Is our press really free anymore? 
September 21, 2009 by Matthew Jarzen
Showing bias, many news outlets don’t cover full stories
A couple months ago I reread George Orwell’s 1984. In the book, the main character, Winston Smith, works at The Party’s “Ministry of Truth.” His job simply entails rewriting newspaper articles to make whatever projections or statistics The Party made accurate.
For instance, if The Party said that 100 million boots would be manufactured but only 50 million were actually produced, Smith would “correct” the number, saying that The Party projected 50 million boots would be produced.
This is how I see the mainstream national media — or as Rush Limbaugh has aptly dubbed, the “state-run” media. What you are actually seeing and feeling isn’t accurately represented by the media.
If you have ever have a chance to watch clips from actual state-run news agencies such as those in Iran, Venezuela or North Korea, you’ll laugh at the absurdity of their “reporting.”
But the same goes for our own national media outlets.
Take the ACORN story for instance: You may not even have heard about it if you don’t watch Fox News, as they were one of few who covered the story in detail.
At the Baltimore office of ACORN, two journalists — a male and female — posed as pimp and prostitute. What transpired as a result was truly sickening. ACORN employees were captured on tape giving advice to the “pimp and prostitute” as to how they could avoid paying taxes, hide their money and get a business loan for the brothel in which underage Salvadorian girls would work as prostitutes.
In a matter of days afterward, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off all federal funding to ACORN.
Many of the mainstream media outlets ignored it. Charlie Gibson of ABC News claimed at one point that he didn’t even know about the story.
So here we have undercover videotapes surfacing about more of ACORN’s illicit and illegal activities the U.S. Senate consequently voting overwhelmingly to cut off funding to ACORN, and Charlie Gibson didn’t know about the story?
On Sept. 12, protesters in support of the 9/12 Project gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the explosion of the power of the federal government, health care “reform,” cap and trade and a list of other grievances.
The protest, started by Fox News’ Glenn Beck, matured into a powerful movement. This alone was probably the largest conservative movement and protest in the history of the U.S. and many media outlets either did an extremely poor job covering it or didn’t cover it at all. The varying attendance figures say it all.
MSNBC, for example, said that there were only a few hundred people protesting. CNN only covered the outrageous and over-the-top signs carried by a few protestors.
Fox News, however, did an excellent job of covering the story. Bill O’Reilly, who has now devolved into a petty and populist journalist, said that there were only 75,000 people there – a gross underestimation.
How did other media sources cover it? Mostly they ignored it or the ones who did cover it mislabeled the protest as simply “anti-tax.” The most extreme of these media outlets went so far as to say the motivation behind it was racial.
This brings me to the manufactured outrage of Representative Joe Wilson’s “You Lie!” comment made during President Barack Obama’s speech on health care to a joint session of Congress. The comment itself came after Obama said illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered under the health care proposals. Wilson vocally disagreed.
The media were quick to pounce on the story. Instead of seeing if Wilson had any credence to his remark by investigating whether illegal immigrants would be covered by the health care reform, the media instead investigated Wilson as a person — trying hard to determine if his comments were motivated by racism.
Following this comment, the House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed new rules about what can and cannot be said on the floor of the House — essentially taking the freedom of speech clause out of the First Amendment and wiping her derrière with it.
Obama’s green jobs “czar” Van Jones is another example. He resigned after Fox News and others pounded the airwaves daily about who Van Jones really was — a self-avowed communist, Black nationalist and radical revolutionary.
How did the media report it? They merely covered the story about how Van Jones responded to the 9/11 attacks and not about how he is a communist.
Did the media investigate who this guy was? Did the media bother to find out that Van Jones was an ex-convict, a communist and a Black nationalist?
Did they bother to investigate his ties to organizations like the Apollo Alliance, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) and the Tides Foundation — all radical left-wing organizations? What about the anti-police Free Mumia Movement Van Jones founded?
