Turning PBS into another propaganda tool

Let me pass on a bit of...well, let's call it dogma, posing as education, that I bumped into today. It's from a booklet titled "Southern Slavery, As It Was". It was required reading for ninth graders at Cary Christian School in Cary, North Carolina up until just last year, when it was withdrawn over charges that much of it had been plagiarized. The booklet was written by Pastor Doublas Willson of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, and Pastor Steve Wilkins of the League of the South.

Quote:

Sodomites parade in the streets, claiming that if we do not appropriate more money to study why people with fould sexual habits get sick, we are somehow violating their civil rights. Feminists, in rebellion against God, invert the order of the home established by God. They do so in a way that seeks to rob women of their beauty in submission and their security in being loved. How did we get here, and what is the way out? The question cannot be answered fully without careful study of the War Between the States and the controversies surrounding it. Slavery was one of those controversies.

May a Christian own slaves, even when this makes him part of a larger pagan system that is not fully scriptural, or perhaps not scriptural at all? Provided that he owns them in conformity to Christ's laws for such situations, the Bible is clear that Christians may own slaves.

Slavery as it existed in the South was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multiracial society that has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This hapened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated by the "civil rights" propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it.

In the South, there were times when slaves were punished, and when this happened, they were commonly punished by means of whipping. Some whippings were severe. In other instances, whipping was as mildly applied as the corporal punishement normally practiced within families today...

Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the Civil War or since. Listen to a few examples:
George Fleming of Laurens, South Carolina, said: "I longed to see Marse Sam Fleming. Lawd, child, dat's de best white man what ever breathed de good air. As old as I is, I still draps a tear when I see his grave, fer he sho' was good to me and all his other niggers."
Clara Davis of Alabama said: "Dem was de good ole days. How I longs to be back dar wid my ole folks an' playin' wid de chillun down by de creek. I don tol' de Lawd I don't want nothin' much...only my home, white folks."...

There is a nobility to these old servants that humbles us: Nicey Pugh says, "I was born a slave but I ain't neber been one. I'se been a worker for the good peoples. You wouldn't calls dat bein' a slave would you, white folks?"

The issue of slavery was used to provoke revoltion in 1861. That revolution has continued to this day, and slavery has increased in our land as a result. It is time for us to stand and declare the truth about slavery and to expose the failures of the aboltionist worldview."

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up until just last year

That has to mean 1904, or 1804, right? What do you figure, Tico, McGentrix, Baldimo, Just Wonders, ...?

when it was withdrawn over charges that much of it had been plagiarized

God, I hope someone was charged and received a stiff fine or some hefty jail time for that heinous crime of plagiarism.

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McGentrix wrote:

I am a regular NPR listener and you are wrong here. NPR has a definite liberal slant and a definite anti-Bush undertone. They are honest when it comes to reporting a pro-left point of view, but the few measly pro-right pieces you actually hear still end up having some sort of liberal bias to them.

I remember ONE interview that was actually pro-Bush regarding the elections in Iraq. I remember it clearly because it wa THE FIRST TIME I HAD EVER HEARD IT! It shocked me!

So please spare me the idea that NPR is somehow honest.

The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party became.[/color] [or 'become' in the case of McGentix] That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.

This is the point of my story: Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a world view that can't be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn't, God forbid. [/color]

JTT:
Kenneth Tomlinson has been making the rounds explaining his point of view. When Bill Moyers asked Kenneth Tomlinson to debate the issues that he had raised, on PBS, in the public view, guess what, Mr Tomlinson declined. So much for having both sides air their views; so much for the new vision for PBS.

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Blatham

Thank you for acknowledging the Journalists Code of Ethics........too bad you didn't take the time of read it thoroughly and/or to understand the implications of the enormous responsibility the Professional Journalist is entrusted with. You rave about the importance to democracy of a well informed citizenry but you gloss over the fact that it is the journalist's responsibility to inform the public so they can make informed decisions in our elections. Instead of educating and informing the public with truth and fact, most of todays pseudo journalists force-feed the public their own opinions and misconceptions. Ever since Walther Cronkite became the most powerful and influential Media personality on the face of the earth by handing victory to North Vietnamese in Feb of 1968, all we have now are Cronkite wanabes......not journalists. Of course you are aware of this but want to ignore it otherwise you wouldn't have asked why I didn't compare Moyers with George Will, or Novak or Coulter. They are acknowledged political commentators.....they Opine.......Moyers on the other hand tries to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist preaching the truth about an evil Gov't.

