The Media Spin Machine Has "Tilted"
By Randall Nunn (02/16/04)
The mainstream media has made a huge blunder in failing to report the basic allegations of the Kerry intern matter that has just been released by The Drudge Report. Ultimately, the media's treatment of this matter will result in more people going to the Internet and talk radio for their news.
The networks and the mainstream press will continue to lose viewers and readers as more Americans realize that their news is filtered, massaged, packaged and shaped by the mainstream media before it is broadcast to what they undoubtedly view as the unsophisticated rabble in this country.
My first reaction upon seeing how the media ignored this information was anger. Anger at realizing that all we get is what the media moguls (overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic) want us to get and that much of the news is little more than propaganda. But after considering what the longer-term effect will be, I am hopeful that this will speed the growth of alternate sources for news that will be more objective and truly mainstream.
Whether the allegations relating to Senator Kerry prove to be true, or only partially true or totally false, the fact that such allegations were made and had some apparent plausibility deserved to be reported, with whatever caveats the news organizations wished to place on the reports. To ignore it totally is indefensible, given the many other allegations about President Bush's National Guard service, the so-called U.S. intelligence "failures", possible advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks, etc, that were aired quickly and without detailed analysis of accuracy or validity.
The handling of the Kerry allegations by the media should jolt many people awake to the reality that much of our political news is suspect. And what should also be of great concern in that the media now has even greater power under the provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) since interest groups are greatly restricted in their ability to respond to a biased media by running "issue ads" that name candidates during the 60 days prior to election day. Thankfully, we have the Internet where people can go for other views and information that is not under the control of the liberal media--the most dangerous interest group in American today.
What makes the media dangerous today is the fact that much of it masquerades as something that it is not. If the networks disclosed that 80% or more of their senior management and anchors were liberal Democrats, then citizens could consider that when they evaluate the news reports. If the media openly acknowledged the liberal bias that exists in the mainstream media, then citizens could put their "news" reports in proper context. Instead, whenever criticism of media bias and "shaping" the news arises, the media anchors and pundits wrap themselves in the First Amendment and suggest that their critics are attempting to silence them or deny them their constitutional rights.
If the media can engage in an orgy of negative reporting about the inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, then certainly we as free citizens are entitled to criticize the media for their inability to "find" and report the Kerry allegations and similar newsworthy items until long after they have been reported on talk radio and the Internet.
We are witnessing today in this country a massive campaign against the conservative ideology being waged by the liberal media, by Hollywood and by many in the academic world. The tools are similar--deliberate slanting of news, movies, television series, textbooks and classroom instruction designed to ridicule and trivialize conservative values and make them "uncool" and "unhip" while trying to convince those without well-formed convictions that all intelligent, sophisticated and caring people should share their liberal viewpoints. These elements of our society are trying, in effect, to create peer pressure by convincing the uncommitted that the majority of contemporary Americans support a liberal agenda. In fact, most polls show that the liberal political philosophy is accepted by a relatively small percentage of Americans.
The 2004 elections will represent a last desperate attempt by the political left to hang on to power and prevent conservatives from consolidating their power and turning the popular culture to the right. If the left loses convincingly in 2004, they realize that they may lose power for years to come. Take away the bias in the media, the entertainment world and academe, and liberals would be swept away. And all it takes to do that is to turn off network television, ignore the Hollywood crowd, turn on your radios, surf the Internet and revel in the realization that there are a lot more people in America like you than Peter Jennings would ever want you to know.
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