2010 a Banner Year for MSM’s Ministries of Mistruth
In George Orwell’s 1984, set in a pre-computer era, Winston Smith, working in the misnamed Ministry of Truth, alters documents that contradict or conflict with his totalitarian government’s take on history, wiping out inconvenient truths or revising them to fit the current template.
In 2010, the establishment press ramped up its propaganda role, acting as a collective of preemptive Winston Smiths. They ignored or massaged important news stories in ways that prevented the vast, relatively disengaged majority of the population (probably 85%, but perhaps as low as 80% thanks to the Tea Party movement) from getting their arms around the truth without doing a great deal of independent research.
Reviewing my blog’s 2010 posts, I thought I might have a hard time coming up with ten obvious Smith-like examples. I found about 50. If I’m lucky, I may have addressed 10% of the really offensive instances that occurred throughout the year. What follows are ten of the worst, with occasional multiple offenses packed into one item. Except for the final two, the worst by far that I found, they are in no particular order.
1. Refusing to describe the U.S. homebuilding industry and new home market as the worst since World War II. The current meme is that it’s the “worst in 47 years of record-keeping,” except that in most instances the “record-keeping” phrase is omitted, giving readers the clear impression that at least 2010 wasn’t as bad as 1963.
That’s not so. 2010 was 43% worse than 1963, and worse than every full year after Japan blessedly surrendered to us — even before adjusting for population.
Reporting the truth would make it painfully obvious that the Obama administration’s HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) and other initiatives have not only failed to revive the market, but have harmed it. The press won’t tolerate that.
2. “Channel-stuffing” at Government/General Motors. From July through November, the company shipped 112,000 more cars to its dealers than its dealers sold, increasing dealer inventories to an unreasonable 90 days’ sales. In doing so, GM, which according to accounting rules recognizes a sale when a vehicle leaves the factory, created over $1 billion in shipped-ahead profit.
This is a very effective technique for dressing up the books ahead of an initial public offering and making things look good for a while thereafter. But it’s not sustainable without a huge upward spike in sales, which isn’t happening. None of this is news in the establishment press.
3. ObamaCare’s work and marriage disincentives. Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has shown that if ObamaCare ever takes full effect, those who wish to advance themselves could face marginal health care subsidy-loss rates of more than 100% (I’m not kidding). A person’s “reward” for earning more income would be having to pay more for the same health care coverage than the additional wages they have earned.
Additionally, couples who marry or wish to stay married would lose thousands of dollars a year by doing so. If not stopped, the subsidy structure will virtually kill any incentives for financial self-improvement, and will be a recipe for breaking up untold numbers of families. Of course, the establishment press has raised no concerns over this.
4. Global warmists’ admissions. First, there was Professor Phil Jones’s February concession that there has been no global warming since 1995. Then there was IPCC economist Ottmar Edenhofer’s frank November assertion that climate policy “is redistributing the world’s wealth.” Apparently only English newspapers and editorial writers at Investor’s Business Daily care about these things. Meanwhile, journalists moaned about how people were no longer buying into the supposedly “settled science.”
5. Multiple falsehoods packed into one report. For sheer volume and chutzpah, it’s hard to beat the falsehoods the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger churned out in one September dispatch. First, he informed readers that trillion-dollar deficits didn’t happen until two years ago (wrong; the 2008 deficit was “only” $455 billion). Then he claimed that tax collections through eleven months of fiscal 2010 were up from the same period in fiscal 2009 (wrong again; they were down). Finally, he wrote that government spending was down compared to the previous year (three times wrong; true spending, as opposed to “outlays” as defined by Uncle Sam, was up by over 4% at the time). I asked the AP to retract Crutsinger’s false claims. To my knowledge, the wire service never has, and the falsehoods are still out there.
6. The State in the boardroom. The “Small Business Lending Act” passed in the fall contains a little-known provision requiring banks wishing to participate to accept federal “capital investment” in their institutions. It’s little-known because the press has shown little interest in reporting it.
7. Flubbed scrub at the New York Times. The scrub goes back to a December 2009 article (the link is to the post-scrub version), but relates to the Ground Zero mosque, one of the most misreported stories of 2010. In August, as the controversy heated up, a few bloggers who had excerpted that December story noted that several passages were missing from the original, including this quote from GZM spokesperson Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:
New York is the capital of the world, and this location close to 9/11 is iconic.