This is all very tiring.........all I get is an echo. BTW, I wrote that "tongue in cheek" bit about commercials educating the American public for my own warped sense of humour but you must admit it makes as much sense as the millions of words written since the election explaing why that Dummy George W. was re-elected.

I hope you enjoy New York and wish you luck with your bull dyke lesbians but I think the cirque d'Soleil is much too busy in Las Vegas to train them.

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rayban1 wrote:

Blatham

Ever since Walther Cronkite became the most powerful and influential Media personality on the face of the earth by handing victory to North Vietnamese in Feb of 1968,

This is really rich, Rayban! Laughing

The US military, any military, can be defeated by the comments of a lone broadcaster. One has to wonder why it took until 1975 for this "victory" to come about.

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JTT wrote:

rayban1 wrote:
Blatham

Ever since Walther Cronkite became the most powerful and influential Media personality on the face of the earth by handing victory to North Vietnamese in Feb of 1968,

This is really rich, Rayban!

The US military, any military, can be defeated by the comments of a lone broadcaster. One has to wonder why it took until 1975 for this "victory" to come about.

It's because the NV didn't abide by the Paris Accords and the US govt wasn't willing to enforce them.

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Baldimo wrote:

It's because the NV didn't abide by the Paris Accords and the US govt wasn't willing to enforce them.

The temerity of those folks, these uppity foreigners, that they should engage in thinking that they actually had a right to self determination.

Quote:

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Vietnam_War

The Geneva Conference of 1954 specified that elections to unify the country would be scheduled to take place in July, 1956, but such elections were never held. In the context of the Cold War, the United States (under Eisenhower) had begun to view Southeast Asia as a potential key battleground in the greater Cold War, and American policymakers feared that democratic elections would simply lead to communist influence into the South Vietnam's government.

Diem's RVN government had gained the support of the US to circumvent the scheduled democratic elections, and under Diem's dictatorship, South Vietnam would be free of both a repressive communist oligarchy, and a democratic process that threatened to irreversibly install it. The North Vietnamese had been winning the public relations battle; it had implemented a massive agricultural reform program which distributed land to peasant farmers, and the people of the South took notice. President Eisenhower noted in his memoirs that if a nation-wide election had been held, the communists would have won.[/color]

Imagine that, Baldimo, some two million people died because the USA didn't want to see democratic elections held in Vietnam.

You won't want to read anymore of that article as I know how you hate to see the truth.

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This article specifically addresses many of the common complaints of our right leaning contributors. It also addresses, though not specifically, the foolishness of giving equal time to such poorly thought out theories as Intelligent Design.

Quote:

http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001395.asp

Columbia Journalism Review

The Longer View
March 23, 2005
Propaganda Clothed as Critique

By Brian Montopoli

We'd like to take Brent Bozell's Media Research Center seriously. We really would. There are ideological biases in the press, overt and covert, and organizations like MRC can, theoretically, be an important resource in identifying and understanding them. Media Matters -- MRC's competitor on the left -- is, for example, a consistently useful resource, largely because the organization tends to limit its criticisms to specific instances of media malfeasance, and then supports those criticisms with documented facts and clear, transparent reasoning.

Underlying every assertion by MRC, on the other hand, is the notion that the media are consciously and deliberately acting to distort the news, thanks to an overriding and all-consuming ideological bias.

{JTT: Now where have I heard that before?}

That's an untenable idea on several counts, not least of which is the fallacy of treating what has been erroneously dubbed "the mainstream media" as a monolithic entity with a single agenda instead of a diverse collection of organizations with their own interests. Then there's the fact that in any rational accounting of the shortcomings of our currently beleaguered media, ideological bias falls pretty far down on the list. As we've noted before, if there's an overriding bias that controls and corrupts news outlets, it's a bias toward sensationalism and conflict at the expense of actual newsgathering -- a bias that's driven by pressures for profits and ratings, and one that rides roughshod over any given reporter's personal ideology.

