<font color=brown> I thought you would like this one. For a change, the truth!<font color=black>
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c1.zedo.com
The truth about lies: An excerpt from a Franken best-seller
By Al Franken / Guest Columnist
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Clinton the murderer and other tall tales the right-wing media buys into.
<font color=red>Asking whether there is a liberal or conservative bias to the mainstream media is a little like asking whether al-Qaida uses too much oil in their hummus. The problem with al Qaeda is that they're trying to kill us.<font color=black>
The right-wing media tells us constantly that the problem with the mainstream media is that it has a liberal bias. I don't think it does. But there are other, far more important, biases in the mainstream media than liberal or conservative ones.
Most of these biases stem from something called "the profit motive." This is why we often see a bias toward the Sensational, involving Scandal, and, hopefully Sex or Violence, or please, please, pleeeze, both.
And there's the Easy-and-Cheap-to-Cover bias, which is why almost all political coverage is about process and horse race and not about policy. Why have an in-depth report on school vouchers when two pundits who've spent five minutes in the green room looking over a couple of articles Xeroxed by an intern can just scream at each other about the issue on the air?
There's the Get-It-First bias. Remember the 2000 election? I believe there were some problems there associated with that one. Pack Mentality. Negativity. Soft News. The Don't-Offend-the-Conglomerate-That-Owns-Us bias. And, of course, the ever-present bias of Hoping There's a War to Cover.
Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe. Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of their enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them.
But to believe there is a liberal political bias in the mainstream media, you'd have to either not be paying attention or just be very susceptible to repetition. Yes, we've heard it over and over and over again. For decades. The media elite is an arm of the Democratic National Committee.
Anyone notice the mainstream media's coverage of Clinton? For 18 months, it was all Monica, all the time. There were a few news organizations that did not succumb to this temptation, and I like to cite them whenever I can: Sailing magazine, American Grocer Monthly, Juggs and Big Butt (which is ironic, because I think Big Butt had a story).
How about the 2000 presidential campaign? Remember when, in the first debate, Al Gore said he had gone to a disaster site in Texas with Federal Emergency Management Agency director James Lee Witt? Actually, it turned out that he had gone to that disaster with a deputy of Witt. As vice president, Gore had gone to 17 other disasters with Witt, but not that one.
The press jumped all over him. There were scores of stories written about how Gore had lied about Witt. It was as if Witt had been the most popular man in the United States of America and Gore was lying to get some of that Witt magic to rub off on him.
<font color=red>Contrast that with the media's reaction to this Bush description of his tax cut in the very same debate: "I also dropped the bottom rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, because, by far, the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder." "By far, the vast majority . . . goes to the people at the bottom." That is what Bush told America.
The truth is that the bottom 60 percent got 14.7 percent. Gee, that's a pretty significant misstatement, don't you think? More important than whether a Texas fire was one of the 17 disasters you went to with Witt. So what was the reaction of the liberal mainstream press?<font color=black>
Nothing.
Do I believe that this was because the mainstream media has a conservative bias? No. I just think the attitude of the press was "He doesn't know! He doesn't know! Leave the man alone! He doesn't know!"
But, of course, he did. Which is why Bush said he doesn't mind being "misunderestimated." Because by "misunderestimated," Bush means being underestimated for the wrong reason. The media thought he was kind of stupid. He isn't. He's just shamelessly dishonest.
<font color=red>The mainstream media does not have a liberal bias. And for all their other biases mentioned above, the mainstream media -- ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and the rest -- at least try to be fair.<font color=black>
There is, however, a right-wing media: Fox News. The Washington Times. The New York Post. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Talk radio. They are biased. And they have an agenda.
<font color=red>The members of the right-wing media are not interested in conveying the truth. That's not what they're for. They are an indispensable component of the right-wing machine that has taken over our country.
They employ a tried-and-true methodology. First, they concoct an inflammatory story that serves their political goals. ("Al Gore's a liar.") They repeat it. ("Al Gore lies again!") They embellish it. ("Are his lies pathological, or are they merely malicious?") They try to push it into the mainstream media. All too often, they succeed.<font color=black>
Occasionally, they fail. (Despite their efforts, the mainstream media never picked up the Clinton-as-murderer stories.) But even their failures serve their agenda, as evidence of liberal bias.
They used these tactics to cripple Clinton's presidency. They used them to discredit Gore and put Bush into office. And they're using them now to silence Bush's critics.
Bush is getting away with murder -- just like Clinton did. See? That's how insidious the right-wing modus operandi is. Even I bought into the Clinton murder thing there for a second. And that's my point. We have to be vigilant.
<font color=red>And we have to fight back. We have to expose those who bear false witness for the false witness bearers that they are. And we have to do it in a straightforward, plainspoken way.
Let's call them what they are: liars. Lying, lying liars.<font color=black>
Al Franken recently served as a Fellow with Harvard's Kennedy School of government at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. |
