Slashdot Mirror
Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?
An anonymous reader writes "Retiring figure Bill Moyers makes his case in a recent speech delivered at the Society of Professional Journalists 2004 national convention. 'But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.' It is a deep argument, made poignant by the recently murdered Francisco Ortiz Franco of Mexico, Manik Saha of India, and Aiyathurai Nadesan of Sri Lanka, among others. It is a broad argument, touching on history from America's first best seller to yesterday's blog. Is it a convincing argument?"
What absolutely amazes me is how many of the lefties here on good ol' slashdot think the media is biased to the "right." What most of them are too ignorant to realize is that that very perception is the result of fact that they have been influenced by the leftist bias in the "mainstream" media (CBS, ABS, NBC, NYT, LAT, etc.).
I wonder how many of these people believe Dan Rather when he says, OK, the documents were phoney but the story behind them is true. What kind of baloney is that? The entire story of Bush's guard service is crap. Bush served for two or three years well above and beyond the minimum requirements. Then he took a leave of absence, which was very common, especially when they had a glut of pilots at the time and were trying to get rid of them. Oh, I guess Dan forgot to mention that, eh? What a joke.
Oh, and one more thing. If Dan Rather was fooled by the fraudulent docs, why is he not as eager as hell to nail the fraud who may have cost him his career if not his credibility? Think about it, folks. No, Dan is "protecting" his fraudulent sources. What exactly could be the thinking behing that?
If you don't get it yet, you are beyond hope.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
> Having MORE articles regarding the Swift Boat Vets for Truth
> doesn't mean the press looked into their records. Having LESS
> articles that match your keywords doesn't mean the Bush
> didn't go after Bush any less.
The original point was the poster claimed that the press covered Bush's desertion story more than the SBVT's lies. I showed that the claim was not true. I showed that during previous campaigns, the press did not publish as many articles looking into Bush's service as they have given space to the SBVT, who have been discredited by all major news sources.
As for your later post searching on Google News, while I applaud your attempt, I remind you Lexis-Nexis is the standard for doing research; Google News is hardly a substitute.
Google News does not prevent re-indexing news stories, and it will index stories that aren't directly about a topic, but just tangentially mention it (that's why Google bombing works on the web). For example, your second search term would probably count stories talking about Bush's elective war in Iraq and how he sent the National Guard in to fight there. You have to be judicious in your search to make sure you don't count those stories. Third, you have to set up the search according to dates to show if the press covered Bush's desertion before the 2004 election, which was the point of the original post.
Finally, you did a search for "Swift Boat Vets Truth". However their actual name is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". I suspect that if you did your search for their actual name, and not an abbreviation, you'd get thousands of more hits, even on Google News.
So you don't win the home version, but thanks for playing.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.