But MRC persists in pretending that there's a vast conspiracy at hand, consistently portraying itself as a voice in the wilderness fighting against a corrupt system. The organization hands out bumper stickers and erects billboards that say "Tell the Truth -- Don't Believe The Liberal Media"; its founder writes books about "how the major TV, radio, and print news outlets not only distort the news, but try to dictate the national agenda"; and its leaders turn to the likes of Ann Coulter as a voice of reason in the debate over what constitutes fair and accurate journalism.

And that's too bad, because MRC could do some real good. There's a need for a serious critique of specific instances of liberal bias in the media, just as there is for instances of conservative bias. But because MRC is so insistent on pushing its overreaching and not-so-hidden ideological agenda, reasonable people have a hard time taking it seriously, even when the organization has a legitimate point to make.

That's because, at its heart, MRC doesn't exist to make the media better -- it's just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media. To some degree, that movement is not surprising, given that many on the right justifiably feel that a largely secular, blue-state media establishment doesn't effectively serve their interests.

But that same movement also reflects a determination to convince Americans that news needs to be strained through an ideological filter that makes the facts themselves something to be debated. MRC, which has a $6 million annual budget, is funded by a number of right-wing foundations primarily interested in pushing conservative ideology, not in building a more honest media. It attacks the so-called MSM both because its backers have legitimate grievances with the establishment press and because those self-same backers want Americans to turn toward news outlets that won't muddy their message with inconvenient context or dissenting voices.

Media bias warriors on both sides make a lot of noise about equal time for both sides. There's something to be said for that: A panel discussion of President Bush's performance in office shouldn't, for example, be made up of all liberals -- or of all conservatives. But they also demand equivalence when it is unwarranted.

Many conservatives claim the press has turned a blind eye toward visible good news coming out of Iraq -- one common complaint was that we weren't hearing about all the schools being painted after Saddam's fall. But a school painting is barely news even here in America, much less in a war zone where the carnage is mounting. As news directors well know, the sad truth is that they're much more likely to get ratings with a report on a school shooting. It's understandable that the "good" news stories coming out of Iraq didn't get much play from reporters who often find themselves under lethal bombardment. News about such attacks is both more important and more sensational than the good news they might uncover. When consequential good news did occur, in the form of the movingly successful election, it dominated coverage. In either case, had news outlets been striving for the short-term equivalence that many called for, we would have seen both the consequential bad stories and the consequential good stories undercovered to make room for relatively trivial reports.

But false equivalence is at the very root of MRC's beliefs. Have a look at this passage, which comes from How to Identify, Expose & Correct Liberal Media Bias, by Media Research Center's Brent H. Baker:

To find bias by use of experts or sources, stay alert to the affiliations and political perspective of those quoted as experts or authorities in news stories. Not all stories will include experts, but in those that do, make sure about an equal number of conservatives and liberals are quoted. If a story quotes non-experts, such as those portrayed as average citizens, check to be sure that about an equal number come from both sides of the issue in question. Also check to see if a reporter's generalization about how 'economists across the political spectrum' or 'most health care specialists' is supported by subsequently cited experts. If they are all or overwhelmingly from one side of the political spectrum, then you've come across bias by use of sources.

One can understand the impulse behind this advice. But to apply it to every story is absurd. Consider a hypothetical report on global warming. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community believes that global warming is happening and that human activity is contributing to it, but there is a small group on the right that consider it an unfounded myth. To give equal time to the vast majority and the tiny minority makes no sense -- and yet that's precisely what a reporter should do, if Baker is to be believed.

A recent incident concerning C-SPAN illustrated to what absurd lengths the quest for equivalence at all costs can lead. The network announced that it would balance its coverage of a lecture by a professor of Holocaust studies named Deborah E. Lipstadt with a speech by David Irving -- who sued Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. A British court found for Lipstadt, finding that Irving was anti-Semitic, racist, and given to misrepresenting and misinterpreting historical evidence. "Falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' histories," said a petition sent to C-SPAN that was signed by more than 200 historians. "Falsehoods cannot 'balance' the truth."

There is important work to be done to combat instances of bias in the press. But it's not being done at MRC. Unless the folks at Bozell's organization decide that fixing the press is more important than undermining it, their critiques will continue to be met as so much rhetorical posturing.

That's not good for the health of the press, and, in the long run, not so good for conservatives, either.

Correction: This article has been updated to specify that the case against Prof. Lipstadt was decided in her favor, rather than dismissed. The original description relied on a New York Times article that has been corrected by the Times.