The article’s co-author, Sharaf Mowjood, is a “Former Government Relations Coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations.” It is reasonable to believe that Mowjood recognized the odious religious triumphalism in Rauf’s statement, and had it and other questionable items expunged shortly after they appeared online and before they went to print.
8. Skimmers, what skimmers? The press said virtually nothing about the EPA’s utter lack of preparedness for the BP oil spill. Journalists also took very little interest in the fact that several nations offered many forms of tangible aid to help the federal government contain and clean up the spill, and were either turned down flat or severely delayed. One Associated Press item whined that many nations wishing to provide help expected to be (gasp!) reimbursed for their costs.
9. He didn’t read it; what’s your point? Except for the uniqueness of the final item, this example would be firmly in the running for 2010′s worst media muff. In May, regarding Arizona’s commonsense immigration enforcement measure, long after irresponsible charges of nativism and racism had been hurled by many administration members, President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress: “I have not had a chance to — I’ve glanced at it. I have not read it.” The press virtually ignored this shocking dereliction of duty.
10. Shirley Sherrod. No review of 2010 media “Smithing” can be complete without mentioning Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired after Andrew Breitbart showed a video of a speech she made to an NAACP chapter. Sherrod and her husband Charles received the free press ride of the year. The $13 million the pair received in a farming racial discrimination lawsuit settlement just before she took her USDA job in July 2009 was almost never reported. The documented proof from a longtime leftist that the pair’s New Communities “cooperative” exploited child labor, paid less than minimum wage, illegally resisted union organizing efforts, and employed scab labor never made it into the mainstream media.
Finally, the press has fiercely resisted reporting the pervasive fraud in a related legal action meant to compensate black farmers who truly suffered discrimination in past decades. It is an operation that Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com recently exposed as a false claims gravy train. CNN actually covered for the government by relaying without question its contention that only three claims were fraudulent.
Will the press’s Winston Smiths be more or less aggressive in 2011? As New Media gets stronger, the establishment will likely get more desperate. So the answer is probably “Yes.”
A striking roundup. Conservative ire at the Old Media runs deeper than that, of course. The most prestigious organs are irritatingly haughty about their status. Their columnists and editorial-page editors are relentless about telling us how stupid we are for preferring freedom to bondage.
Of course, sharply worded, polarized opinion-mongering marketed as “news” is nothing new to American journalism. The rise of the New Media, unfettered by gatekeepers or high physical and financial barriers to entry is the real story — and try as they might, the Old Media can’t keep that bit of news from being reported. Even Barack Hussein Obama has shied back from erecting legal buttresses and bastions for them.
The challenge that remains for the New Media is the creation of independent facts-gathering mechanisms and on-the-spot reporting networks to replace those in thrall to the Old. Once that dependency is broken, true competition in journalism will have arrived, and the Old Media will be compelled to reform or die. How far away is that day?
This is why fewer and fewer people are watching or listening to the main stream media. And if they don’t turn things around soon both the main stream media and its icon, The New York Times, are all going to go under. They just have way too much competition now and, with the Internet around, nobody needs a printed newspaper or journals anymore, along with the costs that go with that. For next to nothing, anybody can start a web site and report their version of the news. And guess what? It works. Both on the left and on the right, blogs and web sites are taking over the nation, especially with younger people. For every Daily Kos or Huffington Post, you have a Hot Air or Pajamas Media now. Granted, the right still has a little ways to go when it comes to competing with the far left nuts, but it’s catching up very, very, quickly. The past midterm elections proved that.
And the above article failed to mention anything about how the main stream media tried to destroy the Tea Party movement. Not only were they proven to be wrong, but the Tea Party movement destroyed the Democrats in Congress. I guess the main stream media missed that one, right guys?
So I say to the main stream media, “Keep doing what you have been doing.” We don’t want them, we don’t need them, and we certainly can’t trust them anymore. So as the older generation dies out, so will the last few viewers of the evening network news. I wonder how long before they can’t pay Katie Couric’s salary anymore?
Amen. I quit a long time ago. Haven’t been able to break my wife though. She’s addicted to news. especially weather, and especially local stuff. She doesn’t believe it all but still watches…go figure. As to Couric’s salary, not soon enough. Goes for that idiot on MSNBC too.
