Media Has Ignored Obama’s Faults, Magnified McCain Missteps
Bethany Stotts, Accuracy in Media
Media coverage is clearly biased against John McCain. An October study by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 60 percent of McCain-focused stories were “decidedly negative” and only 14 percent were positive.
While Pew considered 36 percent of Obama-focused articles “positive,” and nearly the same number “mixed” or “neutral,” our organization has found that the mainstream media have ignored or downplayed several of Obama’s important associations including Frank Marshall Davis, William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and Tony Rezko.
In those cases where Obama’s associations eventually gain the national spotlight, the media have sought a McCain equivalent. This summer, journalists attempted to classify Pastor John Hagee as McCain’s Reverend Wright, even though McCain did not consider Pastor Hagee his spiritual mentor or attend his church.
When Sarah Palin was quoted as accusing Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” columnists highlighted McCain’s involvement with the Keating Five. Never mind that the investigation recommended that McCain be exonerated. Ayers, in contrast, said in 2001 that his domestic terrorist group, the Weather Underground, “didn’t do enough.”
The mainstream media have practically ignored Obama’s flip-flops on very important issues such as his ever-changing tax plan and his decision not to accept public financing.
Not so with Sarah Palin. Her “flip-flop” on funding for the Road to Nowhere was widely broadcast and, in addition, media pundits victimized her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter in an attempt to vindicate juicy, baseless gossip bantered around in the blogosphere.
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There is a war being waged on fair and honest reporting. It is mostly with conservatives such as Rupert Murdoch and his abomination of a news channel (I think we all know what I am referring to....) One of the things they use is this junk about the "Liberal Media", that's their shtick. Apparently, every media organization except FNC is part of this "Left-wing media machine". I recently saw an Interview with former Vice-President Dick Cheney on CNN. It did not look like to me that it was a "Liberal hatchet job" Republicans are being sore losers, that's all it is. John McCain was rejected by America because he has the WRONG kind of experience. He shifted his positions on every major issue, he selected as a running mate, an incompetent hockey mom because he thinks women are idiots. There is no "Left-wing bias" it's just a lie by these conservatives who believe their opinion is superior to all others.
I feel the Media treated McCain as well as any other Presidential candidate in recent memory. O'Bama however was treated like the second coming of Christ. I expected them to crown him king the way they fawned over him. It got sickening at times.
It's true. Every channel has a spin, not just Fox News. They decide what to air (what's "important"), how much time to spend on any given subject and which commentators to have on the air.
And Sarah Palin had a worse time with than McCain. The media portrayed her as ignoramus and the McCain camp did't give her a chance to defend herself. Yes, she doesn't know what she needs to know right now, but give a few years. Right now, she needs to read and study. Who knows? We might have a woman president the next go round.
Ron Paul would give you the beady eyes for saying that.
Winky Palin may not have had two years.... and she was an ignoramus. You know what I think? I think that she said "All right oil boys. You can pay all those others off, but I want to go national." And they hooked her up with McCain. That's why she was cleared in the investigation - because her demands weren't monetary. Pretty slick, eh?
Of course, it's just a theory. One of many as to why McCain would pick a governor who was under federal investigation, may possibly be raising her daughter's child as her own (which, by the way, I don't see anything wrong with... I actually think that's really cool of her to protect her slut of a daughter... IF), knows diddly-squat (to speak Palinese) about foreign affairs and leaders, thought Africa was a country, and couldn't follow campaign orders.
The vast majority of the media was completely against McCain (and Palin in particular), and Fox News spent it's entire time trying to compensate for that.
Until they give more airtime to the likes of Ron Paul or Nathan Larson, people will stick with the false dichotomy that prevails in today's politics.
Whether it's CNN trying to rationalize the Jeremiah Wright incident, or beginning a profile on McCain by pointing out his suicide attempt in 'nam, or even inviting Bill Mayer as a chief commentator after Sarah Palin's surge with polling, the media is definitely was 100% against McCain/Palin.
Except for Fox "OMG HE'S A FRIGGIN' TERRORIST!" News.
The question is who is too blame for bias and how do we restore the press to its lofty position as the 4th estate of Government? I see the Press-for-profit system where corps own and influence the Press as the primary causal factor. The Press must be free of Corporate sponsored ownership. Secondly, the beautiful bobble heads need to be chopped off and real journalist, no matter how they look, allowed to vet the issues. People need information not babble.
