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Anker-Klanker
Admiral
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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 Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:07 pm Post subject: FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) attacks SBVFT |
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Yesterday, I wanted to find out more about MSM's obligation/duty/responsibility to report ALL the facts about an issue. So I did a Google search on "Federalist Papers Freedom of the Press." (I found lots and lots of information on the rights of the press, but not a thing on obligation, duty, or responsibility.)
But while searching I accidently tripped across this site:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/swift-boat.html
You won't believe your eyes! Notice the acronym for their name and what it stands for. Talk about hypocracy!
But there's good news! At the bottom of the link there are contacts, and even directions on how to write your own letter. So as you deal with frustration over the next few weeks, consider writing to these folks to release the pent-up anger. (In fact, one might consider taking all the letters found on SBVFT threads and sending them to FAIR.)
Have fun with these hypocrites - they've left themselves wide open. |
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 8:02 am Post subject: |
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This could use a proper fisking, eh?
God, will we ever run out of ignorant "authorities" and "experts?" 
This is just insane!
| Quote: | MEDIA ADVISORY:
Swift Boat Smears
Press Corps Keeps Anti-Kerry Distortions Alive
August 30, 2004
A group of Vietnam veterans called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have managed to dominate campaign coverage recently with a series of inaccurate and unfounded allegations about John Kerry's Vietnam War service. But instead of debunking the group's TV ads and numerous media appearances, the press corps has devoted hours of broadcast time and considerable print attention to the group's message.
At times, some reporters seem to suggest that the Swift Boat coverage is being driven by some external force that they cannot control. "The ad war, at least over John Kerry's service in Vietnam, has for the moment effectively blocked out everything else," explained MSNBC's David Shuster (8/23/04)-- as if the media are not the ones responsible for deciding which issues were being "blocked out."
The New York Times similarly noted (8/20/04) that the group "catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign," while Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (8/23/04) suggested that "the controversy has completely knocked Kerry off message, and the political impasse suggests the story is not going away any time soon."
That "impasse" is largely the result of the media's failure to sufficiently compare the Swift Boat charges to the available military records and eyewitness accounts. Even a cursory examination of the available evidence reveals fatal flaws in the group's charges, which fly in the face of all documentary evidence, and the testimony of almost every person present when Kerry earned his medals. |
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Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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MrJapan
PO1
Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 465
Location: Chiba, Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:28 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | But instead of debunking the group's TV ads and numerous media appearances, the press corps has devoted hours of broadcast time and considerable print attention to the group's message. |
Hmm.. Looks like a subliminal message to the MSM to totally ignore anything about Swiftvets and POWs .... 'if you don't mention them, no one will know of them..' Prolly not, but.. what do you expect from the mentally challenged?!
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Dimsdale
Captain
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 527
Location: Massachusetts: the belly of the beast
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| Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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This is almost pathetic, but what one would expect from the likes of those who seek to drive conservative talk shows off the air. As seen below, the acronym FAIR is a gross misnomer for this group.
| Quote: | | That "impasse" is largely the result of the media's failure to sufficiently compare the Swift Boat charges to the available military records and eyewitness accounts. Even a cursory examination of the available evidence reveals fatal flaws in the group's charges, which fly in the face of all documentary evidence, and the testimony of almost every person present when Kerry earned his medals. |
Note the term "available military records." No mention of Kerry's refusal to release his records. The only "available evidence" is what Kerry chose to release, not the FULL record. Even the ChiTrib and WaPo stated that Kerry has released a mere six pages out of about a hundred in his file. The testimony of "almost every person present" only allows for anyone actually ON the boat, not yards away. I wonder how they report sports events?
| Quote: | | Larry Thurlow, the Swift Boat Vet who claims that Kerry was not under enemy fire when he earned his Bronze Star, himself earned a Bronze Star for actions under enemy fire in the same incident. Louis Letson, who claims to have treated the wound that earned Kerry his first Purple Heart, is not the medic listed in medical records as having treated Kerry. John O'Neill, the leader of the group, has said that Kerry would have been "court-martialed" had he crossed the border into Cambodia-- but O'Neill is on tape telling President Richard Nixon that he himself had been in Cambodia. Several members of the group are on the record praising Kerry's leadership. And so on. |
Thurlow's medal is also based on AA's written by KERRY! And the "medic listed in medical records as having treated Kerry" was not the actual medic on duty there. Letson was.
| Quote: | | Imagine that the situation were reversed: What if all available documentary records showed that George W. Bush had completed his stint in the Air National Guard with flying colors? What if virtually every member of his unit said he had been there the whole time, and had done a great job? Suppose a group of fiercely partisan Democrats who had served in the Guard at the same time came forward to say that the documents and the first-hand testimony were wrong, and that Bush really hadn't been present for his Guard service. Would members of the press really have a hard time figuring out who was telling the truth in this situation? And how much coverage would they give to the Democrats' easily discredited charges? |
Under FAIR's standards of "available documents" Bush DID "complete his stint in the Air National Guard with flying colors!" You can't have it both ways, boys and girls. Several members of Bush's unit in Texas and Arkansas did testify he was there. The only people disputing it, WITHOUT HAVING BEEN THERE AT ALL, is the MSM, and, it appears, FAIR.
