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Just can't resist...this time on media bias


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Many, perhaps most, participants in this forum would agree that the media is biased against conservatives and conservative values. This piece does not relate to boy scouts, but relates to media bias. It appeared in The Wall Street Journal today.

 

_________________

 

One Man's Terrorist?

Ramsey Clark slurs Jesus, and the media shrug.

 

Friday, January 17, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

 

Does a slur falling in a press forest make a noise if no one reports it? When Jerry Falwell labeled the prophet Mohammed a terrorist on "60 Minutes," he set off a media feeding frenzy. But when peace activist and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark offered a similar analogy about Jesus Christ, the response was, well . . . silence.

 

"The Christian Church overwhelmingly--there are exceptions--who choose to call Mohammed a terrorist. They could call Jesus a terrorist too," Mr. Clark told a group of reporters, somewhat awkwardly. "I mean, he was pretty tough on money lenders a time or two."

 

Mr. Clark delivered the crack at the National Press Club last week, where he was promoting an antiwar demonstration--sponsored by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)--slated to kick off tomorrow outside the Capitol. Though representatives from a number of major media all heard the remark, the only one to report on it was the Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com), a small, Internet-based conservative news outlet.

 

 

 

 

 

Compare this with the furor that erupted when America's most quoted Baptist minister opined on Mohammed. Editorial pages denounced him; an Iranian cleric called for his death; Muslim rioters in India killed several people; and presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer found himself asked whether the Falwell remarks discredited George W. Bush--notwithstanding the president's consistent public warnings against Muslim-bashing. A search of Factiva, the Dow Jones/Reuters database of more than 8,000 news sources, yields 182 reports with "Falwell" and "terrorist" within the first week alone.

In sharp contrast, although Mr. Clark's Christological rumination has now been picked up by various Internet blogs, Factiva yielded only one hit for "Ramsey Clark and Jesus": Fox News Channel's Brit Hume. And then the networks and news organizations profess that they are shocked--shocked!--when a Bernie Goldberg writes a book accusing them of bias.

 

Now we could call up Mr. Clark and the folks at International A.N.S.W.E.R. in high dudgeon, demanding that they apologize or distance themselves from these remarks. But too often people who say things they oughtn't to have said find their statements amplified and twisted far beyond their original import by a media-driven culture. What bothers us is the glaring double standard that reserves this treatment for only one side of the political aisle.

 

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Hello everyone,

 

I've been reading this forum for a while, but this is my first post.

 

I think the the reason the rest of the media hasn't picked up this story is that the Wall Street Journal got it wrong. Reading the quoted remarks (and I haven't been able to find anything further than what was quoted), I think Ramsey Clark was trying to say in a very awkward way that it was ridiculous to call Mohammed a terrorist, and in fact, by the same flawed logic, one could also call Jesus a terrorist. I don't think (based on the limited information available) that he was actually calling Jesus a terrorist.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

gsmom

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The fiction of a liberal media persists. The media in the US is largely corporate and bows to those interests. If anything, our media is far to deferential to such interests.

 

The remarks by Falwell were outrageous and intended to offend muslims. Beyond that, they were made on live national television on major network. Give me a break eisely. How many people saw 60 minutes compared to how many actually heard Clark's remarks at the press club. I often listen to the National Press Club but not many others I know do. On the other hand, if when I went to work on a Monday and asked if folks saw Falwell on 60 minutes, I got a substantial percentage that saw the report or the promos for it. Even my conservative colleagues thought the guy fell out of his tree again.

 

The Wall Street Journal is an excellent newspaper with a lousy, extremely biased editorial page.

 

Exactly when did Clark make the statement? What was the general context and tenor of the speech he gave? Was it a speech? Were the remarks in response to a question? What was the question? A good editorial page would insist on this kind of context. They instead are like you. They have an ax to grind. You have come to a conclusion and seek evidence to support it and you won't let the truth get in the way.

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eisley,

 

The media bias goes both ways and depends on which side of the fence you are sitting on. Political talk radio is practically all conservative. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, G. Gordon Liddy, etc. Name one popular liberal radio talk show that gets the ratings the conservative show do. Fox News has become the most watched news channel on cable. They are staunch conservatives. They even gave Oliver North (a criminal) his own show. Many newspapers are conservative like the Wall Street Journal. Here in Oklahoma City, we have only one newspaper. They have a monopoly and always have. 35 years ago, there was another paper, but the existing one put them out of business. The paper is jokingly referred to as the Daily Republican. When it comes to politics, they don't keep their opinions on the op-ed page. They run front page editorials during election times that are basically political ads for Republican candidates. The last Democratic governor we had never could settle into the job for having to fight the daily "invstigative" stories written about him. He was hounded day in and day out just like Clinton was for 8 years by sore losers. His teenage son ended up commiting suicide over the press hounding him and his family. Yes, there are people in the media and news organizations that are liberal.........and conservative. Yes, they both have an axe to grind. The truth lays somewhere inbetween.

