Monday, October 27, 2008

Column of the Week

From tech writer Michael Malone, on ABC News:
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. . .

But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.
Read the whole thing.

BTW, press slant isn't confined to America, as demonstrated in a recent credulous Times of London profile of a North Vietnamese warden denying McCain was tortured. (In June, the same warden endorsed McCain--a fact not mentioned by the Times.) Compare the altogether different tone in a 2004 article on accusations against Americans.1 I agree with Varifrank:
When he says "there was no torture" you understand of course that he is referring to the grotesque inhuman examples set by American troops and Abu Ghirab and Guantanmo Bay, where inmates were forced to wear womens undergarments and were photographed with Lynnde England. That's what the world thinks is torture.
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1 Times commenter John from Hong Kong (scroll down) adds:
Just because torture is sanctioned in American military jails doesn't mean that this is true elsewhere. And if a Vietnamese pilot had crash landed in the US, he would've undoubtedly been lynched on the spot. McCain was super-lucky and should thank his Vietnamese captors with all his heart.
John's nuts, but there's several equally loony comments at the Times website.


(via reader Doug J., reader OBH)

4 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

> This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Ah, what a coda.

@nooil4pacifists said...

I laughed at that as well.

Geoffrey Britain said...

The MSM...propagandist for the democratic party's agenda.

Ironically, should the MSM achieve its agenda's goal of electing Obama & a filibuster-proof democratic majority, its own success will prove its undoing.

Should the 'fairness doctrine' ever become law it will spell the doom of liberalism's grip upon the media because what is sauce for the goose... in time, will be sauce for the gander.

Leftists of Ayers and Obama's ilk severely underestimate Americans allegiance to fundamental liberties and simple fairness.

That is because their intellectual premises are directly opposed to the founding principles of this country. At base, they simply do not understand the country they seek to lead and change.

That misjudgment will eventually be their undoing.

@nooil4pacifists said...

GB:

I agree that "their intellectual premises are directly opposed to the founding principles of this country." But for many liberals--including most I know--that's a feature not a bug. See Thursday's QOTD.