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JTT wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

I am a regular NPR listener and you are wrong here. NPR has a definite liberal slant and a definite anti-Bush undertone. They are honest when it comes to reporting a pro-left point of view, but the few measly pro-right pieces you actually hear still end up having some sort of liberal bias to them.

I remember ONE interview that was actually pro-Bush regarding the elections in Iraq. I remember it clearly because it wa THE FIRST TIME I HAD EVER HEARD IT! It shocked me!

So please spare me the idea that NPR is somehow honest.

The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party became.[/color] [or 'become' in the case of McGentix] That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.

If you believe that liberals always tell the truth and that somehow equates to NPR always telling the truth then you are hopeless. A version of the truth perhaps, but that's it.
*****
If I wasn't interested in what they had to say, why would I listen to NPR over 3 hours a day? I do not "loathe" liberals. I love them. I love them so much in fact that I wish to show them the errors in their ways in hopes that they may someday join me.

Quote:

This is the point of my story: Ideologues don't want you to go beyond the typical labels of left and right. They embrace a world view that can't be proven wrong because they will admit no evidence to the contrary. They want your reporting to validate their belief system and when it doesn't, God forbid. [/color]

JTT:
Kenneth Tomlinson has been making the rounds explaining his point of view. When Bill Moyers asked Kenneth Tomlinson to debate the issues that he had raised, on PBS, in the public view, guess what, Mr Tomlinson declined. So much for having both sides air their views; so much for the new vision for PBS.

Please give me your opinion on Foxnews. When you do, keep your own words in mind.

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rayban said

Quote:

Ever since Walther Cronkite became the most powerful and influential Media personality on the face of the earth by handing victory to North Vietnamese in Feb of 1968, all we have now are Cronkite wanabes......not journalists. Of course you are aware of this but want to ignore it otherwise you wouldn't have asked why I didn't compare Moyers with George Will, or Novak or Coulter. They are acknowledged political commentators.....they Opine.......Moyers on the other hand tries to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist preaching the truth about an evil Gov't.

Earlier you suggested I ought not to derogate the education level of posters. I'm going to do it again, regarding you.

Your claim regarding Walter Cronkite's causal relationship to the failure of America in Viet Nam is as uneducated a thesis as I've bumped into since...well, since the one at the top of the page from the two Pastors. There's not a reputable historian of America or the war who would give that thesis more than a momentary glance.

So, how have you come to the conclusion that it might be a thesis worthy of passing on here, or anywhere? We both know the answer to that. You haven't studied the relevant history and you don't bother to read the work of historians. We both know what your information sources are, at least approximately, and so does pretty much everyone else here who reads your posts. Nor have you studied media, specifically TV news, or you'd have some glimmer of understanding that newsrooms are set up not by the individuals we see talking, but by (especially now) corporate determination - and those guys aren't liberals. As regards who you turn to in order to understand the operations of media, that's obvious as well.

You mention a disturbing echo. And that's not surprising either. Serious question...why not sign up for some university night school or correspondence courses on media or on the history of the US in the last half of last century?

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McGentrix wrote:

Please give me your opinion on Foxnews. When you do, keep your own words in mind.

This says it all.

===================

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/300125p-256914c.html

Fox News host: Repeat after me

If the conservative guests on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" sound especially on-message, that's because they're being coached by the best:

Sean Hannity himself.

On the March 31 installment of the shouting-head show, the guests included two of the late Terri Schiavo's former nurses, Trudy Capone and Carla Sauer Iyer, arguing that their patient wasn't brain-dead.

Between commercials, according to an off-air audiotape obtained by investigative comedian Harry Shearer for last Sunday's episode of his weekly radio program, "Le Show," Hannity coached the women on exactly how to respond when liberal co-host Alan Colmes cross-examined them.

"Just say, 'I'm here to tell what I saw,'" Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. "No matter what the question, 'I'm here to tell you what I saw. I'm here to tell you what I saw.'"

Hannity adds helpfully: "Say, 'I'm not going to be distracted by silliness.' How's that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I'm talking."

On the air, Iyer performs beautifully. "I don't have any opinions or judgments. I was there," she declares

After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: "We got the points out. It's hard, this isn't easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren't they?"

On his radio show, Shearer injected: "Yeah, especially when they do what you tell 'em to do. Very powerful when they follow instructions from the host!"

