Posted on 12/07/2005 10:23:24 AM PST by ramseye
AMERICAN MEDIA IS TERRORISTS' FRIEND
Rumsfeld is right about the media.
They sit like vultures waiting for something they can use to embarrass and harass our military and our country.
They are not objective, they are antagonistic.
They are not news, they are propaganda.
They are not for us, they are against us.
Those are pretty extreme things to say. But they happen to be true. The best tool the terrorists have isn’t an improvised explosive device, it’s an American reporter.
And while the terrorists are losing the war in the streets of Iraq, they are winning it in the newscasts of America. The terrorists, reporters and Democrats are an odd chorus of America bashers who see nothing good and lust after everything bad.
Again, extreme words.
But they happen to be true.
When newscast after newscast and newspaper after newspaper tells a version of events more to the liking of Islamic fundamentalists than American soldiers you know something is wrong. The simple test of whether a story advances the interests of the terrorists or the Americans shows clearly that Osama’s ace in the hole sits behind an anchor desk.
And plans the front page of the local newspaper.
In a hateful irony, an abundance of news outlets has produced an orthodoxy of content. There are not different perspectives, there are merely different presenters. The same simplistic, ignorant, arrogant, anti-American blather bubbles up in every national media product.
And if you say so you’re an idiot.
The news media is alone among American industries in its certainty and superiority. Customer feedback is disdained except as it conforms to preconceived absolutes. Regular people are quoted not to give their perspective, but to parrot the prerogative of the newscast.
It is an odd profession that claims to know better than virtually everyone else. And it is a profession where political correctness, affirmative action and internationalist liberalism are so rampant that all things American are suspect.
It is an industry biting the hand that feeds it, taking a crow bar to the established order, even if the established order is best and freest nation on earth.
“We've arrived at a strange time in this country, where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press and reported and spread around the world,” the defense secretary said. What passes for reporting is “often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact.”
Translation: They don’t know their heads from a hole in the ground, and everything good about our troops and nation is suspect while anything bad is shouted to the skies.
Judging by the evening news, the biggest story out of Iraq was not the toppling of a dictator and the liberation of 35 million people, but the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A soldier can build a school and not be newsworthy, but let him punch somebody and he’s on the front page.
On the American news, every American action or account is suspected, discounted and minimized. On the American news, the American military is always under a cloud of suspicion. And anchors with flag pins on their lapels seem to be waiting hungrily to hang the next GI out to dry.
In an era of saturation news coverage, we have the worst coverage of an American conflict since before the Civil War. It is shallower, less knowledgable and patently damaging to national interests.
If you doubt that, ask any GI who’s been to Afghanistan or Iraq. Ask how what’s on the TV compares to what’s real and how accurately the context and consequence of the war has been portrayed.
And ask if that combat veteran thinks American news coverage helped or hurt the war effort. Ask if it made things better or worse for Americans in battle.
Ask if it cost lives or saved lives, if it encouraged the enemy of intimidated the enemy.
The answers will all add up to one thing – the American news media is a liability to us and an asset to our enemies.
Those are strong words.
But they are true.
And decent people in the news business should do something about it. Fair minded journalists, even patriotic journalists, should rein their colleagues in.
Because the First Amendment wasn’t intended to be the knife that slit the American throat.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2005
This pretty much sums it up when it comes to the MSM. Sad but true.
I am glad that you and others are finally speaking out strongly.
The fact that the MSM hates America is no secret, but has anyone come up with an explanation why? I've always assumed it's a carry over from the days the KGB and Stalinists were directing the useful idiots in the USA. Are there other theories?
Dead on Bob!
The News Media is a large part of the enemy we fight. They are causing America casualties and should be, for the most part, treated as traitors.
Is Bob Lonsberry any relation to Scott Lonsberry? Scott used to have a very very conservative talk show here in upstate New York.
Emphasis on the word "conservative". He really had a great show.
Then, I'll worry about Pakistan and Iraq.
/john
The terrorists won't attack America for fear of hurting their employees at the MSM publishing companies.
They haven't been mugged yet?
My God.....this is one of the most coherent pieces that I've ever seen exposing the left wing media conspiracy. I commend you, Sir! Militant
What changed the rules was twofold: first, that there was no effective opposition possible to the Big Three because television broadcast equipment represented a prohibitive capital outlay, and second, that circumstances such as Vietnam and Watergate gave the inhabitants of ABCNBCCBS the idea that their role was social and political activism instead of news reporting.
The rules have changed back to Franklin's with the advent of the Internet and the old game is exposed for the self-righteous elitism that it has been for four decades. But it's going to die hard. There's a lot of vested interests involved now in terms of journalistic careers and investment by activists who want results for their money (paging Mr. Soros, paging Mr. Turner). This means that they're not going to stop pushing, but it also means that we can at last push back.
Right this is,perhaps even worse. Two nights ago, one Wolf Blitzer quoted Donald Rumsfield. Mr Rumsfield decried the bias of the press. He,Blitzer, then switched to a rebuttal.
He put on a Michael Ware. Ware is a Times contributor. With a strong Australian accent, Ware spewed out, what would be exactly what the terrorists would say- if they had direct access to CNN. He seemed to gloat about "American boys bein' killed". Further he rubbed it in. "American boys losin' their lives". The terrorists,Ware said,are multiplying, indeed even if they are losing 200 dead a week. He went on to trumpet that,even more coming to fight Americans.
Blitzer then congratulated Ware, as to his informative report. The media- the enemies friends and America's traitors.
Perhaps it is the elitism of the university staff whom are now, with the protection of tenure, instructing the journalists of today. I think it is self revealing and defining when I read a quote from a newly degreed Colombia Grad. He said "I became a journalist because I want to make a difference!" 'Bout says it all.
Here is an excerpt from an excellent article by Ralph Powers in the New York Post on Dec 5. (When I try to copy a URL, what I have written in this window disappears. It can be found here on FR with keyword ralphpeters.)
After Watergate, patriotism became an embarrassment among journalists. They're "citizens of the world." CNN International has grown so casually anti-American that it rivals the BBC, while much of big media here at home gives terrorist atrocities a pass, while celebrating the slightest errors of our troops with front-page headlines.
The Washington Post — the old home of Woodward and Bernstein — offers a fascinating study in the tensions at work in journalism today. Its editorial page has improved remarkably in recent years, while the quality of its general reporting has far surpassed the Times' page one editorializing.
Yet the quest for headlines-at-any-cost and the sense that evident patriotism is distasteful led a superb paper to shameful decisions. Dana Priest, a journalist with much fine work to her credit, recently broke the story of secret CIA arrangements to hold captured terrorists in Eastern Europe. For the sake of a headline, the paper did severe harm to our counter-terror efforts and our diplomatic relations.
The editors would insist that "the public has a right to know." That tired mantra needs scrutiny: It would have justified revealing secrets such as Ultra, the Manhattan Project or the timing of D-Day in the Second World War.
I fight them everyday and have been for several years now.
I stopped watching CBS,NBC,ABC, ect, every since the election night, when Republicans took the house and the Senate.
I refused to read anything in the Major news prints, and started subscribing to the "Washington Times".
I was never so happy when FOX news came on dish network! The best thing we can all do is to turn the terrorist loving bunch of hippie trash off, and ignore them.
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