As a result of biased unbalanced reporting to a public that lacks the ability to use reasonable judgement we have elected a Marxian Socialist to the presidency?
Why didn't the press vet Obama's writtings and ideas as they did McCain and Palin? As a result the Americans with the ability to succeed and build will now be reduced to providers for those that can not.
Perhaps as someone suggested the Queen of England should revoke our Independence. Even British Democratic Socialism is better than Marxian Socialism.
The question is who is at fault for permitting a Marxist to seize the reins of power. The answer is easy:
“We the people”, the majority there of, have evolved into a sorry lot of wieners and know-nothings who bask in the glow of celebrity politicians and mindless actors and feed at the trough of contrived propaganda that is filled daily by the Press-For-Profit puppeteers of senseless profundity, all the while popping pills to increase their serotonin levels.
As Michelangelo said:
“The Greater Danger for Most of Us is not that our Aim is too high and we Miss it but that it is too Low and we reach it”.
As we all know, Americans always reach their goals and it is called “Managing their Metrics” and it is easily achieved through minimalist thought and by aiming too low. This time we have aimed so low that a Marxian Socialist was elected as a savior with the ultraliberal buffoons of Congress, Reid and Pelosi, holding his robes.
Colleges and Universities use to provide a fertile field for debate and the growth of thought and new ideas. Today, Universities simply teach people the mechanics of work so they can be employed as one of the mindless minions. They teach people how to sell, how to buy, which button to push to get the results they want with no consideration as to the correctness or usefulness of the answer. People are being taught to follow, not to question. All answers are known; just plug in the formula and appear to be intelligent.
What about how to question, how to separate truth from fiction or the value of original thought or how to observe, analyze, and then put yourself on the line and take a leap of faith into a trial that may not work, but will educate. What about learning to be more rather than accepting yourself and others for being less.
Both Political parties enslave the populace by offering the appearance of something-for-nothing to a people so stupid that they don’t even bother to ask how or why and are too timid to challenge their Masers for fear of draconian Governmental reprisals as contrived and manifested by the IRS.
We the people have finally reached the lowest common denominator of existence; survival!
The bottom line is that as a people, Americans have been hung by their own petard. We have lost the desire to-be and replaced it with the guttural need to seem-to-be.
No wonder the Marxian Socialist won the Presidency and that dynamic-duo of moronic obstructionism, Reid and Pelosi, gained strength in the Congress.
Cognizant Americans, the ones who have the ability to question, analyze and influence must rise up and publicly challenge the socialist political pundits in every decision on a daily basis. We must be heard and our voices must be so deafening that the Marxian Socialists dare not ignore them. The Marxian Socialist politicians currently planning to take the reins of power must be either educated or removed and that can only happen by the focused will of intelligent freedom loving citizens participating in the dialogue of Governance and voting through positive political action.
As the Greek Historian Thucydides (460-404bc) said so well:
“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”
Be Courageous.
Airdale
If the press actually did its job, none of those douche-bags would have their names on a ballot.
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We don't pick presidents - we're manipulated into thinking we have two viable choices.
I thought it meant collective or government ownership of industry. Kind of like when we bought a stake in the banks except if we bought all of every company and then the government ran them and distributed the benefits to everyone. How is Barak Obama advocating anything like that?
Why should the media be reporting that when it is clearly not true?
Encarta Dictionary:
Socialism, economic and social system under which essential industries and social services are publicly and cooperatively owned and democratically controlled with a view to equal opportunity and equal benefit for all. The term socialism also refers to the doctrine behind this system and the political movement inspired by it.
Socialism was originally based in the working class and has generally been opposed to capitalism, which is based on private ownership and a free-market economy. Socialists have advocated nationalization (government ownership and control) of natural resources, basic industries, banking and credit institutions, and public utilities. Although the ultimate aim of early socialists was a communist or classless society (see Communism), later socialists have increasingly concentrated on social reforms within capitalism.