I egt my news form the net.
Which idiot at MSNBC ? There are several to choose from.
Keep up the good work. We need people like you who have the interest and skills to get some news in perspective.
Obama’s New Year’s Resolution List is out, read it here…. http://beautifulletters-bls.blogspot.com/2010/12/president-obama-lists-new-years.html
Great article. You missed one:
90% of guns seized in Mexico come from the US. Oops, it is only 17% but 90% sounds sooooo much more impressive.
Actually first stated in 2009, the Libs and the MSM still rerun this lame statistic even though it has been thoroughly documented to be pure fiction.
It’s NOT that I don’t believe you, but can you provide a source for that 17% figure?
JW
It came from Fox and is discussed by Factcheck here:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
Two things are left out of all of the accounts:
1. How many of the guns of US origin were originally exported by the US Government?
2. Why would a drug cartel with more money, planes and boats than most nations pay a premium price for semi-auto rifles in the US and move them across the best guarded border Mexico has, then convert them to full auto capable, rather than buy brand new full auto capable guns from numerous other countries throughout the world at a fraction of the price?
We all have family, friends, and neighbors. It’s hard for the lies about the economy to gain any traction. The debt problems, and underfunded public pensions can’t be hidden. I just got my property tax bill.
Tell me the sun rose in the west, it’s warm outside, and Obama is competent. Who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes?
Granted, there are quite a few disengaged people in this country—how else can one explain Obama? But the eighty percent number thrown out there by the author seems more than a bit exaggerated. If most Americans are that unaware of what has been going on I doubt the Tea Party movement would be as strong as it is. Just about everyone knows that the entire MSM is in the tank for and in the pocket of the Democratic Party and is, to put it mildly, unreliable for anything that barely touches a political topic. MSM credibility is probably considerably higher than Congress’, but this isn’t saying much.
I do not agree, Dave. If one is not a news or political “junkie”, any number of items may escape your view, since not every topic can get the same sort of depth of coverage on TV or radio as it can here.
Tom has done a masterful job in putting together his list. I would have some of my own, that only readers of these pages would have an actual depth of knowledge.
The Kvetch & Fetch Media buries key information, distorts facts and figures and creates false narratives on a daily basis…ALL leaning in a direction far, far, far left of the vast majority of Americans.
My list would include:
1)J. Christian Adams (and Hans von Spakovsky as well) expose on how our Department of Justice is prosecuting or not prosecuting the laws of this land in a race neutral fashion. This story has been completely buried and when it was briefly mentioned in the K & F Media…is was distorted.
2)The “JournoList” exposure and all that portends was wholly ignored (ironic or not ironic>?) by the K & F media. A secret society of insider journalists determining how best to distort, bury and slander…is of no interest to “all those fact checkers and editors”.
3)I know Tom mentioned the Global Warming hoax, but Charlie Martin’s full expose’ of the how, why, when and where are facts probably not known by over 90% of folks who do not read these pages. We have information because we are here, that is hidden from the information stream of the vast majority of our countrymen.
4)Stanley Kurtz’ Radical-In-Chief may be one of the most important books on the building blocks leading up to cap and trade, the single payer Obamacare atrocity, the housing and mortgage meltdown, …it shows in a dot by dot connection how they all came into being…and that book is not getting one billionth of a percent of the attention it should. PJM not only has been talking about it (Ron Radosh especially), but they had Stanley on PJTV. Our countrymen do not have a clue about this book or its importance, in numbers that are staggering.
The things that are obtained weekly here or at Hot Air or National Review Online are so valuable to keeping the information stream from being strangled …but, never believe that the individuals intent on strangling it are not way ahead of us in terms of ability to poison that stream. We are the resistance movement. They are the entrenched machine.
People who have not yet engaged fully, hear “both sides” and say…”well, you have your opinion and they have theirs”. Don’t hate them for that. But understand that it is true.
Many, many folks would say …”You believe YOUR facts and they believe THEIR facts…so, I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle”. “MSNBC is one side and Fox is the other”.
“Everybody is entitled to their opinion”.
They see all the finger-pointing and hear the yelling and they don’t dig for the facts. Whatever fits most into their busy lives, they absorb that and kind of shrug off the rest.
We are lucky to be involved here and we ought to thank the folks who built the vehicles for the resistance every day of our lives. We owe them a debt we can never repay.
