PBS, 9:00 PM, September 16, 2003 – Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill talked about media bias, tonight.  It was Br’er Fox investigating the loss of chickens from the coop. (Photos just below are hotlinks to their source, the Flashpoint webpage.)
 
 

As it turns out, there is no bias on PBS, NBC, CBS and ABC.   No bias in Newsweek, the Washington Post and of course the New York Times.  They are all the baselines of journalistic nobility. There is bias, of course on FOX, the internet and especially talk radio.  This threatens free speech, as in the Dixie Chicks case. 

Take the Dixie Chicks, please.  You remember the dustup.  Reacting to mass complaints from listeners, a radio network which includes some country stations pulled the Dixie Chicks music from the air.  This, an extremely arrogant leftwinger told us on Flashpoint, was a violation of free speech.  Not playing a band’s music because your listeners hate what one of the singers said in Europe is a violation of free speech? The concept is so ridiculous as to be genuinely funny.  If it wasn’t, the Supreme court would be adjudicating the issue this month.  You all know about liberals and the courts. 

But, it wasn’t a violation of free speech.  It was a reaction by a business to a listener exercise of free speech.  Liberals do not approve of conservative free speech, however.  When they haven’t got a whisper of a chance in court, their next-best resort is the bureaucracy.  The FCC is the target, here.  This is no  battle to keep the corporations from swallowing up all the radio stations and gassing people in the Dakotas.  Liberals love government monopolies.  They only hate things they don't control. 

Free speech is the target, here.  The arrogant leftwingers on Flashpoint are part of the massive effort to reintroduce the Fair Practices act to, especially, radio.  Why?  To get rid of Rush Limbaugh and friends – the first major media exposure of non-liberal ideology in living American memory.

War hero, John McCain is with the lefties on this.  But, then, Lindburg supported the Nazis.  McCain shouldn’t surprise anybody.  His McCain-Feingold bill, which will hopefully be gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court quite soon, is about exactly the same thing – the suppression of free speech, of political dissent.  You may with logical justification call McCain an enemy of freedom, a traitor to the values of the U.S. Constitution, but I won't.  I think he is merely an idiot. 

"Our position before the Court is straightforward: Congress has the power to protect the integrity of the electoral and legislative process against corruption and the appearance of corruption." 

Really, the Democrats should adopt Joseph Goebbles as their official mascot.  This was a fascist propagandist ass who controlled every word and every picture in every newspaper, magazine, radio broadcast, film and stage play in Germany after the National Socialists took absolute power.  The difference between that and what exists in America today is that while the liberals control 99% of the media and Hollywood, they don’t control 100% of it – and they can’t openly shoot or send to concentration camps anybody in that 1%. 

Watching this complaint about the evil radio executive’s “suppression of free speech,” I was reminded of something that happened at KUIK, 1360 A.M. in Hillsboro, Oregon a while back.  At the time, I was doing a regular Friday afternoon humor segment on Ollie North’s nationally syndicated talk radio show.  I appeared during the last hour.  Also on Ollie’s show during that time slot was Barry Lynn, who our more knowledgeable readers will recognize as an attorney long associated with the ACLU, a minister associated with the National Council of Churches and the president of an organization named “Americans United for Separation of Church and State.”  For those who are unfamiliar with the organizations just mentioned, they are all in the pocket of the left.

The conservatives who listen to KUIK so despised Lynn, and made so many calls to this small radio station, that the owner Don McCoun, dropped the last hour of that show, replacing it with an hour of local programming.  This, ironically, eliminated my audience in my own state.  My plug for Oregon Magazine, which was the principal reason I did the segment, was gone from a key portion of my state.

What is the difference between the radio chain not playing Dixie Chicks music because the audience complained and KUIK not running the hour of the Ollie North show which contained Barry Lynn because the audience complained?  None at all.  Until we get the “Fair Practices Act” back, the owners of radio stations will be able to air what they want to air.  That’s the way it should be.

The idiot leftwinger on Flashpoint sneered at that idea, and said that a media outlet must give a voice to minorities.  We'll set aside the fact that not too far in the future that will mean white males, and this liberal creepette will then find herself in a bit of a pickle. This "fairness" business is attached to a premise based on the "public ownership" of the broadcast spectrum which requires "responsible" programming.  You may thank your lucky stars that no such foolishness obtains with the other media.  If liberals could institute a press fair practices act that went beyond broadcasting, you would never receive the unadorned, unmodulated, unspun truth again. For an idea what that would look like, read any newspaper from North Korea.  Government control of the media is instant death to all freedoms. Try this news release from the "Korea News," which is North Korea's answer to the old Soviet Union's Pravda.
 
 

How much of that could you stand with your morning coffee?

Radio must do what the minority demands, not what the majority demands?  Sounds like what the ACLU tried to pull off in California, doesn’t it?  The recall petition is signed by far more than the California constitution requires, and the 9th Circuit Court (called by some the “Circus Court,” had to reverse their original idiotic decision to let the election go ahead. The ACLU charge, by the way, was bizarre..  The ballots which were just fine when they elected Gray Davis governor, were no longer fair to minorities in a recall. 

Either the ACLU didn't know there were minorities in California during the general election or the ACLU didn't care if there was a whit of validity to their charge.  They just wanted to find a way to abrogate the state constitution and disenfranchise the voters.  Yes, of course.  The American Civil Liberties Union attempting to violate the constitutional rights of the citizenry.  Their dedication to democracy is similar to that of public broadcasting, the mainstream media, Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill. 

There were several small talking head moments on Flashpoint.  Media bias was definitely on their minds.  They did an early segment on Bill O’Reilly, portraying him, and FOX, as an example of political advocacy journalism, which of course is the exact opposite of the truth.  Tom Brokaw, interviewed later in the program, is the one who should have been portrayed as an example of political advocacy journalism.  O’Reilly and Fox, the raucus devils, dig around looking for the truth  -- which is almost always exactly the opposite of what is reported by Tom Brokaw, Peter Jenning, etc.

Here, this will explain the show.  It asked the question: is the media biased?  Those responding to the question on the program were leftwing ideologues (Gwen Ifill, for example) by a ratio of five to one.  It was like watching Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect,” which was a show dedicated to politically correctness, and stacked four to one against the single conservative guest.

Folks, I have said this for years.  Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill are not lying to you.  They actually believe what they are saying.  They are completely blind to everything that is going on around them, and to the meaning of everything they say and do.  They think they are competent journalists, and unbiased.

That is why, instead of inviting guests like David Horowitz or Ann Coulter to argue the case for massive liberal media bias, they simply chose to ask each other, and a few big media friends, if it was true.  I spotted one conservative on the set, the editor of the Washington Times.  A decent fellow, but he appeared to be working on “getting along.”

So, me dearies and hearties, your tax dollars were flushed down the liberal toilet once more as the American media peerage debated the tastelessness of some anchors wearing American flags on their lapels, the tiny audience of cable, what should be done to radio station owners who exercise their free speech rights by criticizing a puerile singer who, standing on ground made holy by the blood of American soldiers, made an absolute Jane Fonda of herself.

Flashpoint, in a phrase, was par for the liberal course.

My suggestion is that you never give a dime to public broadcasting, or to any charitable organization or foundation that does.  Next, you should refuse to vote for any politician that supports taxpayer subsidy of a network that produces this kind of leftist junk.

(LL)

© 2003 Oregon Magazine  Graphics are links to their source, where known.