By Maggie Van Ostrand
Television news suffers from an appalling number of errors. I’m not talking about the frequent ones in spelling and grammar, or even the misidentification of people in photographs onscreen, I refer to misrepresenting the news itself.
MSNBC News on 3/18/08, failed to repeat Senator Obama’s speech aired earlier at 8 a.m. Pacific time. Instead, they kept showing Senator Clinton’s response to that speech. However, despite the fact that she was wearing her Irish shamrock scarf proving her talk was made on St. Patrick’s Day, the day before Obama’s speech, they still called it “Hillary Clinton’s response to Barack Obama’s speech.”
CNN: They continue to show Rev. Wright’s racist talk, over and over and over, without telling the viewers that his rant occurred a few days after 9/11. People of all colors, including celebrities, said similar, distasteful things, in the heat and the horror of the World Trade Center tragedy. Senator Obama tried to explain how predominately African American churches have emotional services, yelling out from the congregation, fiery speeches, mostly about religion. He explained it well, and not defensively. He should be admired for his refusal to dump an old friend for such a reason. Criticizing what he said was enough.
When he was advised to change his middle name because it might inflame potential voters, he refused because he loved his father. Sounds like he’s devoted to family and friends, whether he agrees with the politically or not.
In Senator Obama’s speech, he absolutely answered every question that was raised by the newscasters. He just didn’t always give the answers they thought he should have. He’s honest and, evidently, we’re not used to that. As Jack Nicholson’s character said in A Few Good Men, we don’t want the truth.
This is like the scandal the media attempted with the Resko thing with no proof. What about that photo of the Clintons smiling and standing next to Rezko. What happened to that?
Now the media is all over Senator Obama’s comment about his own grandmother. Perhaps Clinton is paying off the news media with money she borrowed from her husband who made so much by signing unearned pardons before he left the White House carrying taxpayer booty … I’m just sayin’I don’t trust the Clintons.
It’s not just TV news either — look at the New York Times, once true to its motto “All the news that’s fit to print.” Now they fails to fire their Op-Ed columnist, William Kristol, who lied about Senator Obama when he wrote that Obama had been “in the pews” when Rev. Wright spewed his poisonous rhetoric. It was proven that Obama had been in Florida that day and could not possibly have been “in the pews.” Did the Times fire Kristol as they did back in the old Jayson Blair days for lying in his column? No. Why don’t they change their slogan to “All the news that’s fit to slant.”
It’s tough enough to see America in the straits it’s in; we don’t need to cannibalize one another (even if it is politics).
I want to know the news and form my own opinions; I don’t want to see/read/hear news slanted in a manner designed to form my opinions for me. People don’t have to vote for Hillary Clinton. Saturday Night Live appears to have done it for them.
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