I thought Stanley seemed familiar to me…this is an article he wrote before the election that I hade bookmarked.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225752/obamas-challenge/stanley-kurtz
There is a link to the 85% figure. It wasn’t just “thrown out.”
At that link, according to someone who has closely studied these things:
I rounded to 85% at the time partially for the sake of convenience and partially to acknowledge that online media may have had a marginal impact on engagement between 2005, when I saw the info, and 2007, when I posted on it.
To get to 80%, I am suggesting that maybe 5% of the adult population, or perhaps about 10 million more people, have joined the ranks of the actively involved. I’d love to be convinced that it’s more than that, but 10 million, while far from enough in the present circumstances. would be an impressive figure.
Looking at it another way, the idea that 20% of the population is now actively engaged would be a one-third increase over the previous 15%.
The way people get their information has changed a lot in the 5 years since the statement was made, but whether that’s translating into any kind of meaningful increase in active engagement is hard to tell.
#11. One thing you forgot.
“World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.”
Although conservative opinions deny it, like climate change, scientific fact requires more than personal opinion to dispute it.
I completely agree, the study you sight has all the scientific validity of the global warming scam (urr, issue). By the way, my degree is in Chemistry, what’s your scientific background?
Mine is in Physics. I fail to see how anyone with either an IQ above 80, a basic education, or even the barest scientific rationality can possibly be a conservative. The amount of knowledge that must be contradicted or misunderstood to be a modern conservative could fill libraries.
Great! Now that the obligatory leftists an-homonym is out of the way, please tell our studio audience how a statistically significant trend can be determined in a 3.5B year old highly dynamic system when the means of actually measuring the variable in question is only about 200 years old, and not widely used for more than the last hundred years.
Next, explain how even the statistically insignificant amount of data thus gathered can be taken seriously when no standard procedure was employed to gather it, when the points of measurement were not constant in number, uniform in distribution nor isolated from outside effects.
Then, go on to defend a theory based entirely on manipulations of the aforementioned data (the original data having been “lost”)which has not successfully predicted anything to date.
Finally, explain why the solution to the problem alleged by this theory is exactly the same as the solution proposed 30 years ago by the same side of the political spectrum, for a theory diametrically opposed to this one; namely, the dramatic re-distribution of wealth from the US and other western democracies to various totalitarian and failed states around the world.
I look forward to the discussion.
Al, don’t bother AH. When he isn’t working on whether the Higgs field has viscosity or is just kind of oily, he is trying to understand why physics waves are very different from ocean waves even though theoretical waves are based on ocean waves analogously-wise. In short he is just too busy with important matters to answer you.
Well. . .
I guess we can blame AGW for the deafening sound of the cyber crickets chirping.
I guess that the British Royal Society, of whom Newton was once a member, has just turned conservative. They have last October reversed their previous position and stated that the science of AGW is not settled. They also admitted that there has been no global warming during the past 10 years. Phil Jones who ran the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, of Climategate fame, also admitted to the BBC that there has not benn ant “statistically significant” global warming in the last 15 years. Phil Jones is the guy that gathers all climate information and forwards it in presentable form to the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC). Maybe you should become less “misinformed”.
Yeah Lib1 That study has been dupicated by progressive groups across the country and the conclusions are inescapable. The debate is over.
What they conclusively proved is this:
Liberals are all smart. And the reason they are smart is because they are liberals.
Q.E.D.
L1:
Let me make sure I get this straight. A liberal academic institution took an opinion poll AND they determined whose opinion was distorted? The liberals then concluded that the liberal viewpoint was not distorted but the conservative one was?
I would have been surprised if this wasn’t their conclusion. Are you truly this gullible?
Aglet
Was the media ever objective? If yes, when and what changed it?
Media objectivity is irrelevant….unless they imply they are objective, while forwarding a hidden objective.
From at least the time of Cronkite, the media has built the myth that they are objective. It obviously has been a deliberate and prolonged effort. Cronkite was specifically exalted as the ultimately objective journalist. We now know he was a secret leftist, far left.
Personally, I believe that the media was targeted, infiltrated, and taken over by communists in the mid part of the last century. Current “journalists” are 3rd or 4th generation and their indoctrination is so thorough that they actually believe that they are unbiased. It’s the cornerstone of the left’s strategy to destroy the country.
