Biased Reporting (Thomas Sowell)

Townhall.com ^ | July 12, 2006 | Thomas Sowell

[Gordongekko909]

Thomas Sowell strikes again! Ping coming later.

[bkepley]

He's right of course but I don't think it does as much damage as the media would like and maintaining the moral high ground in the armed forces is not a bad thing. On the other hand this doesn't help the soldiers falsely charged.

[Tax-chick]

Thanks again, Dr. Sowell ... America's voice of reason!

[Former Dodger]

Thanks for the post.

THOMAS SOWELL: VOICE OF THE PEOPLE!

Too bad he's so hard to find in papers in this area, NYC/Northeast, sometimes the NY Post runs him, but it's not a regular column.

Dr. Sowell is the best!

[MizSterious]

"Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else."

This is a great column by Sowell, so pinging a few folks.

[kjo]

He's right of course. We are in the midst of America's largest cultural war since the Wets v the Drys in the teens and twenties.

The MSM is on the other side.

[SoFloFreeper]

Another Thomas Sowell Home Run!

[MizSterious]

In case you haven't seen this one...

[Just A Nobody]

including one soldier who won a Congressional Medal of Honor at the cost of his life -- go unmentioned in most of the mainstream media

Few people knew who HE was, but knew who SHE was. Pathetic........

[LachlanMinnesota]

They also thought that the rape allegations of Anita Brodderick against BJ Clinton were not worthy of any coverage! But the rape allegations against our troops are important...

[Just A Nobody]

Thank you for the ping! Thomas Sowell is awesome!

...reminding us that some people under indictment "are innocent until proven guilty"

This is only true if you are William Jefferson, DEMONRAT, Louisiana. If you are a TERRORIST, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove or a member of the United States military, then you are GUILTY the moment some azzhat whispers a derogatory comment they pulled out of their a...er...well.....thin air.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else.

. . . but in the "court" of journalism, of course, nobody other than a liberal has the presumption of innocence.

Every newspaper and every television commentator has a right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else. But when they claim to be reporting the news, that does not mean filtering out whatever goes against their editorial views and hyping unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops.

Stop the presses! Major news! Thomas Sowell gets it wrong!

The "right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else" includes the right to "filter out whatever goes against their editorial views and hype unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops." Even when they claim to be reporting the news.

The First Amendment gives the people the right to speak or print the truth responsibly, but it also protects the right to be wrong at the top of your voice. Unfortunately there is no middle ground between having the First Amendment and not having the First Amendment. If the government were allowed to censor the news as the Soviet Union did, we would have conservative news - only good news which did not call the competence of the government into question.

Since we have the First Amendment we have radical news - only bad news which does call the competence of the government into question (that does not apply during a Democratic administration, of course - because such an administration provides convenient scapegoats to distance itself from responsibility for anything. And if that fails, it cooks the books to make the economy look better than it really is).

There is no recourse for the problem of radical journalism, except a voting public which by majority senses and discounts the radical tendency of journalism. Which fortunately we do have - even though most in that majority would not be able to articulate it that way.

[KC Burke]

You claim that Sowell is getting it wrong and then state:
There is no recourse for the problem of radical journalism, except a voting public which by majority senses and discounts the radical tendency of journalism. Which fortunately we do have - even though most in that majority would not be able to articulate it that way.

I think you have to look at Sowell's contention in light of his decade long earnest effort to help the general public understand the radicalism, its mask and method.

In The Vision of the Anointed Sowell goes to greater lengths than he can in a biweekly column to show that the left always equates their caring and feelings for a form of sincerity and anointedness that would allow them to devalue and completely ignore argument and evidence on any issue that runs against their arguments for centralized, general will, authority.

That clear analysis is still not well understood and it certainly has little impact of the general public at large. Claiming that he is trying to deny fundemental constitutional guarantees is absurd.

Sowell isn't calling for state media as the answer, but he is condemning the unbridled destructive actions of the the leftists.

[jiggyboy]

What about all the civilian rapes that are charged -- and even proven -- in the United States? None of them gets this 24/7 coverage in the mainstream media.

Well there's the Duke University disaster. They were assumed guilty from the start too (but not here on FR).

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I have read a great deal of Professor Sowell's writing; it is strictly a "Dog Bites Man" story to say that Dr. Sowell has written something which has instructed me.

Of course Dr. Sowell is correct when he points out that liberals see themselves as being "elite." I get to be the one, however, to state the obvious as say that assuming you are better than everyone who disagrees with you - as liberals routinely do - is arrogant.

Of course Dr. Sowell doesn't advocate censorship. But - stop the presses - I get to be the one to point out that

• any effort to prevent journalism from claiming to be objective runs afoul of the First Amendment and

• any effort to require journalism to actually be objective would require journalism to tell the whole truth - which is an utterly absurd project to attempt to enforce. Futher,

• the rules by which journalism chooses stories to headline, to include, and to exclude are self-interested. "If it bleeds, it leads" and "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man'" make journalism negative and unrepresentative rather than objective, but it helps journalism attract an audience. "Always make your deadline" is a self-interested rule which is simply "The show must go on" in other words - but that rule cannot but cause journalism to be superficial. And the claim of objectivity is itself a self-interested rule of journalism, joined at the hip with "never question the objectivity of another journalist." Those two are joined because you can't get away with claiming objectivity if you don't have cover from your colleagues and "competitors."

So First Amendment journalism is a mixed blessing: we have to have it, but we are fools if we take it at face value. We have to have it, but we know that it will unfairly criticize exactly the people who are getting things done in society - whether they be business or professional people or law enforcement or military.

[Gordongekko909]

Sowell isn't recommending any government action to change the way that the press reports anything, and he isn't calling for the MSM to un-bias itself. The former is unconstitutional and the latter is impossible.

He seems more interested in pointing out bias so that people can understand that the MSM is not impartial, so that people can take its reporting with the appropriate amount of salt. It's more like "hey, look, the media is still biased, so beware" than anything else.

[Gordongekko909]

Thomas Sowell *PING*

FRmail me if you want on or off the Thomas Sowell Ping List.

[Gordongekko909]

Anointed rocks. I finished it last week. A Conflict of Visions is in the same area, but you get to learn more about the constrained/tragic vision in that one. He does a side-by-side comparison of the two visions across a spectrum of issues.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

CBS, ABC, and NBC -- ran 99 stories in 3 and 1/2 hours about the investigation of charges against Marines in the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November.

[jazusamo]

Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else.

Dr. Sowell nails it again. He supports our military even though some here are quick to find any supposed evidence to paint a dark picture of them.

Our troops deserve the strongest presumption of innocence of anyone, they literally risk their lives on a daily basis for us.