A Fox News flack didn't respond to Lowdown's detailed message yesterday.
===============

JTT: Actual video available at,

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

under the title, "Sean Hannity and The Nurses Part II/ Video"

This helps too:

============

In an effort to "clarify the record," Fox News host Bill O'Reilly admitted that Jane Fonda did not pass secret notes from U.S. prisoners of war to their Vietnamese captors, as he had previously claimed. Media Matters for America has previously documented O'Reilly and other Fox News commentators repeating the smear (here and here). O'Reilly's "clarification" came just one day after he asserted that "in eight and a half years, we have not had to retract one story here."

{Read on at the following URL for a number of documented, ("documented" means verified by facts,) times Bill O'Lielly has spread falsehoods.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505190009

=================

All we get from you, McGentrix, is this persistent whining about liberal bias. Study after study shows it's simply not true. Read the article from the Columbia Journalism Review that's a couple of postings before this one. I saw you and a number of other right leaning folks' tired old arguments in it.

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Quote:

Please give me your opinion on Foxnews. When you do, keep your own words in mind.

McG

Fox is unique. Each morning, for example, directions come down to the various newsrooms in the family from the corporate top, instructing the newscasters/commentators on how to spin the news. They refer to it as the memo. The corporate top is Ailes and his staff. We do understand, I assume, that Ailes is deeply partisan?

No other network operates in this manner. In fact, as I've mentioned to rayban above, the corporate heads of these networks (about five or six corporations now control almost all of the big press and big tv in the US and in Canada...Italy is much worse with Berlusconi see here) aren't college liberal types.

The consequence of fox's corporate/political affiliations are evident in their coverage. They do function as a PR arm of this administration and the business world generally.

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McGentrix wrote:

If you believe that liberals always tell the truth and that somehow equates to NPR always telling the truth then you are hopeless. A version of the truth perhaps, but that's it.

I didn't say that liberals always tell the truth but I have to note just how many times conservatives are caught lying. Entire and numerous websites are devoted to chronicling these lies and I assure you, they are full of DOCUMENTED instances.

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JTT wrote:

rayban1 wrote:
Blatham

Ever since Walther Cronkite became the most powerful and influential Media personality on the face of the earth by handing victory to North Vietnamese in Feb of 1968,

This is really rich, Rayban!

The US military, any military, can be defeated by the comments of a lone broadcaster. One has to wonder why it took until 1975 for this "victory" to come about.

After a few days in Vietnam after the TET offensive, the most trusted name in Media at that time made this judgment in one of his nightly newscasts:

WALTER CRONKITE'S
"WE ARE MIRED IN STALEMATE" BROADCAST,
FEBRUARY 27, 1968

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we'd like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff.
On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won't show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

When LBJ heard that broadcast he crumbled and made the statement that He had lost Cronkite and therefore he had lost middle America, and presto the war was lost psychologically in the mind of everyone. The Public withdrew it's support for the war and that is what Giap and Ho Chi Minh were praying for.........Cronkite was their unwitting acccomplice and their pawn. He was a journalist and he betrayed the public trust by making a power grab and jumped from being a journalist to the most powerful commentator the world has ever seen. He in effect became at that moment the most powerful man in the world.

You must remember that LBJ inherited this war from Kennedy. Neither he nor his Sec of Defense (McNammara) believed in the war but they plunged ahead finally putting 500,000 troops on the ground. They were defeated by the Media and the same thing is happening in Iraq except that now the public doesn't trust the media the way they trusted Cronkite. Thus I believe I can truthfully make the statement that ever since that night many journalists abandoned the code of ethics and became Cronkite wannabes.

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There's a lot wrong with your thesis here, rayban.

The US military was defeated by the vietnamese. Support for the war was affected negatively by news coverage, but tough luck. Democracy means that it isn't just the folks up top who determine the truth of things and the course of a nation. That would be totalitarianism.

So you lost a war? Does that mean the US has a smaller pecker now?

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The USA was an unwelcome intruder, Rayban, just as France was before that. The USA sacrificed the lives of millions to play its sordid little games, which, as history has shown us, amounted to nothing. Vietnam is a communist country and the USA does business with it.

Vietnam, a colony of France, asks America for help to allow it its independence. One would think that's a reasonable request given the USA's history with European powers.