Wikipeida Definition:
Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society.[1][2] Modern socialism originated in the late nineteenth-century working class political movement. Karl Marx posited that socialism would be achieved via class struggle and a proletarian revolution which represents the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.[3][4]
Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.[1]
Socialism is not a discrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalization, sometimes opposing each other. Another dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split on how a socialist economy should be established between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs; Libertarian socialism (which includes Socialist Anarchism and Libertarian Marxism) rejects state control and ownership of the economy altogether and advocates direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, Yugoslavian, Hungarian, Polish and Chinese Communists instituted various forms of market socialism combining co-operative and State ownership models with the free market exchange.[5] This is unlike the earlier theoretical market socialist proposal put forth by Oskar Lange in that it allows market forces, rather than central planners to guide production and exchange.[6] Anarcho-syndicalists, Luxemburgists (such as those in the Socialist Party USA) and some elements of the United States New Left favor decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils.
Why shouldn't they have reported on it? It is clearly true. Look at his "share the wealth" policies on taking from the rich, who have earned what they have, to give to the poor, who have not done anything. Hense why people came up with the "Robinhood" term for Obama. Look at what he wants to do with peoples 401K's. Look at his thoughts on health care, taxes, etc. It is not hard to see why some say he is a socialist democrat. Is he? Who knows? I sure don't.
Bush is a social democrat (because he has partially nationalized our banking system). Obama wants to raise taxes on rich people. There's nothing here that says that's socialist. When you use the term socialist without any qualifiers it implies that we have someone who would be turning our country into the Soviet Union. That is fearmongering. If you mean that he wants to extend health care and raise taxes on rich people, everybody knows that. There's no controversy. There's nothing to freak out about. Robin Hood robbed the rich. Paying your taxes is not getting robbed. Private enterprise will continue to control the vast majority of our economy. Tax rates will continue to be near historic lows.
Despite your prolific quotations and lengthy posting, I'm afraid you've failed to make your point. The expert cited a Pew research study that didn't really support their argument, followed by a lame attempt at complaining about the lack of complete, unlimited coverage of the Republican campaign's series of guilt-by-association stories. The final point is, I suppose, unbelievably ironic as I'm sure I've counted at least five times this year when a Fox News segment began with a rumor on the Internet about Obama. "Is Barack really a Muslim? A report on the Internet claims he is...". "Is Barack and Michelle's fist-bump a terrorist sign? A report on the Internet claims it is..."
Your posting seems to go off the deep end into the "wake up America - you're all being enslaved and only I am smart enough to realize it!" zone. Somehow you connect for-profit media to a liberal bias - I miss that part. Wouldn't a liberal bias demand zero profits? The most popular news outlets are owned by GE, NewsCorp, Disney and Viacom - all of whom seek maximum profits and none of whom are managed by a "liberal biased" Board of Directors.
The Marxist label throughout all this is a nice sign of you having come into this decidedly biased. If your complaint is based on the fact that most media stories wouldn't use this label or continue to refer to McCain's campaign advisers' continued insistence that Obama was a Socialist (or Marxist or, my favorite, anti-Semite), even after McCain himself in an interview said he wasn't, then I think your complaint holds no water.
When there is no story, the media tends to drop it. Jeremiah Wright got several rounds of coverage when Jeremiah himself kept making new comments and accusations. When McCain's campaign members wanted to keep bringing up other people in his past, they failed to make significant connections and failed to get current comments/actions from the people they referenced. Just because Sarah Palin thought that Bill Ayers was relevant today even though they hadn't had even moderate contact in the past 10 years, doesn't mean every reporter is obligated to continue to research it. At some point the media notices their audience doesn't find the story compelling and they drop it. The fact that polls showed she was not found to be ready to be President by most voters was widely reported. Facts are hard to avoid that way.
I believe the "media bias" argument comes up alot around "guilt by association" stories. These stories are frequent in politics but almost never compelling to most voters. Much like McCain thought he had adequately explained his role and his regret over what happened in the Keating Five scandal, Obama felt like he had addressed his association with some of the people in his past. There wasn't much left to investigate/expose. McCain supporters who were frustrated that these guilt by association stories didn't get more airtime somehow turned it into media bias. But why wasn't the Keating Five scandal rehashed continuously? What about the accusations that he was being bankrolled by Indian casinos while he regulated them in Congress? Sarah Palin's husband was in an Alaskan separatist movement party - why not make that a big deal?