See, news and news reporting is no longer about what is happening, but what happened. Investigative journalism is no longer about digging deeper to find the real story and true motivations, but just taking things at face value.
Our national media are state-run.
I remember the White House correspondents’ dinner when Obama made the comment, “Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me,” after which the press in that audience went wild with cheers and applause.
With that in mind, I ask you this: is what you’re seeing and feeling really happening according to our media?
Reporting by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, WaPo, NYT
NOTHING – Reverend Wright’s Hate Speech
NOTHING – John Edwards Love Child
NOTHING – Van Jones Far Left Radicalism
NOTHING – ACORN’s Rife Corruption, Criminality
NOTHING – NEA’s Agitprop
Unf@%!ingbelievable.
“Malevolent Arrogance”
ACORN: Child “Services”, Financial “Services”, “Voter” Registration —Democrat Funded
I too am very disappointed in Bill O’Reilly… he has really wimped out.
O’Reilly is limp-wristed sissy. I’ve never seen him give a the president more benefits of doubt than anyone else. All this guy wants is an interview with Obama.
For him to say 75,000 people were at the rally is extremely false. I was there and it was over a million people!
The media silence was defeaning. However, if you get illegal immigrants to rally or if you get Code Pink to have a protest, the media will be all over it.
Wow. Really? You’re whining about the press not calling Van Jones a communist enough? Really? After the press cheerleads us rushing into a war based on a lie, torture and torture cover-ups, and an economic meltdown, this is what you people focus on.
You truly have no principles or sense of priorities.
Slag,
It is more than covering the Van Jones story (which by the way Van Jones was a professed communist for years in the 90s but he said that he later changed his mind). It is most of the Medias obsession with Obama and protecting him from scandals as they did during the election. I believe that many media outlets feel that if they don’t report on something then it didn’t happen which sadly may be true for some people watching MSN or CNN.
Also you can say all you want that weapons of mass destruction weren’t found in Iraq but a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center said that over 500 had been found. The press in general didn’t cover it though (I guess you watch MSN or CNN and didn’t see it) http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=1591
You can also say that there has been torture and torture cover-ups but where is the evidence? The terrorists are not covered by the Geneva Convention as so many liberals say as they are not wearing a uniform. The alleged “torture” has only been used by Democrats to bash Bush but legally it was not torture, so there could be no torture cover-up. As shown by your comments, you unfortunately do not research what you speak about but only accept the talking point from your liberal talk shows. If I am incorrect, I will admit it but so far I have found no evidence that anything I said in this post is incorrect.
Finally, the scary thing is that countries where the government controls most of the media (as Obama does now) are usually called dictatorships. When a government can twist the news however it wants there is nothing to stop it from completely controlling its people (see China, or Japan during WWII).
Wow, did you just parrot what Glenn Beck says Mr. Jarzen? If I want to hear that bobblehead’s tripe I can turn on FOX “News”. You offer nothing original in this opinion piece that hasn’t been regurgitated by Beck or others on the right.
Jarzen has a point in his article about the media. Whether or not it has been echoed by Conservatives before or whether Glenn Beck says is it or not, doesn’t mean that it still isn’t important.
Obviously you could care less if we cease to have an objective media. When Obama hits all the Sunday news shows EXCEPT Fox News, there is something wrong. Obama clearly sees those news entities as friendly.
How can we trust a media who is supposed to be the watchdog of government, when this very same watchdog is laying at the foot of the bed of a presidential administration?
While Jarzen appears to be a zealous supporter of all things right, he claims Joe Wilson’s comment during Obama’s health care speech was “manufactured.” I had thought both sides agree that his comment was completely spontaneous– as even Wilson said himself. How could such a comment be “manufactured”, when the president’s words were unknown to the senator prior to speaking them? Perhaps Jarzen chose the wrong words to unwittingly support his boy.
Are you seriously confusing a liberally-biased media for “state-run” media? Seriously?! That is so ridiculous it’s actually funny.
