Is Media Bias an Issue?

Oregon Magazine ^ | September 1, 2002 | Thomas Lipscomb

[WaterDragon]

(Thomas Lipscomb, Oregon Magazine's Berlin Bureau Chief, grew up in the beaver state, then went on to fame and fortune in the Big Apple. One of his favorite memories of Oregon has to do with passing out programs in Civic Stadium, and so getting to see the old Portland Beaver baseball games for free. His last corporate job was as the president of the New York Times book division. These days, besides serving as our chief correspondent in Europe, he is a columnist whose opinions appear in the major newspaper and magazines in America.)

In the last few weeks, it has become embarrassingly clear that federal government attorneys and employees at agencies as diverse as the Department of the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have been systematically destroying documents to stymie litigation and investigations directly resulting from their actions as public servants....(snip)

Click here for the complete article!

Thanks for supporting American private property ownership and capitalism by not posting the full article.

[WaterDragon]

A good take on how the federal bureaucrats are preparing to avoid prosecution.

[NapaCA]

It's their blatent dishonesty that bugs me so... some day soon they'll come clean and say to us all, "But children, we really *are* smarter than you."

[WaterDragon]

They have so little respect for us they aren't even that worried we'll find them out. That really, really p*sses me off.

[ThePythonicCow]

The title of this post describes the article better than the first, quoted paragraph.

The key sentence from the article is:

Has a double standard indicative of a broad liberal bias among news outlets gradually crept into place?

[dixiechick2000]

"...the intentional entry of over 900 FBI background files of political opponents into a far more sophisticated Democratic Party computerized database in the Clinton White House led to yawns from press and television reporters willing to accept the most transparent representations of "an honest mistake." Has a double standard indicative of a broad liberal bias among news outlets gradually crept into place?"

In a word...yes.

"...as ABC¹s John Stossel put it, "If you ask a fish about the water surrounding it, it is likely to reply: 'Water? What water?'" For worried media executives, it might be well worth finding out."

FNC is gaining big numbers, while the ratings of the rest are dropping like a rock. You'd think they would get a clue.

[ladyinred]

You'd think they would get a clue.

You would, wouldn't you? That is what leads me to believe that they don't care. Their political agenda is more important than ratings, something most will not believe, so that is the beauty of it.
I always hear that the reason they run with certain stories is all about ratings, but I no longer believe that. It is all about the agenda, and the end justifies the means. They make up for the low ratings with nonsense shows like Survivor and such to numb the brains of the "unwashed."

[Bryan]

When the subject of liberal bias in the media is brought up, particularly during an election campaign, journalists tend to roll their eyes and groan "there you go again" at this recrudescence of an old right-wing shibboleth. This pose, while convenient, was shaken by a famous Roper poll of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and correspondents.

It found that in 1992 they had voted 89 percent for Clinton, 7 percent for Bush. Regular Americans had voted Clinton over Bush, 43 percent to 38 percent. The country went marginally for Clinton; the journalists went for him 13 to 1.

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/krauthammercharles/A40894-2000Sep28.html

* * * * * * *

Compare the media's coverage of the killing of Kevin Shifflet to their coverage of the killing of Robert Byrd. Byrd, of course, was dragged on a chain behind a pickup truck by three white racists until he was dismembered. There's no way you missed that story unless you were raised in a barrel and just let out.

Kevin Shifflet? Who's Kevin Shifflet? You never heard of him. That's because he was white, and a black man killed him simply because he was white. Here is a more comprenhesive listing of hate crimes that you never heard about, because the killers were black and their victims were white:

http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/hatecrimes.html

There is no better example of left-wing media bias than a comparison between the stories of Matthew Shepard and Jesse Dirkhising.

http://www.covenantnews.com/dirkhising.htm

* * * * * * *

Wrapping up the Dirkhising story

By Brent Bozell
April 2, 2001

You could call it a forgotten ending to a forgotten story. On March 22, a jury in Bentonville, Ark., convicted 23-year-old Joshua Brown of first-degree murder in the death of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising. On Sept. 26, 1999, Brown and his lover, Davis Don Carpenter, 39, bound, gagged and drugged the skinny, long-haired boy and raped him with objects until he died of "positional asphyxiation."

Let the record show this is a story the national press has deliberately chosen to spike. The national media's ongoing, see-no-evil campaign of calculated ignorance on the Dirkhising story stands in stark contrast to both its perpetual exploitation of crimes against children and its campaign to smear the religious right as the killers of Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard.

Iconoclastic gay journalist Andrew Sullivan recently arrived at the scene of the discrepancy in the New Republic: "In the month after Shepard's murder, Nexis recorded 3,007 stories about his death. In the month after Dirkhising's murder, Nexis recorded 46 stories about his.

"In all of last year, only one article about Dirkhising appeared in a major mainstream newspaper, the Boston Globe. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ignored the incident completely. In the same period, the New York Times published 45 stories about Shepard and the Washington Post published 28. This discrepancy isn't just real. It's staggering."

It's beyond staggering. It is nauseating.

For the rest of the story, click on the link:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/printbb20010402.shtml

Copyright © 2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

* * * * * * *

Here's an article by David Horowitz, touching on both the Shifflet/Byrd disparity in media coverage and the Shepard/Dirkhising disparity:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz012301.asp

[Bryan]

Here are a few more good links on liberal media bias.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/leo041001.asp

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin031601.asp

http://www.thenewrepublic.com/040201/trb040201.html

http://www.mediaresearch.org/columns/newscol/col20010329.html

http://www.frontpagemag.com/pi_crimes/dirkhising04-28-00.htm

The Bureau of Justice Statistics proves year after year that 90% of all interracial violent crime involves a white victim and a non-white criminal, and that non-whites are at least twice as likely as whites to commit racially motivated hate crimes.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm

But what is, far and away, the most well-known interracial hate crime in recent memory? The death of James Byrd. And how did it become the most well-known? According to Michael Kelly, the story is a perfect fit in one of the liberal media's favorite story templates.

[WaterDragon]

I'm saving the thread for this collection of articles, Bryan. Thank you. I still become ill thinking about the horrendous black-on-white and homos-on-children crimes. Frankly, America cannot survive if we the American voters - continue to elect Democrats to any office. The nation not surviving, of course, is precisely their intention.

[Drango]

Thanks for supporting American private property ownership and capitalism by not posting the full article.

???? Are you suggesting/implying that FreeRepublic is harming private property/capitalism by posting full articles?

[WaterDragon]

bttt

[blackie]

Death To all Tyrant's !!

The Second Amendment...
America's Original Homeland Security !!

[WaterDragon]

Amen to that, blackie. The British twits gave up their right to self defense with hardly a twitter, and kept on electing the politicians who disarmed them. We cannot allow that in America.

[blackie]

Right-on !!

Death To all Tyrant's !!

The Second Amendment...
America's Original Homeland Security !!

Molon Labe !!

[Alissa]

Is anyone noticing that the closer we get to 9/11 the only patriotic sound bites we're hearing in the media are from the Democrats?!? I noted it yesterday, and it is continuing today.

[Judith Anne]

Yes, Alissa, and it's making me angry.

[WaterDragon]

That is strange! The Democrats definitely have no concerns about our defense. Are you saying the Republicans are insufficiently noisy about this? Could it be they're not wanting to turn 9-11 into a Lefty reduction of fake emotionalism?

[WaterDragon]

Ping!

[WaterDragon]

PING