"On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh organized a ceremony to herald the coming of an independent Vietnam. In his speech he even cited the American Declaration of Independence, and a band played the "Star Spangled Banner." Ho had hoped that the American Republic would be his ally in the movement for Vietnamese independence, basing his supposition on the notion that President Franklin Roosevelt had repeatedly spoken against the continuation of European imperialism after the armistice with Germany and Japan."

"The American government began giving funding to the French fight in the early 1950s."

"On December 11, 1961, the United States sent 900 military advisors, and after began to clandestinely send more, both to give temporary support to the South's Diem RVN regime, and to engage in terrorism against both North and South Vietnam.[/size] Some of these bombing attacks were designed to inflame and exacerbate both the civil war in the South and to exacerbate the impression of a greater conflict with the North."

JTT: And you have the gall to post this tripe, whining and kvetching that America lost. These same type people daily complain about terrorism, as if it's only recently been invented. You should thank your lucky stars that there are still many people in the USA that know what morality means.

All quoted material from,

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Vietnam_War

0 Replies

JTT wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

Please give me your opinion on Foxnews. When you do, keep your own words in mind.

This says it all.

===================

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/300125p-256914c.html

Fox News host: Repeat after me

If the conservative guests on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" sound especially on-message, that's because they're being coached by the best:

Sean Hannity himself.

On the March 31 installment of the shouting-head show, the guests included two of the late Terri Schiavo's former nurses, Trudy Capone and Carla Sauer Iyer, arguing that their patient wasn't brain-dead.

Between commercials, according to an off-air audiotape obtained by investigative comedian Harry Shearer for last Sunday's episode of his weekly radio program, "Le Show," Hannity coached the women on exactly how to respond when liberal co-host Alan Colmes cross-examined them.

"Just say, 'I'm here to tell what I saw,'" Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. "No matter what the question, 'I'm here to tell you what I saw. I'm here to tell you what I saw.'"

Hannity adds helpfully: "Say, 'I'm not going to be distracted by silliness.' How's that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I'm talking."

On the air, Iyer performs beautifully. "I don't have any opinions or judgments. I was there," she declares

After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: "We got the points out. It's hard, this isn't easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren't they?"

On his radio show, Shearer injected: "Yeah, especially when they do what you tell 'em to do. Very powerful when they follow instructions from the host!"

A Fox News flack didn't respond to Lowdown's detailed message yesterday.
===============

JTT: Actual video available at,

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

under the title, "Sean Hannity and The Nurses Part II/ Video"

This helps too:

============

In an effort to "clarify the record," Fox News host Bill O'Reilly admitted that Jane Fonda did not pass secret notes from U.S. prisoners of war to their Vietnamese captors, as he had previously claimed. Media Matters for America has previously documented O'Reilly and other Fox News commentators repeating the smear (here and here). O'Reilly's "clarification" came just one day after he asserted that "in eight and a half years, we have not had to retract one story here."

{Read on at the following URL for a number of documented, ("documented" means verified by facts,) times Bill O'Lielly has spread falsehoods.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505190009

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All we get from you, McGentrix, is this persistent whining about liberal bias. Study after study shows it's simply not true. Read the article from the Columbia Journalism Review that's a couple of postings before this one. I saw you and a number of other right leaning folks' tired old arguments in it.

So, if I understand you correctly, you either have no opinion, or you allow yourself to be led by the nose by others in forming your opinion, yes?

The mere fact that you, Blatham and others can not even admit that NPR has a liberal bias is telling.

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McGentrix wrote:

So, if I understand you correctly, you either have no opinion, or you allow yourself to be led by the nose by others in forming your opinion, yes?

The mere fact that you, Blatham and others can not even admit that NPR has a liberal bias is telling.

You asked for my opinion on Fox News, [what an oxymoron!] and that's what you got. You can form opinons when you follow the FACTS, even when those facts are described by others more knowlegeable.

I've shown you some pretty damning evidence that Fox's newscasters [another f..king oxymoron] are, to be charitable, shifty. Show me something that supports your contention. So far all we've got is
"McGentrix doesn't like what he hears".

This is the sum total of the wingnuts' case. "I don't like what I'm hearing [and I'm sure as hell not going to check to see if it's factually based] so I'll just smear it with an oft repeated talking point."

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No, what I got was a bunch of cut and pastes of other peoples opinions on Fox News.

