Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Pat Caddell on media fraud and the First Amendment

Democratic pollster Pat Caddell has a great post on the scandalous bias of the mainstream media:


... the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances.
We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke to.
Please read the whole thing.

The scandal is not that there is media bias-- media folks have every bit as much right to their opinion as we all do, and we have a blessedly free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment. Individual media outlets have always been partisan. It was the rule, rather than the exception, that newspapers in colonial and early America would explicitly take sides in political struggles.

What is disturbing and particularly destructive about modern media bias is 1) it is unacknowledged by its practitioners, who feign objectivity 2) it entails actual journalistic malpractice-- the deliberate editing of tapes to misrepresent news, the actual collaboration with politicians and government officials to misrepresent the news, etc. In this sense, we are not really talking about media bias, which is ancient and inherent to journalism.

We are talking about media fraud, which something else altogether.

But our Constitution guarantees them the absolute right to freedom of speech and the press. As with all outrageous and dishonest public expression in our God-given Constitutional republic, the answer is more free speech, not less.

We conservatives need to speak up and tell the truth, even more passionately.

13 comments:

  1. We conservatives need to speak up and tell the truth

    Yes, about time you started telling the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If a liberal, atheist, or environmentalist said, "1 + 1 = 2", Egnor would insist that it is "completely undisputed that 1 + 1 = 3".

    Egnor telling the truth is like Fox News being fair and balanced.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How about those 100 million deaths from global warming? Where are those 50 million climate refugees? Why wasn't there massive starvation in the US in 1980? Why does England still exist? (Ehrlich predicted it would be gone by 2000).

      You guys are frauds.

      Delete
    2. No conservative ever, anywhere, has made an incorrect prediction? How does making an incorrect prediction make one a "fraud"? And what does global warming have to do with Republican Pat Caddell?

      You're foaming at the mouth, Egnor. Get ready for a paradigm shift. You're psychologically poised to tip over.

      Delete
    3. "No conservative ever, anywhere, has made an incorrect prediction?"

      LMAO. You just got it a little wrong-- 50 million global warming refugees, the non-existence of England, massive starvation in the US...

      But NOW I'm going to believe you-- you're the experts, after all...

      Delete
  3. Media bias exists as a right-wing meme, not as a matter of fact.

    The very successful business model of Fox News includes regularly and repeatedly admonishing their audience not to trust or pay attention to any other media sources; this is critical to their ability to provide the constant stream of partisan right-wing bullshit they are so famous for.

    Almost without exception, the MSM has reacted to this by leaning more right, refusing to call out righties on their bullshit, and turning every issue into a balanced choice between the competing views. You are always going to have both liberal and conservative opinions represented by the media, but a Sunday morning spent watching the Talking heads shows will amply demonstrate the media’s propensity to turn every issue into a he said she said argument with massively disproportionate conservative representation.

    If anyone watched the last Brown-Warren debate they would have seen David Gregory start with a pointed question about Warrens Indian ancestry, then proceed to give Brown 23 min to Warrens 18. Gregory, like every other MSM figure of any prominence, overcompensates to the right to guard against the almost inevitable manufactured conservative outrage not doing so would generate.

    What is really amazing is that all this phony outrage comes from the people that celebrate the massively edited ACORN and Shirley Sherrod videos as citizen journalism, and venerate Andrew Breitbart.

    -KW

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    Replies
    1. The ACORN videos speak for themselves. OKeefe and Giles were given advice on facilitating child prostitution.

      The Sherrod video demonstrated the reaction of the audience-- applause and cheers-- at Sherrod's admission of anti-white racism, which was the primary point of the video.

      Regarding Warren/Brown, there is no doubt that Warren faked her Injun heritage to game affirmative action, which is actually a crime, and that she has been practicing law without a license, a crime too.

      The media has gone remarkably easy on her.

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    2. The media let Warren get away with her bullshit answers, each one contradicting the last one she gave. They wouldn't be talking about it at all if it weren't for AM radio.

      The left owns the media. They aren't even good at hiding it.

      The ACORN and Sherod videos (Not to mention the horrific PP videos in which they catch PP employees being after-the-fact accomplices to rape) were not massively edited. Some were excerpted. The longer video was always available right next to it. The ACORN employees really did agree to assist in the trafficking of underage illegal immigrant prostitutes. Sherod really was a racist, even if she later regretted it, and the crowd did get a good chuckle at her racism. You go, girl!

      TRISH

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    3. If a conservative Republican had faked Indian heritage for the purposes of getting a job, that would be called racism. The fact that they are not calling her a racist is where the media bias lies. They won't even call her a liar. They pretend as if this question is still floating around out there, still unanswered. It isn't. She's not an Indian, and she was gaming the system for years.

      TRISH

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    4. The worst part about Warren is the hypocrisy. If she were an opponent of affirmative action that would be one thing. But if she's not.

      Little John

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    5. TRISH and Little John,

      I agree about Warren. She makes my skin crawl. The hypocrisy is astonishing-- she embodies so much that is wrong with liberalism.

      I liked Scott Brown's comment: "Professor, I'm not a student in your class"

      Brown is very talented.

      Delete
  4. You, guys, should give Egnor a break. He clearly suffers from paranoidal tendencies and should seek professional help.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If it where only him I would. One crazy man with a bullhorn is annoying; thousands of them together become a dangerous hysterical mob.

      -KW

      Delete