A Journalistic November 2 Commission?
By Randall Nunn (09/13/04)
The Kerry campaign and the mainstream media—which are close to being one and the same—are now resorting to what used to be considered a great horror, negative campaign ads. Of course, in the case of the media, they are not ads in the traditional sense but “disguised ads” masquerading as reporting, at no cost to the Kerry campaign and without the need to run an attribution statement with Senator Kerry’s ponderous voice saying he approves this message.
The reason why such negative ads are now acceptable is that Kerry’s cause is considered “noble” by the media while conservatives who resort to negative ads are engaging in reprehensible conduct. This is the same mindset used by Kerry after returning from his four month “tour” in Vietnam to justify falsely accusing all U.S. soldiers in Vietnam of committing war crimes.
If negative ads are to be condemned, one would think that negative reporting and negative headline writing would be equally bad, particularly since the latter two are flying under the false colors of “objective reporting.” Yet the mainstream media has pulled out all the stops and is running in full negative attack mode, spreading anti-Bush rumors and pro-Kerry propaganda like a manure spreader stuck open in high gear. The New York Times and the broadcast networks have sanitized and deodorized their material just enough to allow it to be peddled as something other than what it is.
Like Kerry’s crumbling campaign, the media’s resort to bias and rumor-mongering is becoming obvious to most American voters. When the majority of Americans know what the commentators and pundits are going to say about Bush or Kerry even before they speak, it should be obvious that objectivity and factual accuracy have been abandoned. By election day, the liberal media’s commentators, pundits and executives will be even more shrill in voice and will be delivering their comments with sputtering anger and distended facial and neck veins.
With negative ads one can at least determine who is sponsoring the ad and evaluate the content accordingly. But with biased reporting and headline writing, the unknowing reader or viewer often does not realize that he or she is receiving information that has been packaged and massaged by liberal partisans with a clear agenda. In effect, most of the mainstream media has converted every page of their newspapers and magazines to an editorial page and all news broadcasts to commentary.
Given the heavy criticism coming from conservatives in op-ed pieces, talk radio and the Internet, one would have expected the mainstream media to modify their presentation to ameliorate the growing criticism. But instead, the media—much like the flailing Kerry campaign—has increased the sharpness of its attacks and thumbed its collective nose at its audience.
The liberal media has for too long controlled the political agenda in this country. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” law has given the press even greater power, since the freedom of speech of interest groups that represent large constituencies in this country has been severely curtailed while no similar limitations have been imposed on the press. In fact, neither should be restricted in their ability to robustly discuss candidates and issues. But if political speech of groups is restricted and there is inadequate or no representation of their views in the mainstream media, there is great danger that the media will unfairly and inaccurately frame the issues and distort public opinion by the dissemination of a steady stream of biased reporting serving only to advance “their” candidates and “their” views.
If, as is beginning to appear, President Bush wins in a convincing sweep, maybe a journalistic commission could be put together, much like the 9/11 Commission, to study the media’ actions and failures and make recommendations to the media elites and moguls for reform and correction of the abuses that have become so commonplace. Then, the “Great Liberal Media Election Fiasco of 2004” could be studied, dissected, talked about and analyzed until all understand the systemic bias that threatens to undermine the confidence of American citizens in what used to be a bulwark of our liberties—a free and open press.
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