MS DNC
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Thursday, July 05, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Media Bias:
MSNBC would be fairer and more balanced with Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on the air instead
of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Where is its
"Fairness Doctrine"?
After the Senate's immigration amnesty bill lost for the second time last month, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, complained: "Talk radio is running America," and "we have to deal with that problem."
Dealing with it could mean letting liberal Democrats such as Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine, to once again force broadcasters to give "equal time" to varying political viewpoints.
Olbermann: Prime-time tirades.
But the talk radio phenomenon that Feinstein, Kerry, Lott and others resent is the real fairness. Talkers now combine with Fox News, countless bloggers and publications such as Investor's Business Daily to counteract a political discourse in this country dominated by left-leaning journalists.
The sleep-inducing on-air presentations of "other points of view" two decades ago under the Fairness Doctrine were, by comparison, not nearly as effective — as those who want it back know too well.
Moreover, it's not as if liberals don't have their own rant-and-ravers appealing to the unwashed masses. Just look at the MSNBC cable channel.
Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown," gained fame first as a baseball card collector, then a sportscaster, but is now apparently qualified to "report" on politics. On Monday, this is how Olbermann began his "news" on Scooter Libby's clemency:
<<< "Good evening. A president who lied us into a war and, in so doing, needlessly killed 3,584 of our family and friends and neighbors . . . has tonight freed from the prospect of prison the only man ever to come to trial for one of the component felonies in what may be the greatest crime of this young century." >>>
Olbermann then called on President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to resign before, as always, parroting Edward R. Murrow's sign off, "Good night, and good luck." Unlike talk radio, Olbermann's program presents itself as a straight newscast, featuring reports from NBC correspondents like Andrea Mitchell.
Another of MSNBC's ranters is Chris Matthews, host of "Hardball." The highly partisan Matthews was a senior aide to the late Speaker Tip O'Neill, the Massachusetts Democrat, and the author of President Carter's infamous "malaise" speech.
On Tuesday, Matthews interviewed former ambassador Joseph Wilson — who wrote the infamous New York Times op-ed in 2003 claiming that Bush lied about Saddam Hussein seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger — about the Libby controversy. It was Wilson who always claimed that his wife — then-CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose cover was allegedly blown by the Bush White House, sparking the probe that eventually netted Scooter Libby — never recommended him to go to Niger and investigate.
But in 2004, a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate (Plame) suggested his name for the trip" — including a memo from Plame to the CIA. The Senate also found that Wilson's own report said the Niger government had confirmed that Iraq tried to buy uranium.
But instead of grilling Wilson on any of this, Matthews treated him as a paragon of integrity, throwing the softest of softballs, like:
<<< "Do you believe that they (the Bush administration) went after you because you were a war critic?" >>>
Democratic presidential candidates get away with refusing to let Fox News sponsor a debate, while their Republican counterparts let MSNBC lead them like lambs to the slaughter courtesy of Matthews' loaded questions and sound bites and Olbermann's crazed tirades. A "Fairness Doctrine" manufacturing Olbermann and Matthews clones is the last thing America needs.
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