Media Hypocrisy

Like politicians, the media can sometimes be hypocritical. Just kidding--they're usually hypocritical, so let's look at it for what it is. Back in the days when president Bush declared war on Iran, the leftist media was on him like wet on water, white on rice, and stink on Biden, and the public never looked beyond the surface of what took place. It's almost as if the media holds the queue cards and the public follows with booing or applause, depending on the story. Here we have the New York Times (you know them, "All the news that fits, we print"), whose own history of honest reporting had come into question like the global warming hoax where their reporters claimed that the north pole was melting in one story they told. It started, as you probably recall, with Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, a movie so filled with inaccuracies, the British court ruled that in order to show it in their schools, the children would have to be informed of this first.

But the start of The Times and their lying probably began with William Duranty in the Stalin era when he intentionally failed to report on the millions of people dying in the Ukraine under Stalin's reign. (An Inconvenient Problem). This, to me, seems unforgivable, but most people are probably unaware of this journalistic sacrilege. 

The fact that The Times undeniably favors the leftist left, and consistently discredits, disfavors, and generally just disses the right, is simply a matter of record, or lack of record, if that is what they must use to promote their politics. (I never thought there would come a day when I would use the term 'their politics' when discussing news reporting.)  When the Marines pulled out of Iraq, where they left after a decisive victory under then president GW Bush, especially in the area of Fallujah, where they displayed incredible military skill and courage, The Times buried the story deep inside its folds. Whether you were for or against the war in Iraq is irrelevant. What is important is the fact the this rag of a paper went to lengths to forgo giving credit to the valor of the Marines, and thus to President Bush. It's shameful.

But The Times represents just a fraction of the leftist lefty media.   A study often cited by critics of a "liberal media bias" in American journalism is a book published in 1986: The Media Elite, co-authored by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter. The authors surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks and found that most of these journalists were Democratics whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including such hot-button social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. So is it any wonder that the Tea Party, the Repulican Party, and anyone not on the left side of the left, would be targeted by these clowns?

So what can you do? Simple. Get your news in a variety of places. Use the blogs, Twitter, follow people you like and agree with, but also follow those whose opinions differ and see what they have to say. Don't read The New York Times without reading Pajamas Media, for example. (I suggest forgoing The Times altogether just to put those charlatans out of business.) But be informed about both sides. If you come to conclusions that suit you, then stick with them until they stop sticking. That can only happen by reading both sides, keeping an open mind, and cliches like that.