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For what I consider an excellent book on the topic, read "Bias", by Bernard Goldberg, published in 2002. If you recognize Goldberg's name, it's probably because he was a CBS correspondent for 28 years. He fell out of favor with CBS leadership, and Dan Rather in particular, for criticizing, as an insider, network media bias in an editorial in 1996. Immediately ostracized, he stuck it out for several years before leaving CBS in 2001.

 

Of course the WSJ is a conservative newspaper; so what? That's not the issue. The issue is that conservatives will admit the WSJ is conservative, but liberals refuse to admit that the New York Times is a liberal newspaper. By the same token, Rush, Sean Hannity, et. al., openly declare themselves as conservatives. Liberals, however, describe themselves as "middle of the road". When did the curve get so skewed to the right?

 

No media bias? Then, why do network anchors consistently label people and ideas with which they disagree as "right-wing" or "conservative", but they never seem to use "left wing" or "liberal" tags on anyone or anything? That's just one example. Goldberg quotes many others...

 

By and large, the people I know do not hold exclusively conservative or liberal viewpoints on every topic. They are conservative on some issues, liberal on others. I think that explains the success of Fox News Channel; their coverage reflects the diverse views of Americans in general. Sean Hannity AND Alan Colmes on the same show; Bill O'Reilly will take anyone on, regardless of their political stripe. And so on.

 

Anyway, read Goldberg's book, then see if you still think there's no liberal media bias...

 

KS

 

 

 

 

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Just my Two cents worth.

The newspaper here in Des Moines is called The Des Moines Register by everyone except some conservatives who call it Pravda. There is a media bias and there will be until the media starts reporting the news and nottrying to skew it one way or the other and many people are not smart enough to have their own opinions but are fed their opinions by the media. They don't think for themselves.

 

 

 

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I think KoreaScouter pretty well nails it and says everything I would like to have said. I am aware of Goldberg's book, but have yet to pick it up.

 

Local newspapers do tend to reflect one point of view or the other. The larger metropolitan newspapers are almost overwhelmingly liberal in outlook, and it shows.

 

I submit that the success of Fox News is simply the result of more honest reporting.

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scomman,

 

I agree that most people don't think for themselves. But even for those of us who do, the media is about the only place we can get information that is "considered" reliable or credible. Sure, you can search the internet, but anybody can post anything they want without any data or source to back it up. You have to be really careful with info you pull from the internet. Since you and I are probably highly unlikely to fly to Israel and tour the West Bank or Gaza, it is kind of hard for us to know for certain where the "real" truth lies in the Israel/Palestinian conflict. What I know is what I see on the news and read in the magizines and newspapers. I frequesnt a pro-Israeli conservative website that constantly decried the media as liberal if they refer to Palestinians as rebels instead of terrorists. While there are terrorists blowing themselves up in Israeli markets, expecting reporters to refer to ALL Pali's as terrorists rather than any other term is to expose their own bias. Most reporters and editors don't sit around putting tons of deep thought into how to appease certain political minded people when writing the headline of a story. More often than not, the word rebel fits into a 3" column better than the word terrorist does. But there are people out there who will use that as proof that the reporters are "liberal" instead of "conservative" because of the choice of a single word in a headline. I read it every day on numerous websites.

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The notion that the media uses the word "rebel" rather than "terrorist" because it takes up fewer column-inches can be easily refuted by two facts. First, if the print media were concerned about column-inches, they wouldn't consistently label, in print, conservative persons and ideas as "conservative" (a very long word). Second, print media stories consist of a lead (first paragraph), a bridge (second paragraph), and a body (all subsequent paragraphs). Beginning print journalists are taught to put their most important information in the beginning paragraphs of the body, because editors under space constraints will lop off the end of the story to make it fit, rather than ask a journalist to substitute shorter words for longer ones.

 

KS

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The fiction of a liberal media persists.

 

Let's see, over 98% of reporters vote Democrat. Sounds liberal to me...

 

The media in the US is largely corporate and bows to those interests.

 

All too often I find that corporations are very liberal. So in that case, I think you're right. The media is largely corporate and does bow to those (liberal corporate) interests.

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"firstpusk: would you explain what is "lousy" about the editorial opinions in the Wall Street Journal?"

 

I think if you read my remarks about context above, you have a pretty good example of what I am talking about. Clark has been around a long time and has a reputation for sarcasm. In context, I think that would come through loud and clear. This goes beyond bias and beyond professional ethics and honesty. You know into FOXnews territory.

 

By the way eisely, I have to apologize for taking your troll hook,line and sinker. Your remark is a classic, "I submit that the success of Fox News is simply the result of more honest reporting."

 

You had to beat me over the head before I realized your brilliant satire. Good stuff and very funny.

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"I submit that the success of Fox News is simply the result of more honest reporting."

 

Yes, and a multiple vehicle car wreck is entertaining and Jerry Springer's guests and topics are thought provoking too.

 

loudly spouting personally held opinions and brow beating guests is not news reporting, it's entertainment on the order of WWF wrestling.

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