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In this politically charged time, I 'm astounded by
the differences of political perspective around me. We are all
Americans, yet we have subdivided ourselves into two primary
political factions: Democrats and Republicans. Republicans' views
are thought to be more "conservative," while Democrats'
views are characterized as more "liberal."
Nowadays, some who identify themselves as a Democrat or Republican
do so with such fervor as to take on an almost religious-like
ideological fanaticism that impedes objective, intelligent thought.
The debate has become so polarized that emotion is replacing
reason, as talk show guests (and hosts) resort to childish name-calling
and insult-hurling toward the opposing view. All of which just
pits American against American, and impedes the cooperation necessary
for progress. Just look at how partisan Congress is during an
election year, and how little gets accomplished as a result.
Because elections have become a battle for one side or the other
to win - not an opportunity to elect the best person for the
position - the nation is at risk of failure from within at local,
national and international levels..
I think that one way to understand the differences between Democrats
and Republicans is to understand the nature and sources of the
"facts" that form the basis of opinions. In the United
States most people receive information about current events from
television news and print media. In "The Media Elite,"
a book written in 1986 by Lichter, et al., the authors surveyed
240 journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC PBS, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and
US News and World Report. It found that in the presidential elections
of 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976, on average 86% of responding journalists
in America's top media voted Democrat.
In 2001, Stanley Rothman and Amy Black updated the "Media
Elite" survey of national journalists and established that
76% voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and 91% for Bill Clinton
in 1992. The pervasiveness of liberal bias in the media is further
detailed in the book "Bias" by Bernard Goldberg, a
former CBS correspondent. Bias can influence what is reported
on the air and in print but perhaps more importantly, dictate
what we don't see or read. This covert bias - choosing not to
report certain stories or aspects of stories is, what I feel,
to be most damaging.
Why do highly educated, predominantly urban people accept
the bias inherent in these media? Being someone with an advanced
professional degree perhaps my own experiences can offer a possible
explanation. I ,too, once was perhaps a sympathizer of these
messages of the mainstream media. Indeed, I remember the almost
ritualistic reading of the New York Times on Sunday morning as
something almost requisite to my degree and position. (It stands
to reason that if we all drink from the same trough we're all
likely to be similarly infected.)
I think that most educated people are conditioned to believe
just about everything they read. Scholarly and scientific literature
is subject to peer review and held to a very high standard -
so the reader is reasonably certain of its accuracy. And virtually
nowhere is opinion or wild speculation, not to mention the purposeful
omission of facts, condoned. By contrast, newpapers, political
magazines and TV news programs are businesses designed to attract
customers. They operate on tight deadlines and sometimes are
sloppy in reporting facts, or purposefully only present one side
of the story if it suits the point they are trying to make. The
recent CBS document debacle illustrates this point well.
My naive eyes were opened to the workings of the media shortly
after we started Picket Fence Preview. My wife/business partner
and I learned quickly that newspaper stories are influenced by
the business interest of the paper, and since real estate agencies
are big advertisers in the paper, any story that mentioned our
business invariably gave Realtors the last word. Worse, when
nationally syndicated personal finance columnist, Jane Bryant
Quinn, wrote a column about selling by owner in which she stressed
the financial sense that selling by owner made and talked up
my book, "How to Sell Your Own Home", our local paper,
and many other Gannett papers throughout the country didn't run
the column that week! Instead they chose to re-run an old column
- an event almost unheard of with syndicated columnists according
to Ms. Quinn herself!
The error that many people, particularly well-educated people,
make is assuming that journalists hold themselves to the same
rigorous standards that they themselves do in their profession.
The process of higher education paradoxically creates a flaw
of uncritical acceptance of the written word. The people who
are most susceptible to manipulation by the media are, ironically,
the intellectuals - the college professors who spread political
ideas among our young adults.
The almost monopolistic manipulation
by the media results in a sort of "groupthink" by its
audience.
How is one to know what is true and what is less than true?
Unless you, or someone you know, personally witnesses the event
you can't be sure that the events actually happened as described
because every reporter and editor has a point-of-view and some
level of inherent bias. Being exposed to other sources of 'news'
and information can help prevent someone's opinions from being
manipulated by a biased news agency, and can help make for a
more critical reading of information, no matter its source.
For example, Investor's Business Daily (IBD) is a newspaper that
covers business and world events. The political coverage is refreshing
because in many instances it is diametrically opposite to what's
being reported, or not reported, in the mainstream media. For
example, when Chief weapons inspector David Kay testified in
January before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the failure
to find WMDs in Iraq, IBD ran the verbatim testimony that he
gave,
"A lot of (the current difficulty) traces to the failure
on April 9th to establish immediately physical security in Iraq
- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was
directly intentional, designed by the security forces to cover
the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as
well... The Iraqis excel at that (looting). The result is - document
destruction - we're really not going to be able to prove beyond
a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that
we're going to come to. There will always be unresolved ambiguity
here."
"Let me be absolutely clear about it - Iraq was in clear
and material violation of 1441. They maintained programs and
activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point
to resume their program. So there was a lot they wanted to hide..."
The major daily newspaper headlines proclaimed Kay doubted WMDs
would be found. Failure to find "proof" of WMDs fostered
speculation that Bush "misled" the American people
about the threat Saddam posed, an accusation that has been repeated
so many times by the Democratic party, beginning with Howard
Dean, that most people simply accept it as the truth.
Kay also noted in his testimony that the pre-war assessment of
Iraq's weapons program was a near universal consensus - even
France and Russia's intelligence concluded the same - and was
not something cooked up by the White House and forced on analysts.
