Posted on 07/12/2006 6:21:44 AM PDT by Gordongekko909
The same newspapers and television news programs that are constantly reminding us that some people under indictment "are innocent until proven guilty" are nevertheless hyping the story of American troops accused of rape in Iraq, day in and day out, even though these troops have yet to be proven guilty of anything.
What about all the civilian rapes that are charged -- and even proven -- in the United States? None of them gets this 24/7 coverage in the mainstream media.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example of media hype of unproven charges against American troops. While military action was still raging in the early days of the Iraq war, there was media condemnation of our troops for not adequately protecting an Iraqi museum from which various items were missing.
When the smoke of battle cleared, it turned out that members of the museum staff had hidden these items for safekeeping during the fighting.
Then there was the incident when a Marine shot a terrorist who was pretending to be asleep and the media turned that into a big scandal until an investigation revealed how these and other tricks used by terrorists had cost the lives of American troops in Iraq.
None of the brutal beheadings of innocent hostages taken by terrorists in Iraq -- and videotaped for distribution throughout the Middle East -- has aroused half the outrage in the mainstream media as unsubstantiated charges made by terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo.
Nor have most of the media become any more skeptical about charges made by these cutthroats in Guantanamo after the claim that copies of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet at that prison turned out to be a lie.
The idea of trying to flush any book down a toilet ought to have raised suspicions but much of the media treats statements by terrorists and their supporters as true and any denials of wrongdoing by American troops as false and "a coverup."
These are the same liberal media people who claim to be "honoring our troops" when they hype every casualty and make a big production of each landmark death, such as the 1000th American killed in Iraq and then the 2000th.
The multiple-page spread in the New York Times and similarly elaborate coverage of these landmark deaths on liberal television programs show that they had been preparing for these particular deaths for some time.
They may well be disappointed if we don't reach the 3000th American death, since the terrorists have shifted their attacks and now target primarily Iraqi civilians.
We all need to understand the fraudulence of the claim that these media liberals who have been against the military for decades and who have missed no opportunity to smear the military in Iraq are now in the forefront of "honoring" our troops by rubbing our noses in their deaths, day in and day out.
Troops who have won medals for bravery in battle -- including one soldier who won a Congressional Medal of Honor at the cost of his life -- go unmentioned in most of the mainstream media that is focused on our troops as casualties that they can exploit.
A recent study by the Media Research Center found that the three big broadcast news networks -- CBS, ABC, and NBC -- ran 99 stories in 3 and 1/2 hours about the investigation of charges against Marines in the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November.
These remain unproven charges in a country where people on the side of the terrorists include civilian women and children who set off bombs to kill American troops and who can set off lies to discredit those that they do not kill.
But the same networks that lavished 3 and 1/2 hours of coverage of these unproven charges gave less than one hour of coverage of all the American troops who have won medals for bravery under fire.
Every newspaper and every television commentator has a right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else. But when they claim to be reporting the news, that does not mean filtering out whatever goes against their editorial views and hyping unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops.
Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else.
He's right of course but I don't think it does as much damage as the media would like and maintaining the moral high ground in the armed forces is not a bad thing. On the other hand this doesn't help the soldiers falsely charged.
Thanks again, Dr. Sowell ... America's voice of reason!
Thanks for the post.
THOMAS SOWELL: VOICE OF THE PEOPLE!
Too bad he's so hard to find in papers in this area, NYC/Northeast, sometimes the NY Post runs him, but it's not a regular column.
Dr. Sowell is the best!
This is a great column by Sowell, so pinging a few folks.
He's right of course. We are in the midst of America's largest cultural war since the Wets v the Drys in the teens and twenties.
The MSM is on the other side.
In case you haven't seen this one...
Few people knew who HE was, but knew who SHE was. Pathetic........
They also thought that the rape allegations of Anita Brodderick against BJ Clinton were not worthy of any coverage! But the rape allegations against our troops are important...
...reminding us that some people under indictment "are innocent until proven guilty"
This is only true if you are William Jefferson, DEMONRAT, Louisiana. If you are a TERRORIST, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove or a member of the United States military, then you are GUILTY the moment some azzhat whispers a derogatory comment they pulled out of their a...er...well.....thin air.
. . . but in the "court" of journalism, of course, nobody other than a liberal has the presumption of innocence.Every newspaper and every television commentator has a right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else. But when they claim to be reporting the news, that does not mean filtering out whatever goes against their editorial views and hyping unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops.
Stop the presses! Major news! Thomas Sowell gets it wrong!The "right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else" includes the right to "filter out whatever goes against their editorial views and hype unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops." Even when they claim to be reporting the news.
The First Amendment gives the people the right to speak or print the truth responsibly, but it also protects the right to be wrong at the top of your voice. Unfortunately there is no middle ground between having the First Amendment and not having the First Amendment. If the government were allowed to censor the news as the Soviet Union did, we would have conservative news - only good news which did not call the competence of the government into question.
Since we have the First Amendment we have radical news - only bad news which does call the competence of the government into question (that does not apply during a Democratic administration, of course - because such an administration provides convenient scapegoats to distance itself from responsibility for anything. And if that fails, it cooks the books to make the economy look better than it really is).
There is no recourse for the problem of radical journalism, except a voting public which by majority senses and discounts the radical tendency of journalism. Which fortunately we do have - even though most in that majority would not be able to articulate it that way.
I think you have to look at Sowell's contention in light of his decade long earnest effort to help the general public understand the radicalism, its mask and method.
In The Vision of the Anointed Sowell goes to greater lengths than he can in a biweekly column to show that the left always equates their caring and feelings for a form of sincerity and anointedness that would allow them to devalue and completely ignore argument and evidence on any issue that runs against their arguments for centralized, general will, authority.
That clear analysis is still not well understood and it certainly has little impact of the general public at large. Claiming that he is trying to deny fundemental constitutional guarantees is absurd.
Sowell isn't calling for state media as the answer, but he is condemning the unbridled destructive actions of the the leftists.
Well there's the Duke University disaster. They were assumed guilty from the start too (but not here on FR).
Of course Dr. Sowell is correct when he points out that liberals see themselves as being "elite." I get to be the one, however, to state the obvious as say that assuming you are better than everyone who disagrees with you - as liberals routinely do - is arrogant.
Of course Dr. Sowell doesn't advocate censorship. But - stop the presses - I get to be the one to point out that
He seems more interested in pointing out bias so that people can understand that the MSM is not impartial, so that people can take its reporting with the appropriate amount of salt. It's more like "hey, look, the media is still biased, so beware" than anything else.
FRmail me if you want on or off the Thomas Sowell Ping List.
Dr. Sowell nails it again. He supports our military even though some here are quick to find any supposed evidence to paint a dark picture of them.
Our troops deserve the strongest presumption of innocence of anyone, they literally risk their lives on a daily basis for us.
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