Media Brain Washers Determine the Facts

That’s Why News Is Not News

By Sara Pentz

Most people say the news is depressing. It is a major complaint about the business since the 1960s when television with its highly provocative visual images brought these pictures into our living rooms. The arrival of those images impacted our lives as much as it impacted the lives of those who were the subject of war zone reports––from Viet Nam and Afghanistan, from the streets of Newark, East Las Angeles, Harlem and New Orleans.

The complaint about no good news can be properly translated. It really means that the news produced by the brain washers is one–sided. It does not represent the total story.

Instead it was all bad news. It was selected editorial choices by producers, reporters and network executives who determined what we saw and heard. No one questioned these choices.

Now, it’s a different story. Many journalists are fed up with the editorial slant of the news pictures seen on the screen…and they’re not going to take it anymore. They are a new breed. They have formed outlets to challenge the current mainstream media––blogs, e–zines, and websites––to counterattack the mainstream media brain washers.

The agenda in news reports, then as today, is the same. It can’t be news if it is good news, say the producers and their lackeys. They don’t state that out loud. Instead that ugly little practice is simply part of their souls––part of their mantle––part of their being––their total existence. Anyone who does not believe this is certainly not a good or respected journalist––or human being, they say. In fact, they say that out loud as a criticism––with insulting phrases and angry faces and an intimidating manner.

These journalists believe it is their duty to change the world. They are not merely interested in gathering facts. They are bent on being pro–active. Their leaders and their peers expect this of them. They are devoted to the exposure of the oppression of the various groups that have been, they say, the West's victims. That is their anti–Americanism. Women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, and others that have been officially designated as oppressed groups. This is the so-called "diversity" ideology to which every network president, executive, producer and reporter pledges obedience and devotion.

They blame it on capitalism. That is why you don’t see many CEOs, industrialists or even small business owners as part of a news story. They can’t be trusted, say journalists, to tell the truth. They have the profit motive behind them. Ergo, they are not news and they will be boycotted.

But this is slowly changing…certainly not in the mainstream media. Instead if you hunt hard enough you will find interesting and newsworthy stories about good news––and even about American values and the exemplar deeds of capitalists.

The Good News

Writing for the Free Market Project, www.freemarketproject.org, Amy Menefee demonstrates the anti–capitalist bias of the media.

“U.S. oil companies, drug companies and Wal-Mart have been among the most generous contributors to the relief effort - a fact the print media included. The Washington Post reported on September 4 that oil companies had given at least $15.5 million. Wal-Mart donated $17 million and the Walton Family Foundation another $15 million, the Associated Press reported on September 6. Drug companies have pledged more than $25 million, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
But these contributions – from companies regularly vilified in the media – received little or no attention in the last week on ABC, NBC and CBS news shows. Past media reports have attacked Wal-Mart for “low wages” and “anti-unionism” and have chided drug companies for “spending less than they make in profits.”
The oil companies have attracted similar coverage, especially through the summer’s high gas prices. NBC’s Katie Couric said on the August 17 “Today,” “As we pay through the nose, someone has to be smelling some pretty big profits.” Out of those profits, however, came charitable donations to hurricane relief. The Post’s September 4 report said that Exxon Mobil had pledged $7 million; ConocoPhillips and Shell Oil Co., $3 million each; Marathon Oil Corp. $1.5 million; and the BP Foundation, $1 million.”

Also writing for Writing for the Free Market Project, www.freemarketproject.org, Herman Cain refers to the bias of pollsters referring to a September 2 ABC News/Washington Post poll.

“The pollsters were so blinded by their bias that all they could see was the federal government’s response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Their questions focused on placing blame on President Bush and asked people whether the government’s response left them “angry; proud; ashamed; hopeful; or shocked.” (Emphasis added.)

Let us be very clear here…the bias of the poll is in the wording of the question. It is focused on the government’s response to the disaster. The poll does not ask if people were angry or proud about what corporate America and many citizens were doing––because corporations represented good news––like contributing $90 million in three days.

Mr. Cain raised that very issue in the remainder of his column: what capitalism is doing in a positive way. He points out that most of the media focused on how so–called greedy companies were making a profit because of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Cain’s view is exactly the opposite. He demonstrates how capitalism was at work in a positive way.
“A hallmark of our free market economic system is that when individuals

work on pursuing their dreams, in this case rebuilding cities and states, the positive effects ripple throughout the economy. Together, those dreams lift a society.

