Weapons of Mass Distortion

In the media’s haste to discredit everyone to the right of Michael Moore – most enthusiastically President Bush – the media’s lies are becoming too big to go unnoticed by a critical mass of people. The major media outlets hijacked Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans as an excuse to pillory President Bush and his administration. The media incessantly reported that the administration was slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina and was indifferent to the suffering that it caused.

The media greatly exaggerated - many times outright fabricated - the human toll. The media reported that hundreds of deaths occurred at the Superdome when only 10 were documented. The media reported that dozens of murders were taking place in the Superdome when only four victims of gunshot wounds were identified.

If the destruction occurred in an isolated locale or only impacted a few people, the media may well be able to get away with such lies. However, tens of thousands of people were sent within a day or two of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans to assist the victims. These rescue workers will have their stories told which will undermine the media’s unceasing claims that New Orleans was abandoned.

There used to be a time when accuracy was more important than sensationalism. There used to be a time when facts were checked. There used to be a time when there was some effort to present balance in reporting. There used to be a time when the sanctity of life and a scintilla or patriotism (or at least the absence of unmitigated hatred for the United States) was more important than selling a story. However, partly because young people are specifically going into journalism to advance their pet causes, these times have long passed.

I recently read Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media by L. Brent Bozell III. Mr. Bozell made a number of very forceful points to not only document the major media outlet’s extreme liberal bias but the fact that the media is merely being used as a tool to advance hard left causes. Among the points were:

• Of 139 Washington, D.C., bureau chiefs and correspondents surveyed, 89% said they had voted for Clintonin 1992. 50% of the group identified themselves as Democrats and only 4% as Republicans. Furthermore, 61% of the supposedly objective press identified themselves as “liberal” while only 2% labeled themselves “conservative” or “liberal to moderate”.
• In 1997, the media went berserk when Newt Gingrich was offered $300,000 to teach a course on “Renewing American Civilization”. The IRS cleared Gingrich of all allegations that his teaching such a course violated any tax laws. Nevertheless, Gingrich was fined $300,000 by the House of Representatives. Bob Dole offered to loan Gingrich the money to pay the fine. The press was abhorred that a U.S. Representative would receive a loan from someone (Bob Dole) that worked for the tobacco industry. However, when Terry McAuliffe pledged to $1.35 million of his own money to secure a mortgage on the Clinton’s New York home, the media was mute despite McAuliffe paying a fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a union pension fund that he was accused to have fleeced.
• Similarly, it became a scandal that Newt Gingrich received a $4.5 million advance for a book deal while Hillary Clinton was lauded for receiving an $8 million advance for her book.
• The press changes reality to make liberals seem more appealing to the public. For instance, in July 2002, VH1 edited out the boos (and changed them to cheers) that accompanied Hillary Clinton’s speech at a New York City concert to benefit victims of September 11.
• Special interest groups have extraordinary control over the media. For instance, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association wields tremendous influence over the major media. This is one of the primary reasons why the Matthew Shepard story (a homosexual teen that was murdered by heterosexuals) received 3,007 stories the month following his death while Jesse Dirkhising (a heterosexual male that was murdered by homosexuals) received only 46 stories in the month following his death.
• The media unconditionally suppresses evidence of the use of guns in preventing crime. According to criminologist Gary Kleck, people used guns to defend themselves against an assailant or burglar as many as 2.5 million times a year. The media refuses to acknowledge that gun control laws are not respected by criminals and therefore will not prevent crime. For instance, the Columbine killers broke eighteen separate federal and state gun laws.
• While the media lambasted Dick Cheney for not including some hard left organizations on his committee reviewing energy policy (they were invited but refused to participate), the media made almost no mention of the fact that a judge fined the Clinton White House in December 1997 for baldly lying about the composition of the Clinton health-care task force, which had planned to socialize one-seventh of the American economy.
• During the 2000 Presidential election imbroglio, Florida’s Supreme Court was extremely activist on behalf of the Democratic candidate, Al Gore. The Florida court acted on its own motion to bar the state from certifying election results. Indeed, the  Florida court had six justices that were appointed by Democrats and the seventh was a coappointment. However, all that the nation heard was that Katherine Harris, the duly-elected secretary of state, was a Republican. In fact, Ms. Harris warned the media not to prematurely announce election results since Florida’s Panhandle lies in the Central Time Zone. The media ignored Ms. Harris’s advice and therefore caused the election fiasco. Several analyses of Panhandle voters indicate that these citizens would have overwhelmingly voted for Bush and thus saved the nation an agonizingly precarious month.
• An interesting aside, while there are credible allegations that Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic, it is interesting to note that Allied planes dropped 88,000 copies of the pope’s encyclical over Germany, in the hope that Pope Pius’s guarded anti-Nazi message would get through to the people.