But, we'll let that slide for a moment. If I also go and fetch example of various personalities on NPR being rather, shall we say liberal, will that satisfy you that NPR may actually have a liberal slant?

BTW, I agree that fox news is conservative. I have never argued that it wasn't. Rolling Eyes

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blatham wrote:

There's a lot wrong with your thesis here, rayban.

The US military was defeated by the vietnamese. Support for the war was affected negatively by news coverage, but tough luck. Democracy means that it isn't just the folks up top who determine the truth of things and the course of a nation. That would be totalitarianism.

So you lost a war? Does that mean the US has a smaller pecker now?

As usual you fail to recognize the impact of the main point here.......THE NEWS MEDIA SHOULD NOT HAVE THE POWER TO INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME OF A WAR.

I was a participant in Vietnam war so I have more than a passing interest in its history so I did some digging. Even I wasn't aware that even though the TET offensive was brilliantly planned and executed by Giap, the actual result was far different than anyone wants to admit. In actuality the Viet Cong were virtually wiped out and the North Vietnamese regular army was reduced by 50%. This is because their all- out offensive brought them out into the open in massed formations which made them vulnerable to our superior firepower.........but it didn't matter. The public trust was lost.

I think it is a bit ironic that now the MSM is it's own worst enemy......why......could it be because of those Cronkite wannabes? Look at what happened to Rather and now Newsweek mag. Look at what happened to the two top guys at BBC as a result of Andrew Gilligan....another Cronkite wannabe.

The following is a piece that I wrote after I discovered the truth about Cronkite's betrayal.........if the tone is a bit anxious it is because I was and still am a bit frustrated that the sacred cow of a free press has turned into a monster that must be constrained during any war and no one will admit it.

It started it's spiral out of control in Feb of 1968, with Walter Cronkite's opportunistic pronouncement that the Vietnam War was mired in Stalemate. Johnson immediately declared, "I've lost Cronkite and I've lost middle America", I cannot win this war. Walter Cronkite and the media had just determined the winner of the Vietnam War. The same grab for power jumps out at you today as you read a blaring headline in the New York Times to the effect that conditions are getting worse by the minute in Iraq. It continues attacking our senses during the 7 o'clock news from any of the three major television networks, which uniformly label the Iraq war as a mistake and that we must "get out" immediately.

Who gave the media a license to influence and undermine the public trust in such a shameless manner? The public gave it's support to the war, through it's elected representatives, and has just reaffirmed it's support by re-electing the President who made the decision that it was the "Right Thing" to do to while honoring his duty to protect the American People.
Where is the media's obligation to SUPPORT our democracy.......they instead seek it's destruction through misguided transparent attempts to discredit the current administration who has pledged to defeat Islamic fascism where ever it exists. Certainly this administration has made errors in the planning and the execution of tactics during the past 2 years but that is history. History can provide useful information for "lessons learned" but once the lessons have been recorded and put into context then it is time to move on. No two people will ever completely agree on HOW to accomplish a certain mission but we can agree on the responsibilities of the various parties tasked to perform the mission. The media has the responsibility to report on activities that concern the public...........they do not have the responsibility nor the authority to judge decisions made during the fog of war. They do have the authority to state their opinion but only on the editorial page where readers can identity opinions from facts. The responsibility to judge, lies with the public alone. The media appears to have also made a judgment that the public does not possess the collective intellect necessary to form a valid conclusion on important issues, therefore THEY must activate their moral imperative to lead us in the right direction.

It is the responsibility of the President, with the approval of Congress, to wage war, and it is the responsibility of the Defense Dept to conduct the war. Once the decision has been made it is the responsibility of ALL to support the war effort. Anything less is treasonous and it should be recognized as such. I admit that the constitution is vague regarding treason and I submit the proposition that it should be clarified by the judiciary and agreed to by the Congress and by the Executive branch. Unfortunately the only procedure for this action is by testing it in court. No one seems to possess the intestinal fortitude to file suit against anyone for treason. Several opportunities were missed after the Vietnam war...........perhaps the current conflict will create more opportunities.
And....perhaps it will dawn on someone that the free press, sometimes known as the fourth estate, has become so powerful it is actually a fourth branch of gov't with no constraints or controls except when the public stops buying newspapers or clicks the remote to change channels.......to Bill OReilly

Twisted Evil

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Turning PBS into another propaganda tool

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