It’s been widely reported that Home Depot’s stock value rose with the floodwaters. But the story behind that is exactly what USA Today reported on September 1: the company’s massive effort to stock stores in the devastated region and to prepare for a speedy response. As USA Today’s Julie Schmit wrote, “Plywood makers are cranking up production. Contractors and laborers are lining up to enter the area. Retailers are redirecting products from as far as Wisconsin to the Gulf region.
Without a free economic market, the companies that can help the most wouldn’t have the incentive to hurry to the scene. They know their products and services will be needed – so they’re doing all they can to assist those who want to begin the rebuilding process.”

Although Herman Cain is the former president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc. and the National Chairman of the Media Research Center’s Free Market Project, don’t expect to see his writings published on the front page of the NY Times.

The Bad News

(Taken from and annals of the Media Research Center)

CBS News Sunday Morning "contributor" Nancy Giles, charged that "if the majority of the hardest hit victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were white people, they would not have gone for days without food and water" and insisted that "the real war is not in Iraq, but right here in America. It's the War on Poverty, and it's a war that's been ignored and lost."

CNN's Wolf Blitzer repeatedly prodded reluctant Congressional Black Caucus member Elijah Cummings to blame racism for delays in rescuing hurricane victims in New Orleans. When Cummings demurred from such a blanket accusation, Blitzer wouldn't give up: "There are some critics who are saying, and I don't know if you're among those, but people have said to me, had this happened in a predominantly white community, the federal government would have responded much more quickly. Do you believe that?"

CNN's Aaron Brown took up the same agenda with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, lecturing her: "Now, look, here's the question, okay? And then we'll end this. Do you think the reason that they're not there or the food is not there or the cruise ships aren't there or all this stuff that you believe should be there, isn't this a matter of race and/or class?"

ABC's Ted Koppel charged on Nightline "the slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina has led to questions about race, poverty and a seemingly indifferent government."

ABC's Terry Moran put politics at the forefront in hurricane disaster coverage when, on a storm-ravaged Biloxi street, he confronted President Bush about how "one of the things you hear is people saying 'there's a lot of resources being devoted to Iraq. Now this country needs them.' And they're frustrated about that. What do you say to the people who say there's too much money being spent on Iraq and it's time to bring it home?"

NPR and ABC reporter Nina Totenberg charged that National Guard equipment deployed to Iraq is supposedly impairing rescue efforts, that "for years, we have cut our taxes, cut our taxes and let the infrastructure throughout the country go and this is just the first of a number of other crumbling things that are going to happen to us." An astounded Charles Krauthammer pleaded: "You must be kidding here." But Totenberg reaffirmed: "I'm not kidding."

Each one of these anecdotes is an example of media bias––of reporters arguing for their agenda. They are supposed to be reporters asking questions that elicit information…not commentators pushing interviewees to confirm their agenda.

Here’s a rundown in an article by Ben Johnson from www.frontpagemag.com of how the media focused on the Liberals and far out socialists in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It's official: the American Left now believes George W. Bush is God. Bellowing leftists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cindy Sheehan have blamed Hurricane Katrina - something insurance companies classify as an act of God - on President Bush's "killing policies”... Former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal…chalking up the flood to the Bush administration's having cut one item in the Army Corps of Engineers' annual budget. (snip) DNC Chair Howard Dean weighed in by demeaning Bush's trip to the disaster area, calling it "just another callous political move crafted by Karl Rove.”

“In addition to claiming Bush somehow fed the phantom of "global warming" to rain death upon his own citizens, the Left has alleged "racism" in his handling of this disaster. Jesse Jackson quipped post-Hurricane New Orleans looks like "the hull of a slave ship.” Director Michael Moore played the race card in an open letter to Bush on his website. They found an echo in the "Reverend" Al Sharpton, who told MSNBC's abysmal Keith Olbermann, "I feel that, if it was in another area, with another economic strata and racial makeup, that President Bush would have run out of Crawford a lot quicker and FEMA would have found its way in a lot sooner.”

“Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV,… has proposed a 9/11-style commission to probe the feds' response to Hurricane Katrina. (After all, the original 9/11 Commission proved so exemplary.)

In summary Johnson adds:

“Despite these transparent attempts to claw political advantage from the suffering of the downtrodden - after the National Guard forgeries, Plamegate, and conspiratorial ravings about the Federalist Society won them no traction - a Washington Post poll revealed 55 percent of Americans do not blame President Bush for the debacle in the Big Easy.”

Does anyone really think the Liberal Washington Post would design an objective, fair and balanced survey? That is not the way they see the facts.

While the media brain washers pander their doctrinaire message, it appears from this survey, at least, that most of the American public are bright enough to take the brain washers talk as simply another boring bad news media rant. Good for them.

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