Sixteen people are dead because Newsweek got the story wrong, and the image of the United States is damaged in the Islamic world. And Newsweek refuses to hold anyone to account for this outrageous error, least of all its own senior management.
Each of those “mistakes” was biased in favor of the left and was committed in the haste of liberal journalists to get some ammunition to discredit Bush and the Iraq war. But when the same reporter who wrote the current story filed the first disclosure of the Monica Lewinsky affair with his editors at Newsweek, the magazine piously refused to run the story.
In fact, in all the years of the Clinton presidency, I cannot recall a single instance of a similarly inaccurate high-profile story attacking the Democratic president.
Each of the scandal allegations ultimately proved to capture the Clintons in some sort of ethical violation. The sole exception that comes to mind is the FBI-file story, but, even there, the journalist reports that the files had been available to the White House staff were accurate.
But when a Republican president is waging a war of which the left does not approve, a different journalistic standard appears to apply.
The media need to examine their own bias and correct it, lest still more readers and viewers turn away in the face of their obvious manipulation of public opinion.
i stopped subscribing to newspeak some twenty or thirty years ago.
Too late! Heck - even the airport now has FOX news...
Um Dick, the liberals in the media are not going to examine their own bias and correct it.
I live by a few journalists; they are total nutjobs and weird; complete liberal wackos who were probably picked on in high school.
Most journalists are just plain angry people; look at how that reportette from the NY Slimes attacked Scott McCellan yesterday. They are just angry slime.
We are watching the media commit suicide. Wonder what they're planning on doing for a living after they kill the mainstream media jobs?
Memo to Dicky Morris:
It's NOT the "media elite" lambkins. It's the media DREGS.
We out here in flyover country know when we're looking at 10 lbs of sh*t in a 5 lb bag. Are you just catching on?
What we need is a high profile, trusted figure to raise the issue of liberal bias and spearhead a campaign to put those organizations out of business. Canceling subscriptions, publically calling to task the offenders, calling for resignations, and mass actions like petitions and email campaigns would be the tools.
If George Allen did this, combined with his stance on the illegal immigration issue, he'd be a shoo-in for President in 2008.
Contacting and boycotting advertisers would be effective as well.
Based on the sample I can recall, that is too accurate for (their) comfort. Two of them in particular led me to the conclusion that there was some sort of "Goebbels Syndrome" in action.
Disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist... but then, neither are psychologists.
This sentence needs revising:
But when a Republican is president a different journalistic standard appears to apply.
Much better.
This is the same media that fawned all over President Reagan when he died, after realizing they had to cash in on the overwhelming support and love shown for the former President. They HATED the man when he was in office.
Some day when President Bush passes away and if there is even a close semblance to the outpouring of love for him, these same hacks will speak in their soft tones about how he was so adored and loved.
The media truly suck balls.
No repentance or sorrow on the part of Issakof. As It Happens is available over the internet from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It makes our PBS seem conservative, it is often used by US politicians to fly trial balloons.
Become moonies or some other cult.
This article is very good. Morris remembers that era correctly.
The MSM are as attractive as a cereal bowl of pus.
Why are your federal tax dollars being used to pay the ACLU to bring frivolous lawsuits against you.</p>
Check it out.
Right on Dick.
The MSM can kick and scream all they want but their stupidity and ignorant left wing bias out weighs their ability to make the correct decisions when it comes to publishing fair and balanced news.
For the left this is a SNAFU that has become a regular part of of their operating procedures.
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