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[integritycounts]

The Demise of Responsible Political Journalism
Written by Vincent Fiore
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=9327

Monday, August 30, 2004

You do not need to be especially engrossed in politics to know that this year’s presidential election offers little in the way of fair-minded journalism. Just scanning the front page of the New York Times daily will make this abundantly clear.

Even the pretense of fairness is quickly fading as a thing of the past. Americans have known for some time now that the media newsrooms and copy desks are dominated by a progressive mindset. That is not the story here.

The story here is the journalistic exertions by the nation's leading outlets to push the Kerry/Edwards ticket across the finish line in November--by nearly any means possible. With a media dominated by liberal idealism and in full combat mode, Americans may be witness to what I would choose to call the media’s ''soft coup d'etat.''

I say soft, because of the mainstream media's deliberate and calculated omission of fact, all the while hiding behind the pageant of a free and unshackled journalistic ''responsibility'' to the masses. And I use coup d’etat, for the palpable impact of the news itself in relation to this year’s presidential election, and their obvious tilt towards the Democratic challenger.

A select yet recent example of this aversion of the facts no matter how obvious to the contrary would be the New York Times editorial page for August 25. The piece titled ''Swift Boats and the Texas Nexus'' portrays the onslaught of Mr. Kerry’s credibility problem with the ''Swift Boat Veterans for Truth'' and their subsequent ads as the responsibility of Mr. Bush. In breathless effrontery, the Times’ editorial board goes on to say ''By failing to condemn the ads, Mr. Bush leaves the impression that he condones this effort to turn the historical record (Kerry’s) into a partisan blur.''

(www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/opinion/25wed2.html?th)

Yet, it was only a few days ago that Bush condemned all ''527'' ads, and called on John Kerry to do the same. To date, Kerry is too busy to respond to this challenge, instead opting to hit the campaign trail opining about the president’s ''Fear and Smear'' tactics.

Of course, none of this happens in the ''nexus'' of John Kerry: ''Nope. No 65 million dollars spent on flaying Bush from here. MoveOn who? Coordination? I just want to talk about today’s relevant issues. Why does the president want to make my service in Vietnam an issue? Well, bring it on.''

Kerry didn’t say the above, and why should he? He has a national media to take positions on his behalf and echo statements that have absolutely nothing to do with the issues he claims to want to talk about.

It is not just this omitting of the facts that has caused so many to stand up and take offense, but it is the media’s refusal to correct--again in the face of overwhelming evidence--which has people so visibly outraged.

But this has been the pattern of the media elite since they--and Kerry--managed to thwart Howard Dean in Iowa in January to begin Kerry’s long march up to the nomination. I have always maintained that after watching just how hopeless a candidate Dean would have been against Bush, the media then did everything they could to insure that Senator Kerry would be the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination. Judging from this political season of disinformation, that assumption is looking more likely every day.

Putting aside big media’s dismal performance in relation to Kerry’s swift boat problem, there is the bigger issue of the Iraqi War. In January 2003, Bush said these now infamous sixteen words: ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' What followed were reams of devastating press, compounded by ambassador-turned-hack Joe Wilson’s pronounced claims that the administration had ''twisted'' intelligence to justify the war.

(www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm)



For over a year, the mainstream press ran with the assumption that Bush had overstated, even fabricated, intelligence to make war with Iraq. When the Senate Intelligence Committee reported on July 9 of this year, it concluded that not only was Bush right in his statement, but former Ambassador Wilson had ''misspoken'' about nearly everything. You could have heard a feather hit a mattress, so quiet was the media response at correcting the record that they created.

Besides the lack of correction of copy, there is also blatant misreporting of fact. A case in point would be the media’s steadfast refusal to admit that Saddam Hussein actually did have a relationship of record with al-Qaeda that started as far back as 1992, or the continuous insinuation that the Bush administration has tried early and often to tie Iraq to 9/11. Yet, the news rooms at the Washington Post and the New York Times continue to run lengthy, front page parables that more often reflect wishful thinking than fact.

The old media of yesterday seem to feel that a Kerry presidency is imperative, without considering the well-being of the country.

In the context of this election, the electorate has seen a dwindling shadow of real and responsible journalism. We often forget that journalists are people just like us, and naturally have their own predispositions and partisan leanings. Though it has and will continue to be denied, the alphabet media empires of ABC, CBS, NBC and their incestuous offshoots are consciously and serially committed to the politics of liberalism.

Be it Bush or Kerry who wins in November, one sure loser will be the monolithic institutions of the country’s major news outlets. The cracks have been there for years, but it took this election to widen the gap between the news as it is, and the partisan divide that so plainly dominates what Americans hear and read.

About the Writer: Vincent Fiore is a freelance writer and activist who resides in New York City. Vincent receives e-mail at Anwar004@aol.com.

[curtis]

The amount of factual damaging information about John Kerry you can find on the internet is amazing. And if you just read major newspapers to get your news, you wouldn't know about any of the skeletons in Kerry's closet. The internet has opened a lot of eyes that the "old media" had been trying very hard to keep shut.


Curtis