If the national media was “state-run” most of the outlets would have been shut down during the Bush administration and Fox News would have for sure been shut down since Obama took office.
It’s also ironic that you are criticizing others’ reporting when yours is so full of flaws.
PS after Wilson’s self-admitted spontanteous outburst, the media did check to verify if it had any legitimacy. Guess what? It didn’t. I would suggest for you to use factcheck.com but you would probably think that is “state-run” too.
Kilamon,
“This brings me to the manufactured outrage of Representative Joe Wilson’s “You Lie!” comment…”
I should have said, “This brings me to the manufactured outrage over Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You Lie!” comment…”
The word choice does make it seem that Rep. Wilson manufactured the comment. That is my mistake for not having caught it.
The manufactured outrage over the comment was made by the media who over-blew the comment looking for some hidden racial agenda rather than looking at the contextual reason behind the comment.
I hope I was able to clarify. If I didn’t, please let me know. Thank you for pointing that out though.
If Wilson’s remark had no validity then why did the senators change the bill after he made the remark? http://cbs3.com/health/illegal.immigrants.health.2.1179039.html
The media was most definitely not controlled by the government when Bush was President, so I figure you just want to bash Bush. The fact is that Obama has control over the scheduling of many of the large news outlets. This has been shown by his repeatedly “asking” for prime time slots so he could try and sell his healthcare reform and getting them every time. Those same news outlets then refused to allow for those against his healthcare reform to rebut his arguments. ABC even went as far as to not even let them advertise during his hour long Obama-merical. http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/06/18/abc-says-no-to-paid-opposition-ads-during-obamathon/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/27/abc-nbc-refuse-air-advertisement-critical-obamas-health-care-plan/
Though I agree that calling the media “state run” is a bit of a stretch, Obama wields far too much power over much of the media for it to be called objective. This may be the reason that the media is not trusted by hardly anyone anymore. http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/14/poll-news-medias-credibility-plunges-to-all-time-low/
Its hilarious that you all are so gung-ho about Bill O’Reilly when he says everything you want to hear but the minute he says something you don’t like, he’s a “limp-wristed” “sissy” “petty, populist” journalist. As much as you complain and talk about how YOU WANT THE TRUTH!, you don’t want the truth-sayers, you want sheeps (which Bill O’reilly is, even if he did step out of line for a second). The truth could be handed to you on a silver platter by god and as long as FOX news tells you its bad, you coin it socialist or communist (afterall, they are interchangeable, right?) and disregard it as liberal, hippie garbage which could not possibly be good or true, because FOX news told you so.
Mr. Jarzen, next time, when writing about biased, non-investigative, slanted, not-free media, you shouldn’t praise FOX in the same article– they are right up there with the rest of them… they just happen to be slanted and biased in the direction of THEIR wallet enhancers. Its about money and frankly it surprises me that the Republicans don’t understand this, afterall they are the “money=more important than anything” party.
Destiny,
I know you want to stereotype all conservatives in one breath as it is easy to demonize us that way but next time will you think for just a second before you make such a blatantly incorrect statement.
I think you will be hard pressed to find people (conservative, liberal, moderate, etc.) that do not want to know the truth. You could argue that they prefer to not know by their actions but if you asked them I’m pretty sure 100% want to know the truth about our government. I personally, routinely look at CNN, MSN, Fox News, Real Clear Politics, La Repubblica, etc. to make sure I have a complete view of a topic (more than most people I speak including liberals).
By calling Republicans the “‘money = more important than anything’ party”, you are once again showing your ignorance of the wide breadth of the Republican party and seem to only be watching a very small group of liberal news media. By trying to promote this obvious incorrect statement shows you are more interested in scoring points with your fellow liberal than actually looking at facts. Republicans, Democrats and Independents have members in all social classes. When was the last time you saw a poor Democrat politician for example? Or Republican? Or Independent? They are all wealthy which makes your argument sound more like whining than fact.