www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/31441.htm
Reprint October 10, 2004 -- Mainstream media bias against Republican presidental candi dates is a fact of American po litical life. the establishment media seems to have become a wing of John Kerry's campaign. One unusually candid member of the liberal media mafia admitted as much d uring the Democratic convention. Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, offered this confessi on on media bias on the PBS program "Inside Washington." And I think they're going to por tray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fo x as being young and dynamic and optimistic, and there's going to be thi s glow about them, collective glow." Whereupon his magazine published a how best to put this glowing cover sto ry dubbing the Democratic duo "The Sunshine Boys." This was hardly an isolated incident though we'll get to Dan Rather and h is hatchet work in a bit. First, consider the latest smoking gun to emerge in the media war on Geor ge Bush: The internal memo written by ABC News Political Director Mark H alperin that popped up right before Friday night's Bush-Kerry debate. Halperin, described by the network as "responsible for the planning and e ditorial content of all political news on the network," issued new order s Both sides distort the truth, he said, adding in effect that Kerry's lies don't matter but that George W Bush's most certainly do. "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but the se are not central to his efforts to win." In contrast, he wrote, "the c urrent Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out o f context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done" a point he said was echoed by reporters from such paragons of objectivity as the above- mentioned Newsweek and The New York Times. Then came the instructions: "We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public in terest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that. But as one of the few new s organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public in- terest, now is the ti me for all of us to step up and do that right." That is, voters need skillful, strong "help" evaluating information becau se they are too stupid, too ignorant or too benighted to figure out the "right" way to vote all by themselves. They need Mark Halperin and his crew of correct-thinkers to explain thing s to them. Such arrogance borders on the incomprehensible and it is unforgivable at this stage of one of the most important presidential elections in Americ an history. An ABC News flack said Friday night that "we're not interested in taking sides" which hardly addresses the issues raised by the Halperin memo. So here's hoping that network handles its crisis with more honesty, more honor, than CBS mustered in the Dan Rather Memogate fiasco last month. Rather and an activist CBS producer harboring a five-year obsession with George W Bush's military record decided to prove that the president had lied about his service and to do it as close to Election Day as possibl e There was one big problem with this project: An utter lack of evidence. So they swallowed whole "incriminating" documents that were convincingly discredited by by any number of neutral observers within three hours! And still it took two weeks for Rather to admit that he top dog at the on ce-upon-a-time Tiffany network had been duped. Almost to the end, he sna rlingly insisted that anyone who questioned CBS News was motivated right -wing politics. Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne and Time magazine were f retting that the Memogate controversy was "shifting the debate away from Bush's questionable record" and mainstream media mavens were derisively dismissing credible questions about John Kerry's own military record as political "smears." Again, this phenomenom is not new though rarely has it be practiced so op enly, so arrogantly. The fact that Rather still presides over the "CBS Evening News" is an ama zement; it speaks, in fact, to the cowardice and moral rot that informs the mainstream media. For putting in writing the instructions that usually are transm itted in winks and nods?
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