Not Ignorance, Incompetence, or Bias, but Media Fraud

Crucial facts are left out of news stories when those facts will undermine or destroy a liberal argument.

BETHPAGE, TN (Catholic Online) - Some American journalists act like communist governments, sifting and spinning the "news" into propagandist, policy-molding sound bites, but sadly media bias itself is no longer news because it is defrauding the country.

Poll after poll has shown that the vast majority of US journalists vote for Democrats, even though the country is evenly split between the two major political parties. A fellow at the Manhattan Institute, William McGowan offered an explanation for such journalistic malpractice in his book "Coloring the News."

In it McGowan revealed news organizations create special editorial caucuses consisting exclusively of homosexual, feminist, black, or Hispanic journalists who decide how the news about their respective groups will be reported, or whether it will receive air time or print at all.

Crucial facts are left out of news stories when those facts will undermine or destroy a liberal argument, while false stories and claims are reported widely as factual in the media when they support liberal views. Recent examples abound.

March for Life

Some claim the reports on the recent March for Life in Washington demonstrate outright media fraud. Reports from those on the ground on the numbers of pro-lifers at the march were estimated at 300,000 and pro-abortion advocates fewer than a hundred.

But mainstream media reporters like CNN's Rick Sanchez seemed unable to discern who had more supporters present, and CNN cameramen aired shots of small groups of pro-abortion protesters close-up in the foreground, making the 300,000 pro-life marchers seem insignificant, invisible, or at the very least, not newsworthy.

Such corruption in reporting for the March for Life is said to be a late-January tradition in Washington, to the point that pro-abortion protestors are always given pride of place in mainstream stories, no matter their scant numbers compared to those participating in the March. Footage is edited to give misleading impressions and numbers are skewed in favor of pro-abortion activists, leading pro-abortion activists to pack up when the media leaves.

In major media outlets like Newsweek, young women participants in the March for Life are said to be absent, implying there is no support for the pro-life cause among young women, when in reality they compose the largest demographic in the movement.

McGowan confirms the same biases in reporting on the abortion issue, attributing them to the fact that over 80% of journalists surveyed say they are pro-choice, and offers the widespread media promotion of safe sex and use of the term "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-life" as examples of ways journalists "color" the news.

The Massachusetts Election

As though we needed more reason for suspicion, consider the recent Massachusetts election.
During coverage of Republican Scott Brown's address after his monumental win, CNN and MSNBC aired only a fraction of his acceptance speech, while Fox News aired both his and Martha Coakley's speeches in their entirety.

While Coakley conceded the election, all three channels aired most or all of her eight-minute speech. Republican Scott Brown's speech, however, was cut short on CNN and MSNBM. Keith Olbermann at MSNBC even cut Brown's mic mid-speech and proceeded to personally attack him instead, accusing him of racism and hatred of homosexuals, a rant that can be seen in its entirety on YouTube. In the end CNN ran 26% of Brown's speech, MSNBC 37%, and Fox carried all of both.

Global Warming

Then there is alarmist global warming reporting based on "unequivocal scientific evidence." The New York Times headline read: "Science Panel Calls Global Warming 'Unequivocal,'" yet the article was mere editorial, for the end of the story revealed that the unequivocal scientific evidence was not even available and wouldn't be released until later in the year.

The Washington Post ran a similar story, disclosing at the end that "detailed scientific documentation" for the claim was not yet available and wouldn't be released "for a few months." Who reads every word of such articles only to discover that the whole thing was based on a misleading headline?

These reports were, of course, before the devastating "emailgate," "climategate," and the rash of other global warming "gates" that alternative media outlets have investigated and reported and major networks, newspapers, and mainstream media organizations have all but ignored.

As a Democratic nation, we are especially vulnerable to misinformation, because a fraudulent press affects policy making and can mislead the voters to national disaster. These false reports, should convince us that lies in the media proceed, not from ignorance, incompetence, or even bias, but outright fraud indeed.

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Sonja Corbitt is a Catholic Scripture teacher, study author and speaker. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. Visit her at www.pursuingthesummit.com and www.pursuingthesummit.blogspot.com.

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