| Quote: | | But when Kerry is the target of the attacks, many journalists seem content to monitor the flow of charges and counter-charges, passing no judgment on the merits of the accusations but merely reporting how they seem to affect the tone of the campaign. As the Associated Press put it (8/24/04), Kerry "has been struggling in recent days against charges-- denounced by Democrats as smear tactics -- that he lied about his actions in Vietnam that won five military medals." Credible charges or smears? AP's readers could only use their own personal opinions of Democrats to judge. |
Content? I would use the word "impotent" to describe the MSM's "examination" of Kerry's military record, particularly in light of the document "rectal exam" they press gave Bush under the DNC's orders. They passed "judgement" by accepting the word of Kerry outright and without verification, while allowing the DNC and Kerry to publicly call Bush a "liar."
I did "use my own personal opinions of Democrats to judge," and they came up short, just like the so called FAIR.
| Quote: | | The notion that reporters cannot pass some reasonable judgment about the ads was common. "There is no way that journalism can satisfy those who think that Kerry is a liar or that Swift Boat Veterans For Truth are liars," asserted NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving (NPR.org, 8/25/04). |
Sure there is: it is called investigational journalism, which is more than copying down DNC and Kerry talking points and spin. It is NOT forging documents to make your case.
| Quote: | | An editorial in the L.A. Times (8/24/04) noted that the problem is not that reporters can't say whether the charges are true-- it's that they don't want to say: "The canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over...Kerry's service in Vietnam." |
They CAN'T say the charges are false, because O'Neill et al. did their homework and the MSM refuses to do theirs. I agree there is no real controversy, but in the SBVT's favor. But you will never hear it.
| Quote: | | Just as the Swift Boat Vets are "funded by conservative groups that interlock with Bush's world in various ways," the L.A. Times said MoveOn is "part of Kerry's general milieu," and "either man could shut down the groups working on his behalf if he wanted to." The only difference that the editorial acknowledged is that while the MoveOn campaign is ''nasty and personal,'' the Swift Boat Vets ads are ''nasty, personal and false.'' |
So above, they admit there is no factual basis for calling the charges "false" but they can print the LATimes quotes as legit! Does the LATimes have access to some special knowledge everyone else lacks, or are they just partisan shills for Kerry? I favor the latter explanation, given their record.
| Quote: | | Never mind that MoveOn is a grassroots organization with 2 million members, founded in 1998 when Kerry was merely the junior senator from Massachusetts, while the Swift Boat Vets have no more independent existence than the ''Republicans for Clean Air,'' which attacked McCain in the 2000 primaries and then disappeared. |
So "grassroots" is defined as having Soros's billions at your command, agents at the top of the Kerry campaign staff, and the monies of the megarich Hollywood liberals, but the SBVT, with a couple of five figure donations from Texas Republicans and the vast majority of donations from the great unwashed (like me!!) demonstrates a Republican "dependence" or link somehow? Can they even spell the words "logic" or "ethics?" We know they can spell "fair" but they just don't know what it really means.
| Quote: | | But to many journalists, finding some way to criticize both sides is much easier-- and politically safer-- than examining evidence to try to determine the truth. CNN's Candy Crowley (8/6/04), for example, said to Kerry political director Steve Elmendorf: "There have been ads out there that have compared the president to Hitler, that have been really, really tough ads." That comparison makes little sense, though; the Hitler "ads" were submissions by individuals to MoveOn's ad contest, and were removed from the group's website when they were discovered. |
Criticizing both sides (allegedly) is how they put on a pretense of objectivity, when they are really subjetive and partisan. The internet is simply making it too easy to prove, and they are squirming. The Hitler ads of Moveon.org were taken down, then put up again, and adorn the pages of liberals everywhere. And the free publicity from the complaints and MSM coverage did what they did not have to do: pay to get it out in the news. And boy did they squawk when the RNC ued it against them, once again getting the image into the major news. Sleazy, effective, Kerryesque.
| Quote: | | Another way of drawing a false equivalence is by talking about the "negativity" of both sides. CNN's John Mercurio (CNN.com, 8/20/04) wrote that Kerry's comments responding to the Swift Boat charges "were notable--if only because they revealed how negative, and how responsive, both campaigns have become this year." One would think, rather, that they showed how negative one campaign was and how responsive the other was. |
Again, an unfounded accusation. "FAIR" should put it's money where it's mouth is (on Kerry's backside?) and get the real story. Not once is there a mention that they bothered to ask the SBVT for their opinion.
