Monday, September 19, 2005
The Media, Calamities, and Perspective
Don’t believe all you read in the newspapers or hear on TV
There is an old adage: Don’t believe anything you read in the newspapers or half what you hear bandied about, and be especially careful of what you think you saw with your own eyes. That is more true today than ever. The Media are in the business of selling news, and to sell large quantities of papers or garner large audiences they must have news that attracts customers. Unfortunately, for the most part they hipe the events as far as they can, to the point of making up stories and predicting awful casualties to pull in the gullible.
Case in point: the New Orleans flood. We heard for days how there would be 10,000 dead floating around. There were, at last count, less than a thousand. We heard about rapes and shootings, but there have been no authentications of all this. This is not to belittle the real tragedy of so many people who lost all they own, and for those who lost their lives. It is, however, a condemnation of the Media for their exploitative tactics and reporting, in particular when the video images shown belied what they were saying.
Case in point: Iraq. Many in the Media have used the number of civilian casualties in the fighting to be about 100,000. this was done using false aggregations of counts and sleazy statistics as many have carefully pointed out. The more accurate number is 28,000, and most were caused by the insurgency, not by our forces.
The two main reasons for such distortions of the truth are that the Media needs to sell sensationalism to their public audience and the Media are woefully biased to the Left, or at least their editors are biased, even if the run-of-the-mill reporters are trying to record the truth and nothing but the truth. Their hatred of George W. Bush far and away supercedes their obligation to the public to tell the truth. This fact has been demonstrated thousands of times in the last five or six years. While slanted news is nothing new in the world, I believe today’s Media has gone way past rationality to where one reads papers to find out the game scores, and little else. For some mysterious reason, they don’t foul up the scores like they do important situations.
One must thank God for a few cool heads that maintain their perspective in the face of this Media onslaught, and manage to get published despite their direct challenge to mainstream biases. One person I must commend for his perspective is Victor Davis Hanson. He is consistently publishing the best analyses of events to be had. Another columnist I heartily recommend is Mark Steyn. Read them and you will come away informed and ready to do battle with the Moonbats of the Left. A blogger that I admire as well is John Hawkins at Right Wing News. I have seldom disagreed with his positions on just about anything and everything! I also appreciate Wrechard over at The Belmont Club.
Don’t believe all you read in the newspapers or hear on TV
There is an old adage: Don’t believe anything you read in the newspapers or half what you hear bandied about, and be especially careful of what you think you saw with your own eyes. That is more true today than ever. The Media are in the business of selling news, and to sell large quantities of papers or garner large audiences they must have news that attracts customers. Unfortunately, for the most part they hipe the events as far as they can, to the point of making up stories and predicting awful casualties to pull in the gullible.
Case in point: the New Orleans flood. We heard for days how there would be 10,000 dead floating around. There were, at last count, less than a thousand. We heard about rapes and shootings, but there have been no authentications of all this. This is not to belittle the real tragedy of so many people who lost all they own, and for those who lost their lives. It is, however, a condemnation of the Media for their exploitative tactics and reporting, in particular when the video images shown belied what they were saying.
Case in point: Iraq. Many in the Media have used the number of civilian casualties in the fighting to be about 100,000. this was done using false aggregations of counts and sleazy statistics as many have carefully pointed out. The more accurate number is 28,000, and most were caused by the insurgency, not by our forces.
The two main reasons for such distortions of the truth are that the Media needs to sell sensationalism to their public audience and the Media are woefully biased to the Left, or at least their editors are biased, even if the run-of-the-mill reporters are trying to record the truth and nothing but the truth. Their hatred of George W. Bush far and away supercedes their obligation to the public to tell the truth. This fact has been demonstrated thousands of times in the last five or six years. While slanted news is nothing new in the world, I believe today’s Media has gone way past rationality to where one reads papers to find out the game scores, and little else. For some mysterious reason, they don’t foul up the scores like they do important situations.
One must thank God for a few cool heads that maintain their perspective in the face of this Media onslaught, and manage to get published despite their direct challenge to mainstream biases. One person I must commend for his perspective is Victor Davis Hanson. He is consistently publishing the best analyses of events to be had. Another columnist I heartily recommend is Mark Steyn. Read them and you will come away informed and ready to do battle with the Moonbats of the Left. A blogger that I admire as well is John Hawkins at Right Wing News. I have seldom disagreed with his positions on just about anything and everything! I also appreciate Wrechard over at The Belmont Club.
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