There is even more B.S. propaganda on the internet, truth is we are all doomed…. HAPPY NEW YEAR.
DO NOT allow the Leftist belief in man made global warming go down the memory hole. It is very important that they believed a nonsensical theory and used it to push radical leftist economic and enviro policy. Remember how they used to (and some still) ridicule skeptics. I bring this up to liberals just as often as I can–maybe it will cure them of gullibility.
“4. Global warmists’ admissions. First, there was Professor Phil Jones’s February concession that there has been no global warming since 1995. Then there was IPCC economist Ottmar Edenhofer’s frank November assertion that climate policy “is redistributing the world’s wealth.”
Richard, you kind of stole my thunder. I was going to add the following:
a. Then there was the about face of the British Royal Society last October. They admitted that the science of AGW is not settled and that there has not been any warming in the past 10 years. Britain early on got on board the AGW band wagon at the instigation of the Royal Society.
b. Then there is “kiwigate” in New Zealand where the government scientists have admitted to cooking the books and that New Zealand has not experienced any warming since 1960. They claimed they did it because they thought it was the right thing to do, i.e., they had a political agenda and they didn’t feel they were doing anything wrong.
As a survivor of the horrible sixties; I still can vividly recall leftist professors constantly raving about how bad America was; how bad Christianity was; how bad traditional family life was (that came especially from professors who were seducing their female students); how bad the military was; how bad white people were especially white males; how bad the Republican parts was; they began the onslaught which has only become worse. Now as these crazy lefties look around while wagging their long grey pony tailed locks they can find no innocent group to victimize with their hate centered religion of rejection; now they are desparate because of the failures of all their social engineering plans; war on poverty, tax the businessses; intergration, forced busing, weak military; fatherless families and the list goes on and on. They have to face that they are the biggest group of failures in history and it must hurt.
Wce see that despite an astonishingly radical first year in office, which has awakened unprecedented voter outrage and caused Obama’s popularity to plunge, the lame stream media largely continue to ignore the reality of who Obama is, what he really stands for, and who influences him. During this time most of the media’s top publications and personalities refused to read the No. 1 best-selling non-fiction book in America, Aaron Klein’s “Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists” a blistering, thoroughly documented account of Barack Obama’s extremist connections, because they “found” the subject matter “offensive”. We now know that the media were our enablers, that our political opposition is funded by us, that Acorn and the welfare-entitlement complex is funded by us, that the Marxists in schools are funded by us. We now know that the MSM not only failed to do their job–asking important questions and informing the populace in a balanced way–they have also lied to us over and over again. We now know that we can’t depend on the MSM for information. We now know that Barry Hussein is a mere symptom of what ails America. We now know that liberalism is not only intellectually incorrect but also an affront to common decency. We now know that liberals simply hate Americans, especially when they won’t go along with such obviously good things such as President Obama’s healthcare law, “economic stimulus” spending, nationalizing student loans, unilaterally disarming American nuclear weapons, or raising taxes in an anemic economy. After watching the Glenn Beck rally and the news aftermath, we now know positively that the lame-stream media will never be objective. The rally stort is a simple one, a story of one man with his own money who collected a lot of money for a worthy charity and brought a large group of people from across the country to one place to listen to white, black, American Indian, Christian,Mormon, Jewish speakers talk about faith, hope, charity, and God. Al Sharpton had a rally on the same day. You know, Commie Fest. So why was Mr. Sharpton’s rally so unsuccesful as Mr. Beck’s? Mr Sharpton thought he had claim to “everything Martin Luther” simply by the color of his (Sharpton’s) skin? Don’t you think Martin Luther would be happy to see a celebration of his life by a gathering of people of all skin colors? Of course he would. MLK is a piece of American History. I am American. I am white, so why can’t I embrace him too? Wasn’t Maritn Luther King all about “character rather than color of skin”? Mr. Sharpton’s has made his existence and notoriety as being dependent on the continuation of racism, so he has a stake in making sure that racism continues to exist, or at least portraying it as such. Glenn Beck made his existence and notoriety as dependent on the issues of our Progressive leaders taking God out of the halls of our Congress. I know that many of us can find faults with Glenn Beck’s agenda . I know he is not a minister or a priest so (like he says) he made some religious mistakes. I welcome that he (like Franklin Graham) had a rally on Washington DC’s footsteps. I am surprised they got the permit considering our Admministration’s attitude towards Christianity (not to mention the world’s attitude). But, what no Christian should like is news like this: Wednesday, April 15, 2009. Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”–symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there. Ah, there’s the rub. God help us all who perchance to dream that it is still possible for something to come out of nothingness. Nothingness is were our Progressive leaders and Godless representatives have taken us.
