Saturday, March 19, 2005
The NYT: Caught Telling Its Dimwitted Readers Only Half the Story
The New York Times has become, in the last 20 years or so, one of the worst American newspapers where someone can go to find objective stories or even the truth. The Jayson Blair scandal, the lies of PaulSlugman Krugman, the hilarious falsehoods of Maureen Dowd, and the sheer sickening anti-Bush bias of the paper's so-called "opinion page" have made the Times a veritable laughingstock when it comes to American journalism.
So when this kind of story comes out, and it appears in The Times, one must approach it with a sense of "let me read this, but let's see if I get the whole story, or just another liberal lie-fest." And if you took the latter stance, you would find that The Times does it again - it tells you one of their stories to make President Bush look bad, but buries the truth somewhere way down into the story. Check this out and see what I mean:
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
It sounds like President Bush invented this program to get around the news media, right? At least, that's what this story leaves you with. However, unless you read wayyyyy down into the story, you will have missed this vital piece of information:
Ah, so...it all started during those wild and woolly days of Bill "Get Yer Top Off Now!" Clinton. Bush is only continuing it.
Once again, half a story from The Times.
But to The Times, that is not a lie...it is a half-truth.
More liberalspeak.
The New York Times has become, in the last 20 years or so, one of the worst American newspapers where someone can go to find objective stories or even the truth. The Jayson Blair scandal, the lies of Paul
So when this kind of story comes out, and it appears in The Times, one must approach it with a sense of "let me read this, but let's see if I get the whole story, or just another liberal lie-fest." And if you took the latter stance, you would find that The Times does it again - it tells you one of their stories to make President Bush look bad, but buries the truth somewhere way down into the story. Check this out and see what I mean:
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
It sounds like President Bush invented this program to get around the news media, right? At least, that's what this story leaves you with. However, unless you read wayyyyy down into the story, you will have missed this vital piece of information:
The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration...
Ah, so...it all started during those wild and woolly days of Bill "Get Yer Top Off Now!" Clinton. Bush is only continuing it.
Once again, half a story from The Times.
But to The Times, that is not a lie...it is a half-truth.
More liberalspeak.
