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How much did the liberal
media influence your vote?
Adele Ferguson
Political Columnist |
At one time, quite a few years ago, I’m sorry to say, I was proud of my profession... Reporters were pretty hot stuff in those days and readers believed what they read in their newspapers. Get it first, but get it right was the rule. Not a scintilla of bias one way or the other was permitted or even found, except where it belonged, on the editorial pages. We were journalists in the truest sense of the word. A direct presentation of facts without interpretation.
Precisely when and why that changed, I don’t know, but those days are gone. News stories appear today that are so slanted I often wonder if the reporters are stringers for the Democratic National Committee. The slant, no one denies, definitely is to the left...
The hatchet job done on the Bush-Cheney ticket was outrageous, while Al Gore and Joe Lieberman are treated as if they were Batman and Robin. You figure out which is which.
Take this lead. “Dick Cheney acknowledged yesterday he failed to vote in 14 of the past 16 elections in Texas, hitting the Republican presidential ticket with a new controversy as nominee George W. Bush struggles to gain traction.”
What it should have and didn’t say was that these were primary or local elections. Way down in the story, “Cheney said he has voted in every general election over the past 22 years.” How many readers of the four-column headline CHENEY HIT ON TEXAS VOTING RECORD and secondary headline “VP hopeful missed 14 of 16 elections when living in Texas” came away believing he only voted twice in 16 years?
At the same time, Cheney was criticized for the fact that in Kosovo, the company he used to chair, Halliburton, maintained separate but identical portable toilets for its American and Albanian employees. Halliburton explained the Albanians would stand on the toilet seat because they were used to squatting over holes in the floor. Cheney didn’t know anything about it, and shouldn’t be expected to, anymore than President Bush should have been expected to know the price of a loaf of bread when he was conned into that supermarket picture years ago. How often is a president asked to stop off and pick up a loaf of bread for supper?
I haven’t been to Kosovo but I have been to Asia and the toilets there often were holes in the floor. What’s wrong with separate toilets if the Albanians want to stand on the seat and the Americans don’t want to clean it off before every use? And why pick on Cheney over it?
Columnist Molly Ivins and others blasted Cheney for his congressional vote against a resolution calling for the freedom of Nelson Mandela, without including his explanation that it also called for the recognition of the African National Congress, a terrorist organization. He said no to that.
The Seattle PI’s Joel Connelly recently dredged up President Bush’s town hall appearance where he “was repeatedly seen checking his watch as if impatient at encountering average Americans.” How the hell does he know why Bush was checking his watch? How many panels has Connelly been on, as have I, where you have to keep track of time to know if you’ll need to ask or answer another question? Maybe the president had to go to the bathroom, who knows?
George W. Bush is ridiculed for his speech gaffes as if he were retarded. Heck, our beloved U.S. Sen. Warren G. Magnuson was famous for his blunders but everybody thought it was funny, if not charming. Nobody ever suggested it was because he lacked intelligence. I heard Dick Gephardt say Democrats were working for smaller class room sizes. If Bush had said that, he’d have been pilloried again for being a dummy but Gephardt’s slip went unnoticed. Clinton once called the Missouri an aircraft carrier and it was ignored by the liberal media.
Much of the media today observes a double standard, one that says liberal Democrats can do no wrong, and conservative Republicans can do no right. No wonder, for many people, the press has been added to the old saying about the only way to look upon a politician is down.
(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P. O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.) |
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