Thanks. That’s quite a long time.
I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.
The best way to combat the MSM is through their advertisers. If even 14% declare that all companies / products that infuse the MSM with advertising dollars lose customers they will feel the effect. It would be fairly easy to link the MSM to advertisers. Make a list, use a website to disseminate and allow people to reject giving money to these companies.
TO: All
RE: Nothing More….
….than what I’ve been saying for YEARS.
What they are telling you can be important. What they are NOT telling you can be vital.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Are we there yet?]
I believe the “Winston Smith Media” is the moniker that so many have been looking for to describe what some like to call the “MSM”. Winston Smith Media is nearly perfectly accurate.
MSN is exactly like Newsvine (the pudknockers who control the websites for NBC. The people running Newsvine couldn’t figure out how an outhouse works. I am sure they go to family reunions to meet women.
After reading their articles, I am sure they call Hee Haw a documentary. Newvine reported: Why did President Obama feel it was necessary for him to apologize to the world and to degrade the United States? Because Jimmy Carter had laryngitis?
Apparently Newsvines messed up the article when reporting “Why did God create Democrats? In order to make used car salesmen look good?
Then there was this: They say that Christopher Columbus was the first Democrat. When he left to discover America, he didn’t know where he
was going. When he got there he didn’t know where he was. And it was all done on a government grant.
Lastly, Newsvine came up with this story: Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, a conservative Democrat, and an old drunk are walking down the street together when they simultaneously spot a hundred dollar bill. Who gets it? The old drunk, of course, the other three are mythological creatures.
Great job Newsvine and MSN.
Re: the global warming hoax, I wrote 13 months ago that what we are witnessing is “scientific deconstructionism.” Excerpt:
What we are seeing, I think, is that linguistic deconstructionism has polluted its first scientific discipline.
One of the basic tenets of postmodernist linguistic deconstructionism (which I learned how to do in my postgraduate studies at Vanderbilt) is that all text is tainted by bias and that objective points of view are impossible. Hence, the objective of expression is to exercise power. (Formerly the type of expression so designated has been confined, mostly, to those of history, literature and politics. But now we see that even mathematics may be considered biased and subjective.)
Hence, there is no such as thing as objective truth and statements are never more than propositional in nature. A statement’s truth content is never more than opinion, and opinions are nothing but expressions of power. Therefore, in a basic sense, all speech is power directed.
This is a fundamental world view of the Left and is derived directly from Marxism, as reworked by Leninism. Since Marx held that his communist theory was literally scientific, his economic-historical forecasts were not simply likely, they were certain. To understand and partner with this inevitability was to be “on the right side of history” (which is where that overused cliche comes from). As formulated by Lenin et. al., truth is therefore not statements of objective facts, but assertions that move the communist revolution and its fulfillment closer to reality. “Truth” is therefore pliable and impermanent, the concept of truth being only practical. In practice, all of language became subservient to the dominance of the party, a fact recognized by George Orwell in his novel 1984 and its concept of Newspeak.
And the winner for cherry picking spin doctor of 2010 is …..T Blumer.
Dumb***.
And the winner of the Order of the Plexiglass Navel is Red Foreman.
Folks, Red is the prime example of why the only question on how to debate Leftards is “Do I have enough bullets?”
They aren’t going to be stopped by sweet reason.
Fox News is calling. Are you blond and pretty?
Tom, you forgot the economic and environmental devastation of California’s Central Valley as a result of the EPA turning off the water for the sake of a supposedly endangered fish.
JK, I limited the scope of my column to items I had a chance to directly address in 2010. There’s no doubt that what’s going on in CA’s Central Valley is one of the most unreported/under-reported/misreported stories out there, as is the entire Holder/J. Christian Adams/Black Panther matter and so many others. I’m lucky if I was able take notice of 20% of the Winston Smith Media’s recognized 2010 muffs, let alone items which may be just as bad that nobody noticed at all.