| Quote: | | Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike of the New York Times wrote a similar article (8/22/04), lamenting that while "this was supposed to be the positive campaign," both sides have discovered that "negative ads work." As evidence, the reporters noted that "Bush has spent the majority of the more than $100 million he has spent on television advertisements attacking his Democratic opponent." |
If Kerry and his minions consider his record to be a negative point, that is Kerry's fault, not Bush's. If I point out how Kerry betrayed America in 1971 and in his votes in the course of his 20 years in the Senate, is it negative? To be "positive" one would be forced to lie, unless you were one of America's enemies.
| Quote: | | This is presumably a reference to a Washington Post survey (5/31/04) that found that 75 percent of Bush's ads were negative. Not mentioned, however, was the Post's finding in the same story that Kerry's ads were only 27 percent negative. |
Cute, but it misses the point: Moveon.org and nearly 90% of the 527s are behind and support Kerry. They are spending the money on the highly negative attacks on the President, while Kerry sits there, looking "pretty" (sorry), triangulating, and running less negative ads because THEY DON"T HAVE TO. The 527s are doing his dirty work. And, in the tradition of Clinton, they accuse their opponent of the very thing that they are doing, deflecting attention from themselves, and putting their opponent on the defensive (see Hitler ads above). It is the Clinton Lesson.
| Quote: | | Including that fact would have spoiled the premise of the article, that the sin of negativity is committed equally by both sides. But sometimes the truth is not somewhere in the middle. |
The "truth" is completely missing from this article! It is nowhere near the middle. If they did a TRUE assessment of the totality of the ads on both sides, going back through the primaries and specifically including the deluge of negativity against the President regarding his ANG service, the needle on the "negativity scale" swings hard left, going off scale.
Sorry for being so long winded, but crap like this enrages me.
It doesn't help that I make a cup of coffee with three scoops of Turkish grind espresso either! LOL!
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Everytime he had a choice, Kerry chose to side with communists rather than the United States. |
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Dimsdale
Captain
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 527
Location: Massachusetts: the belly of the beast
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| Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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In the words of "FAIR" itself, a cursory examination of the available evidence on their website reveals fatal flaws in the group's charges of unfair coverage of Kerry.
In fact, I defy anyone to find a single article, note, sentence that is even remotely pro-Bush or RNC in the entire site.
Sadly, this is the kind of "evidence" the liberals and the MSM (one and the same, I know) use to say "the MSM is not liberally biased."
Howls of derisive laughter!!
Every article is so flawed and partisan, it is all I can do to keep from writing about a million comments to correct them, but I know they would be ignored, despite the fact that I would use real FACTS to dispute their claims of "unfairness."
Even the rankest amateur could see "FAIR" for what it is: a liberal clearinghouse for partisan spin on the news and the election.
The only thing "fair" about "FAIR" is it's name, and it does a disservice to that.
Distrust and dismiss anyone that uses them as a primary source. Or a source at all.
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Everytime he had a choice, Kerry chose to side with communists rather than the United States. |
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You Bic?
Ensign
Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 55
Location: North Florida
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| Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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FAIR is an old hard left advocacy group that has been around awhile.
If any newscoverage doesnt lean hard left, FAIR says it is biased!
I recall when FAIR took Nightline to task for not having enough women and minorities in their newsmaker interviews!
I kid you not. As if diversity should trump newsworthyness and accuracy in journalism! Shows what left wing nut burgers they are. |
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Tom Poole
Vice Admiral
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 914
Location: America
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| Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 12:19 am Post subject: |
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| You Bic? wrote: | | ...FAIR is an old hard left advocacy group... |
Nevertheless, even though I'd read that release a couple of times before, it still made me scream at my computer, "RELEASE YOUR RECORDS YOU DAMN FRAUD!" Why can't we do something to smoke him out?
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 4:48 am Post subject: |
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Send him faxes and snail mails of SF180's with "We saw what you did - we know who you are," scrawled across them?
If you are pretty good with image editing, you could create one that looks like it's written in dripping blood.
Send the news media faxes and snail mails of SF180's with John Kerry's name filled in and the same sentiment scrawled on it, adding, "Just what is he trying to hide?"
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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azpatriot
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 20 Aug 2004
Posts: 593
Location: Arizona
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| Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 4:50 am Post subject: |
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| Navy_Navy_Navy wrote: | Send him faxes and snail mails of SF180's with "We saw what you did - we know who you are," scrawled across them?
If you are pretty good with image editing, you could create one that looks like it's written in dripping blood.
Send the news media faxes and snail mails of SF180's with John Kerry's name filled in and the same sentiment scrawled on it, adding, "Just what is he trying to hide?" |
Not "Just what is he trying to hide" but Are you ready to vote into office a man that is scarred of this little piece of paper?
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