Posted on 06/26/2002 6:16:39 AM PDT by bert
Dan Chavez
06/24/2002
Thanks to the efforts of conservative and right wing activists a dawning awareness is taking place in the public's mind as to the existence of a pervasive and widespread left-wing, pro-statist and anti-freedom bias in many of the major "mainstream media" venues. What is less well known is that this bias has been in existence for many decades.
During the Great Depression there was much disillusion with America and many critics became enamored with the slogans of peace and prosperity emanating from the Soviet Union. Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent, praised the Soviet Union and it's show trials of the time, in which innocent victims were condemned, tortured and executed on trumped-up charges of treason, as well as excusing the deaths of millions of Russians during the forced collectivization of the 1930s. A few of this sterling journalist's quotes were "They're only Russians" and "I put my money on Stalin" - a true predecessor of today's arbiters of "political correctness".
Left-wing apologists of Duranty's ilk were, as far back as the 1930s, beginning to help shape the thinking of and the concepts used by the liberal media establishment, with its faith in the power of government to orchestrate social change, along with an arrogant contempt of the cost in human lives.
During the 50s the liberal media vilified those on the right who acted against individuals such as Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, questioning the motivations and actions of those who were attempting to secure the US from infiltration of such agents. With the fall of the Soviet Union many KGB archives have come to light, which revealed the true scope of their infiltration of American society and the role of Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Fuchs, and many more in the theft of American nuclear and military secrets. Such thefts having caused the taxpayers untold billions of dollars. The media, blind, vicious, partisan and arrogant, never comments on this or apologizes to those whose concerns at the time history has proven justified.
The 60s brought a massive increase in the size and power of government. As well as an ever more obvious ability of the "mainstream media" to empower those special interest groups which were in line with their own political views, regardless of the will of the majority. The media learned how to inflate the importance of small pressure groups by giving them a voice, free publicity, while presenting a distorted, slanted, negative or non-existent side of the opposition and then sat back with unholy glee while agendas alien to the will of the majority were rammed down the public's throat by judicial fiat or administrative diktat.
Media bias in favor of leftist, statist and totalitarian regimes, thinking and policies is not a new thing. Its modern, American expression of this bias can be seen in its partiality to that which is "politically correct" -read as, not likely to offend a constituent portion of the liberal Democratic coalition. If we were not living in a nation which still contained some vestiges of freedom I would wager that the proponents of "political correctness" would, if they were able to, put those who were not as "politically correct" as they into a modern and updated version of the Soviet Gulag. Bernard Goldberg, in his tremendously popular expose, "Bias" wrote on page 13 " ..everybody to the right of Lenin is a "right-winger" as far as the media elites were concerned...". This statement with all that it implies can be developed and amplified by simply looking at the history of media bias. Along with the human costs in lost lives and failed policies this bias has been instrumental in causing. This is why we are so angry with the liberal media. This is why we want to see them brought down.
We maintain our website at www.fairpress.org. If you wonder why you should be concerned about
Media Bias today, visit our website and learn........It's only 132 days till election day!
CCRM......... leading the charge against media bias.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.