Mark Twain: “The old saw says, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ Right. Still when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.”
As a skeptical reader, I suspect I do more genuine research on the media’s boonswoggle stories and bogus data than the “journalists” do while they’re writing (creating) them.
As a friend recently reminded me, back in the day, the only kids who chose Journalism as a major were those who couldn’t withstand the challenges of more rigorous specialties.
In other words, the Times, they aren’t a changin’…
The answer is certainly YES, the MSM now will go the full kamikaze to reverse the tide, to cause the oceans to cease their rise.
When People stop believing in God, they don’t believe Nothing, they believe Anything.
Global Warming, for example, they can’t let it go, they defend it religiously.
2+2=5. It is plusunwise to disagree.
You get a degree in journalism, you enter the haven of Plato’s Guardians, shaping & guiding the republic.
That is, a degree on how to write at a sixth grade level, with a knowledge of history and law coupled with tradition to match.
***SPOILER ALERT***
An alternate ending to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:
“The lame stream media gazed up at his ugly mug. For years, they had fawned over the cruel smile and the Dumbo ears. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Gin-scented tears trickled down their faces. But everything was all right, their struggle now finished. They had won the victory over themselves. They LOVED Obama.”
In my opinion, any story about the MSM’s Ministries of Mistruth MUST mention The Journ“O”list Network revealed last summer consisting of HUNDREDS of media-types (and so-called journalists) who, by agreement, SECRETLY worked together during the 2008 election cycle to launch organized ATTACKS against the right, and more importantly, SUPPRESS ANY AND ALL NEWS that would hurt Obama.
In other words, they were ALL COMPLICIT in helping elect the FRAUD that is Obama!
Because of that, I think EVERY Journ“O”list should ALWAYS have an *ASTERISK* by their name FOREVER identifying them and their absolute disregard for journalistic ethics as TREASONOUS! (Some would go so far as to call the list a hit list — I guess that depends on their perspective.)
BTW, the “O” in Journ“O”List stood for “O”bama.
Thanks for highlighting all the misinformation. If it wasn’t for the internet…
Another creepy trend is the growth of Adcouncil ads–propaganda fed to us with our precious tax dollars. The Foundation For a Better Life ads also have a squishy progressive feel to them (tho’ they’re fronted by a religious fellow). I am shocked at the number of ads not selling a product or featuring a business, but telling us what to do, how to behave, what to think.
In regard to #3: Obamacare
“You’ll be able to buy in, or a small business will be able to buy into this pool,” Mr. Obama said. “And that will lower rates, it’s estimated, by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting. That’s money out of pocket.” And that’s not all. Mr. Obama asked his audience for a show of hands from people with employer-provided coverage, what most Americans have. “Your employer, it’s estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent,” said the president, “which means they could give you a raise.” A White House press spokesman later said the president misspoke; he had meant to say annual premiums would drop by $3,000.” – President Barack Hussein Obama and reported by CBS News in March of 2010.
The increase in health care costs also applies to those insured by their employers. The recent “adjustment” by my employer provided health care coverage was ironic to BHO’s statement above, an increase of $3000 in out of pocket expenses – or a 100% increase for 2011. To add insult to injury, the premiums went up over 8% for 2011 as well.
Thank you Democrats for “pass-ing the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it”
What the editors won’t tell you:
The IPCC scientists agree that:
1-humans have an effect.
2-the degree of the effects are projected to be anything from:
A: negligible to nothing to little if any.
to
B: runaway unstoppable warming.
Therefore we have 24 years with no effects, unless all bad weather (extreme) is our fault now instead Nature‘s, and some day if we tax the air and live sustainable lives like Quakers (poverty), we can make the 5 billion year old helpless planet be like it should be, like the inside of an indoor shopping mall. Safe. Predictable. CONTROLLED.
AND
The news editors won’t tell you why CO2 levels keep going up when our emissions keep going down. And just HOW DO those scientists outnumber the protestors oh trusted news editors?
You have milked this CO2 environMENTALism and knowingly lead us to a false war of climate variation and condemned billions of children to a death by CO2.
Scientists not only polluted the planet with their chemicals, they also produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemicals, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, strip mining technology, deep sea drilling technology and now climate change.
Climate change was to journalism, science & common sense what nasty priests were to religion. You copy and paste clowns are not journalists.
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