Journalism is Not About The Facts Anymore
By Sara Pentz
Journalism is not about the facts anymore. There is little respect for the sanctity of truth. The media has one agenda: to instill the liberal philosophy of the Left and the religious philosophy of the Right into our lives. The practices used to do so are intentional. Without understanding the mechanics of how biased journalists work, they will lead us down the slippery slope to totalitarianism because they represent the classic clash against reason, individualism and freedom.
This blog will demonstrate how propaganda in the news media–––primarily from the elitist Left, but also including all spectrums of political discourse–––is infecting the communication of information as seen across all media. Slanted journalism is the ‘big lie’ and it must be understood and stopped.
The blog will analyze how headlines often do not reflect the information contained in the news report in the hope that the reader will skip the story and absorb the headline. This column will look at loaded words and distorted ideas to demonstrate how they are used to deny or avoid information that conflicts with the liberal point of view. It will explain the way, for example, that polls are taken (mostly by liberals of liberals), and how and why the results are used to influence the pubic. All of these techniques are used to send a message other than the truth or the facts of the news story.
Biased journalists give distorted accounts of the facts through various methods. They are selective in what they report about a story. They rely on anecdotal material that supports their own conclusions. They create quotes and attribute them to anonymous sources. They seek out the disgruntled to illustrate issues that affirm their premises. They use mike-in-the-face snippets from everyday people who are coached to say what the story demands. It’s all in the way the questions are asked.
Those who deny their bias are corrupt and deceitful. Some admit it openly. In 2002, 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney said on CNN's Larry King Live: "There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions.”
ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin admits the problem in an interview on the Hugh Hewett radio show recently, “…well over 70 percent of the people working on his network's political coverage are liberal, and would vote Democratic. Further he said, “…that the preponderance of liberal thought in media organizations is an endemic problem and for 40 years conservatives have rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake.”
Some journalists merely equivocate. ABC’s Charles Gibson said on ABC’s The View recently: "...there is no such thing as objectivity, there is just lesser degrees of subjectivity...And you have to, all the time, say to yourself, are we being fair? Are we being down the middle, as we can? And I simply can tell you that is something which, which I try to implant on everybody at World News."
Ted Kavanau, founding Senior Producer of CNN and founding President, CNN Headline News, explains, “The big Democratic cities have always had a stranglehold on what is the most significant news story of the day. The concentration of liberal thinking at the heart of those cities has had an effect on hiring within the major media community, as well as the creation of an attitude toward what was acceptable thinking within that media group. That attitude constituted a disdain for objectivity and a need for acceptance by the liberal media establishment, by those who shared the liberal point of view. If anyone breached the liberal agenda, they faced an expulsion that could and did have serious economic effects.”
We need to point the finger at those in the media who have personal and professional agendas other than objectivity. While it is inappropriate to call for censorship of dishonest journalism, it is critical to identify it as editorial propaganda. It is not news reporting. Journalists who dispense propaganda instead of the facts of a news event should be fired in much the same way as those who literally fabricate the truth–––and there have been plenty of those on the staff at the New York Times.
