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PERSPECTIVE
- September 2004 by Pat Freibert The Agenda Driven Media Most Americans probably connect the Enron scandal to President George W. Bush because of the way it has been presented by the media. But, the president under whom all this scandal occurred was not George W. Bush – it was William Jefferson Clinton. Unstated in most news reports, the Enron chairman stayed at the Clinton White House 11 times, Enron gave several hundred thousand dollars to Clinton’s party over three years, Enron’s chairman met with the Clinton and Gore in the Oval Office, and Enron was subsidized for hundreds of millions of dollars in a single transaction by the taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank. In today’s agenda-driven media, terrorists are not called terrorists. They are referred to as “militants” or “insurgents.” Rioters are called “demonstrators.” Even England’s formerly vaunted BBC ordered its reporters to not refer to Saddam Hussein as an “ex-dictator.” Use of that word would “compromise neutrality.” After 9-11 (when terrorists, not “insurgents,” attacked our country), networks prohibited news readers from wearing American lapel flags. This, of course, was to preserve “neutrality.” Legendary WWII journalist Edward R. Murrow never pretended to be neutral between the Nazis and the Allies. WWII journalists did not shrink from describing Hitler as a “dictator,” as opposed to some mealy-mouth term. The news industry should report what happened, without slanting to create news and control public opinion. Editorial pages and commentary segments of electronic media are the honest places for opinion. Examples of fabricating, withholding or covering up news are numerous: Jayson Blair fabricating for The New York Times, Maureen Dowd’s tricky use of a handy ellipsis to make George W. Bush say something he never did, and only after Hussein’s fall did CNN admit that it deliberately failed to report mass murders by his regime. This regime buried infants and children alive, dipped humans in vats of acid, cut off heads and limbs and cut out tongues. Mass graves with more than 300,000 bodies have been uncovered, and this does not count surviving victims of torture and rape. National media shapes views by the way it covers events, selects headlines, places a story and frames questions. Mainstream news leaves distinct impressions that America’s economy is in bad shape. In reality, every significant indicator continues to show dramatic improvement. Identical levels of unemployment lauded in the late ’90s under Clinton are now portrayed negatively under Bush. Many, if not most, of today’s journalists present America negatively to achieve “neutrality.” Hollywood and the national media – a self-appointed intelligentsia – regularly trash America’s history, traditions and culture. Collectivist views promoted by this leftist team have been singularly unsuccessful in Europe and around the world. While the media was eager to show the shame of sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by aberrant American soldiers, it did not have the stomach to show a four-minute tape of Saddam’s prisoners being fed to his own Doberman pinschers, nor others’ fingers, tongues and heads being cut off. Is this selective journalistic outrage an attempt to shape views on a war it opposes? Our country is at war, a war authorized by the U.S. Congress. The media drumbeat is that America stands alone in Iraq. In fact, 33 nations have joined the effort to defeat terrorism with military or financial assistance. Few would wish away the freedom of the press but consumers can force a solution to slanted coverage by continuing the steady loss of viewership for network news. Thousands have already canceled subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times because of its slanted coverage of the recent California governor’s race. Consumers are seeking news from alternative sources because they distrust “mainstream news.” Would we want a conservative national press and media? Absolutely not. What we deserve is an unbiased media. Liberal agenda-driven news is responsible for the low standing of journalists in the eyes of Americans. Is media degeneracy abusing a constitutional freedom? Pat Freibert
is a former Kentucky state representative from Lexington |
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