I would argue that when he nominated Palin, he lost alot of ground and respect with the media. He was known as a genuine, direct politician up until that point. Suddenly he has to act surprised and dumbfounded that the media would question her ability to serve as president, or even Vice President. His allegiance to the right wing meant he had to flip flop on abortion , embrace the "agents of intolerance" and look like a typical duplicitous politician when talking about difficult issues instead of the style he had built his career on. When he pulls that kind of behavior, the media will react by filtering what he says and attempting to fill in what he won't talk about with pundits and experts who all have their own agenda. Combine that with a camera-shy (for good reason) Palin and you'll get alot of opinions reported as facts in the media to make up for the lack of facts being offered by the politicians themselves.
The media has alot of problems, but being biased against McCain wasn't one of them. Americans had the widest range of media outlets to choose from to get their coverage and I don't think they had any problem finding both sides of every story.
Yes but how much did you see that media pushing the fact that Obama had only two years as a senator? How much did the media push that he was the least experienced of all the Candidates? Not much in comparison to how much they published about how little experience Palin had. I watched a video on NBC on the computer that was about Obama a week or so ago. They were interviewing a person who works with the FBI and CIA in their hiring process. The person interviewed said that if Obama was applying for a job in the CIA or FBI he would be rejected because of a questionable past. How much did the media franchise on that? None hardly at all. Infact, on the NBC site, it was in a link that was so small, you would not of easily caught it just scanning the page. Another good example, the Salina Journal in Salina, Kansas was biased toward McCain and as a result published allot of the Bad stuff about Obama on the front page. That to be is showing bias and not being neutral.
I think his lack of experience was reported continuously. There was constant amazement expressed at his continued success during the primaries given his lack of political experience. There were many McCain campaign reps who got lots of airtime to point it out. But it's not a story after 13 months. It's been reported. If your opinion is that it makes him unfit, then great. But that's not a news story based on a new fact or circumstance.
McCain could have probably kept that in the news by appointing a reasonably experienced VP. He didn't and it became a huge story about Pailin because McCain kept trying to insist she was qualified, after insisting Obama was not. Suddenly manufactured terms like "executive experience" were being spouted and people were earnestly trying to argue that being mayor of Wasila was a meaningful, compelling job in preparing for national office. They showed complete ignorance as to the electorate's distrust of this kind of spin. Palin's story got even more airtime when she refused to be interviewed for so long after being nominated, and it took several weeks to dig up an understanding of her limited experience, then she finally demonstrated that she was definitely not ready to be interviewed by national news reporters. The straight talk express made a stop at Karl Rove station and never managed to leave.
What if Obama's daughter had gotten pregnant?
What do you think the media would have to say about her? "Typical, urban youth with no sense of responsibility raised with loose morals who plans to depend on the state to take care of her child."
Do you think the Republicans would lay off of Obama if his 17 year-old daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock? You know the answer to that question. Everyone does.
What if Obama's wife Michelle had stolen drugs? Cindy McCain was addicted to drugs and stole from her own charity to feed her addiction. Now what do you think the Republicans would have done if Michelle Obama had done that?
What if the campaigns were run completely clean instead of all the dirt digging? What if the president was elected because he was the best candidate and not the one who the least amount of dirt could be dug up on? What if? What it? What if? The election is past and America has spoken. However, I do think that media had a great role in which way the vote went.
The "liberal media" is owned by staunch conservatives. While this does not mean that there isn't spinning, Fox's spin more than makes up for it. The use of adjectives is questionable in most of the reporting for either side, but the plain fact is that McCain has made more missteps than Obama. When there is more negative to be reported, more negative is reported.
Does this mean there are no irresponsible reporters who are strongly tilted toward Obama? Of course not. But McCain has not handled himself well the past 12 weeks and Palin is only the tip of that iceberg. He has betrayed his own history and record, has floundered about trying to find something he is for as opposed to simply objecting to the "socialist" Obama. Some of his hyperbole has gotten ridiculous to the point that it is difficult to take some claims seriously. This in not the media's fault; it is McCain's and his advisors'.
I haven't experienced anything wrong and it's very rare that you do.
Just make sure you are using an OFFICIAL jailbreak (ie. Redsn0w, QuickFreedom, QuickPwn etc.) That means NOT ZIPHONE.. :P
I think it's partially a "scare-tactic" people use... It does void your warranty if you are unable to fix the problem... But in the event something does go wrong, 99% of the time you can just plug it in and restore to new.
Jailbreaking is worth it 150 million percent. Read up on the programs you are using if you are unsure...
mark456
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