He also said it was likely that the weapons existed prior to
the invasion, but that they were shipped somewhere else.
Why is this not being covered in the media? Why wasn't the American
public informed that three months before the war began, Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Israelis that intelligence
showed Iraq was moving large amounts of military material into
Syria? There is substantial evidence pointing to Syria's possession
of chemical weapons, and that Al-Qaida has access to it. In April
of this year, Jordan thwarted a planned chemical attack on its
capital by Al-Qaida. The Jordanian government estimated more
than 80,000 people would have been killed if the attack had gone
forward. The vehicles containing the chemical weapons and poison
gas both came from Syria. Apparently, these weapons are in Syria.
How did they get there?
Conventional wisdom in this country has it that our intelligence
was flawed going into the war - and so was that of England, France,
Russia, and others. But was it?
The 9/11 commission found substantive contacts between Al-Qaida
and Saddam's regime, but nothing that would point conclusively
to Iraq playing a role in the 9/11 attack. Again, the New York
Times set the tone for the nation's newspapers (many who dutifully
followed their lead the following morning) with headlines stating
no Al-Qaida, Iraq link. Although several talk show newscasters
observed that this was misleading and irresponsible, it was too
late to undo the damage. Because they heard it on the news, or
read it in a headline, many people believe this to be true (the
Kerry/Edwards team ridicules Dick Cheney when he points to the
facts, knowing that the media has convinced people there is no
link at all). It is disturbing to think of ourselves as being
brain-washed by the media.
In his film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore used
clever tactics to convince the audience that his speculation
and propaganda regarding the Bush family, the Iraq war, and the
Bush Administration are true. Applying the laws of associative
conditioning, Moore has linked contiguously unrelated events
in the mind of the audience. Simply presenting one item after
another in close proximity will result in the two items being
linked together - as if one event caused the other. For example,
when one scene shows injured civilians and the next shows soldiers
'high-fiveing' each other, the propagandist wants to us to believe
that the two scenes are causally related - that the soldiers
are celebrating injuring the civilians, which is obscene and
only believed by the gullible.
Moore understands his audience because he appreciates their manipulation
by mainstream media. He gave them exactly what they wanted in
Fahrenheit 9/11- a vicious propaganda piece that confirms the
most dastardly deeds and intentions of the Bush Administration.
No wonder he ridiculed Americans as "stupid" when accepting
his award from the Cannes Film Festival in Europe. He, more than
anyone, would know how easily manipulated we are.
The almost monopolistic manipulation by the media results in
a sort of "groupthink" by its audience. The constant
barrage of negative news and headlines convinces the audience
that its a mess out there, and we need a change to correct things.
Last night I was disappointed to hear Clinton's former Secretary
of State, Madeline Albright, say during a TV interview that the
Bush Administration was misleading the American public about
the current state of affairs in Iraq. "All this 'happy talk'
that you hear from the Administration just doesn't match what
newspapers, such as the New York Times, are reporting."
One would think that a woman of her status would have access
to more direct sources of information than newspapers, and would
certainly appreciate that the current Administration is privy
to information not available to the mainstream media.
Earlier this year Rep. Mike Rogers (D-AL) visited Iraq and was
astounded by how much progress had been made improving the infrastructure
and humanitarian programs in such a short time. Rep. Rogers was
pleasantly surprised because he expected he'd be entering a disaster
zone based on the mainstream media reports he'd seen that focused
on only negative events. He chastised the media upon his return
for presenting only the negative news, thereby helping the enemy
destroy America's resolve in our fight to defeat terrorism.
President Bush has been given a bad rap by the mainstream
media (with the exception of FOX News Network). Headlines and
evening news sound bites are carefully phrased to create and
impression, knowing that most readers won't get to the real truth
that is buried somewhere in the story. Just this morning there
was a headline stating," Kerry hints Bush will reinstate
the draft"; it wasn't until the latter half of the article
that it mentioned the Bush Administration strongly denied they
would do this. Yet you can bet, however, that this accusation
will be repeated over and over until it is simply accepted that
this is the Administration's plan.
Because the world as we know it has changed since 9/11, this
is a critical election for the future of our country and the
world. It is important that voters have accurate information
on which to make decisions. If you plan to vote, carefully consider
your sources of information and impressions. Seek out other sources
of news that you wouldn't otherwise normally listen to or watch.
You may disagree with the administration's tax policy, environmental
record, or position on social issues, but this is a one issue
election: national security. To fail on this crucial task in
the next few years renders all our other higher-order concerns
moot.
We need a proven leader - one who is feared by the terrorists
- that will continue to protect the United States. President
Bush has been effective in protecting the United States; the
proof is that we haven't had another domestic attack since 9/11.
President Putin realized, after the Russian school hostage tragedy,
that to be weak is to invite attack. Terrorists look for weakness
and indecision, and they don't see it in President Bush The fact
that the terrorists want to prevent a Bush re-election should
speak volumes! President Bush warned us that fighting terrorism
would be unlike any war we've experienced before, and that it
would be a long war. He is taking the fight to the terrorists
on their soil, rather than ours, and we are making progress.
A change in Presidents would signal a lack of commitment on our
part to confronting and defeating terrorism that would embolden
terrorists. Instead of fighting terrorism in a few spots around
the world, we would have a hundred quagmires to deal with, including
more domestic terrorism
It's up to us to prevent that from happening.
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William F. Supple, Jr., Ph.D. is co-founder and Publisher
of Picket Fence Preview.
He received his degree in Psychology/Neuroscience from Dartmouth
College in 1986.
He can be reached at bill@picketfencepreview.com
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