A couple months ago I reread George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ In the book, the main character, Winston Smith, works at The Party’s ‘Ministry of Truth.’ His job simply entails rewriting newspaper articles to make whatever projections or statistics The Party made accurate.
For instance, if The Party said that 100 million boots would be manufactured but only 50 million were actually produced, Smith would ‘correct’ the number, saying that The Party projected 50 million boots would be produced.
This is how I see the mainstream national media – or as Rush Limbaugh has aptly dubbed, the ‘state-run’ media. What you are actually seeing and feeling isn’t accurately represented by the media.
If you have ever have a chance to watch clips from actual state-run news agencies such as those in Iran, Venezuela or North Korea, you’ll laugh at the absurdity of their ‘reporting.’
But the same goes for our own national media outlets.
Take the ACORN story for instance: You may not have even heard about it unless you watch Fox News, as they were one of few who covered the story in detail.
At the Baltimore office of ACORN, two journalists – a male and female – posed as pimp and prostitute. What transpired as a result was truly sickening. ACORN employees were captured on tape giving advice to the ‘pimp and prostitute’ as to how they could avoid paying taxes, hide their money and get a business loan for the brothel in which underage Salvadorian girls would work as prostitutes.
In a matter of days afterward, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off all federal funding to ACORN.
Many of the mainstream media outlets ignored it. Charlie Gibson of ABC News claimed at one point that he didn’t even know about the story.
So here we have undercover videotapes surfacing about more of ACORN’s illicit and illegal activities the U.S. Senate consequently voting overwhelmingly to cut off funding to ACORN, and Charlie Gibson didn’t know about the story?
On Sept. 12, protesters in support of the 9/12 Project gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the explosion of the power of the federal government, health care ‘reform,’ cap and trade and a list of other grievances.
The protest, started by Fox News’ Glenn Beck, matured into a powerful movement. This alone was probably the largest conservative movement and protest in the history of the U.S. and many media outlets either did an extremely poor job covering it or didn’t cover it at all. The varying attendance figures say it all.
MSNBC, for example, said that there were only a few hundred people protesting. CNN only covered the outrageous and over-the-top signs carried by a few protesters.
Fox News, however, did an excellent job covering the story. Bill O’Reilly, who has now devolved into a petty and populist journalist, said that there were only 75,000 people there – a gross underestimation.
How did other media sources cover it? Mostly they ignored it or the ones who did cover it mislabeled the protest as simply ‘anti-tax.’ The most extreme of these media outlets went so far as to say the motivation behind it was racial.
This brings me to the manufactured outrage of Representative Joe Wilson’s ‘You Lie!’ comment made during President Barack Obama’s speech on health care to a joint session of Congress. The comment itself came after Obama said illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered under the health care proposals. Wilson vocally disagreed.
The media were quick to pounce on the story. Instead of seeing if Wilson had any credence to his remark by investigating whether illegal immigrants would be covered by the health care reform, the media instead investigated Wilson as a person – trying hard to determine if his comments were motivated by racism.
Following this comment, the House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed new rules about what can and cannot be said on the floor of the House – essentially taking the freedom of speech clause out of the First Amendment and wiping her derri’egrave;re with it.
Obama’s green jobs ‘czar’ Van Jones is another example. He resigned after Fox News and others pounded the airwaves daily about who Van Jones really was – a self-avowed communist, Black nationalist and radical revolutionary.
How did the media report it? They merely covered the story about how Van Jones responded to the 9/11 attacks and not about how he is a communist.
Did the media investigate who this guy was? Did the media bother to find out that Van Jones was an ex-convict, a communist and a black nationalist?
Did they bother to investigate his ties to organizations like the Apollo Alliance, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) and the Tides Foundation – all radical left-wing organizations? What about the anti-police Free Mumia Movement Van Jones founded?
See, news and news reporting is no longer about what is happening, but what happened. Investigative journalism is no longer about digging deeper to find the real story and true motivations, but just taking things at face value.
Our national media are state-run.
I remember the White House correspondents’ dinner when Obama made the comment, ‘Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me,’ after which the press in that audience went wild with cheers and applause.
With that in mind, I ask you this: Is what you’re seeing and feeling really happening according to our media?
