Left Wing Bias in the Media

Hairy Homer

..my big hairy brown eye. Let's talk about right-wing bias in the media. Have a look and listen to what this guy has to say on one of America's top news programs, the O'Reilly Factor

Be warned. He's not joking. Here are some edited highlights


‘I’m suggesting that we start bringing.. the consequences of this war to the civilians who are harbouring and helping and supporting the insurgents in Fallujah and other places. I would like to see the United States turn Fallujah into dust And tell the Iraqis: If you are going to continue to support the insurgents you will not have homes, you will not have schools, you will not have mosques..

Bill O’Reilly: ‘But then we’d be Nazis’

‘No we wouldn’t be Nazis. We’re the good guys Bill. There’s an enormous difference.

We are fighting in self defence for the United States. We are fighting here for the lives of Americans.

….Look what Sherman did in the Civil War and ended the Civil War by burning Atlanta by going after the civilian population. .

We need to do that. That’s what we did in World War Two

How did we end WWII? By dropping Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We did not create more enemies. We actually created friends and we created ultimately a free Japan. We brought the Japanese people to their knees and that is the only way you can establish a democracy in a culture which is so opposed to freedom is bring their culture to its knees. As long as we continue to appease them we are not going to be successful. We cannot win a war by trying to buy their love. They do not love us. They hate us.’


I know the rules say I'm not allowed post a quote from elsewhere without comment, but frankly, I'm speechless.

Love to know what supporters of the WAR ON TERRORISM think of this guy. Former Israeli intelligence officer turned naturalised American.

I think he's a bit of a C-word myself.

OfflerCrocGod

He's someone with no actual power? After all these american programs don't exactly encourage real debate, they just use trained monkeys to insult each other.

BlitzKrieg

hmmm....what can be said...


the guy has his facts completely wrong.

-japan got nicer to the USA because after the war the USA gave huge amounts of financial and industrial support (same with west Germany)

-Clearly has left Vietnam and the majority of the cold war aside on purpose. If america had no enemies after ww2 why was communism seen to be more populer with developing countries.

-Isreal when it got tougher, created more terrorism.


on a side note...i was impressed at how reasonable the fox news presenter was compared to the last fox news clip i saw (the one of the presidents party)

Sand

Love to know what supporters of the WAR ON TERRORISM think of this guy. Former Israeli intelligence officer turned naturalised American.

Why, wheres the law that says if you think the U.S. is right to combat groups like Al Queda that you must also agree with every whacko they drag in off the street?

The anti - war groups in the UK were run and organised primarily by a hard core of cold war USSR fan boys. The SWP and Sinn Fein did their best to hijack the ones here. By your logic anyone who protested the war was obviously in favour of all their policies....

Capt'n Midnight

If you are going to continue to support the insurgents you will not have homes, you will not have schools, you will not have mosques..

tried and failed miserably in Germany, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia - carpet bombing did not bring the population on side.
just think of the guff about the spirit of the londoners in the Blitz

We are fighting in self defence for the United States. We are fighting here for the lives of Americans.

then do something about gun control at home ... 9/11 was barely a blip on the end of year murder statistics

How did we end WWII? By dropping Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No that's what you did AFTER the end of the war was an inevitable conclusion, if a massive slaughter of civilians is a war wining tatic then why wern't peace terms offered on the 10th of March ? 100,000 people were killed in the worst raid on Japan and a quarter of the city in ashes.

We did not create more enemies. We actually created friends and we created ultimately a free Japan.

someone form the middle east should know that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" China and Russia were greater threats ... Also the pre war plan for a german pastoral economy involved a population about 20 million less than were in germany.

sackville

Hairy Homer wrote:

..my big hairy brown eye. Let's talk about right-wing bias in the media. Have a look and listen to what this guy has to say on one of America's top news programs, the O'Reilly Factor

Be warned. He's not joking. Here are some edited highlights


‘I’m suggesting that we start bringing.. the consequences of this war to the civilians who are harbouring and helping and supporting the insurgents in Fallujah and other places. I would like to see the United States turn Fallujah into dust And tell the Iraqis: If you are going to continue to support the insurgents you will not have homes, you will not have schools, you will not have mosques..

Bill O’Reilly: ‘But then we’d be Nazis’

‘No we wouldn’t be Nazis. We’re the good guys Bill. There’s an enormous difference.

We are fighting in self defence for the United States. We are fighting here for the lives of Americans.

….Look what Sherman did in the Civil War and ended the Civil War by burning Atlanta by going after the civilian population. .

We need to do that. That’s what we did in World War Two

How did we end WWII? By dropping Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We did not create more enemies. We actually created friends and we created ultimately a free Japan. We brought the Japanese people to their knees and that is the only way you can establish a democracy in a culture which is so opposed to freedom is bring their culture to its knees. As long as we continue to appease them we are not going to be successful. We cannot win a war by trying to buy their love. They do not love us. They hate us.’


I know the rules say I'm not allowed post a quote from elsewhere without comment, but frankly, I'm speechless.

Love to know what supporters of the WAR ON TERRORISM think of this guy. Former Israeli intelligence officer turned naturalised American.

I think he's a bit of a C-word myself.

Total Strawman argument the HH.

To hold a non-news neocon propaganda station up as an example of all media is spurious in the extreme.

Magnolia_Fan

I like Fox News, its very entertaining and I wouldn't agree with the remark that its not News I feel the opiniated shows (which are the most popular) shouldn't be called news programs as they are merely the news in the opinions and political views of the presenters. As for Japan I think dropping the bomb was beneficial to the ending of the war. I certainly would disagree that Fallujah should be turned into a wasteland. And as for the heading of this post there is a huge Left Wing Bias in the media, Fox News is one right wing source(even though they claim to be balanced) in a huge pool of left wing sources. Fox News is succesful though so they tend to take alot of heat for their bias.

Orizio

Magnolia_Fan wrote:

And as for the heading of this post there is a huge Left Wing Bias in the media, Fox News is one right wing source(even though they claim to be balanced) in a huge pool of left wing sources..

And those left-wing sources would be what?Frontpagemag?Washington Post?Fox news is a right wing channel,CCN,CBS and PBC are all moderates.

Hairy Homer

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

He's someone with no actual power?

He's boss of the extremely influential Ayn Rand Institute. Ayn Rand, whose centenary is this year, was a whacko Russian emigre who so loathed the collectivism of the Soviet Union that she developed a philosophy called Objectivisim based around what she called 'The Virtue of Seflishness'. One has to look out for oneself to the exclusion of others. Altruism and compassion are morally wrong.

This philosophy was very popular in the dot.com boom when it appeared to give intellectual weight to the notion that it's OK to be suddenly stinking rich thanks to a fortuitous blip in the stock market and that such wealth should impose no obligation on anybody to have any responsibilities towards anything or anybody else.

Mr Brook is a perfect example of what you get when you take that philosophy anywhere near its logical conclusion.

blitzkrieg wrote:

on a side note...i was impressed at how reasonable the fox news presenter was compared to the last fox news clip

He made Bill O'Reilly come across as a moderate kind and caring guy. That takes some doing. :-)

sand wrote:

Why, wheres the law that says if you think the U.S. is right to combat groups like Al Queda that you must also agree with every whacko they drag in off the street?

Because it is hard to find in the right-wing media (eg the Sunday Indo and increasingly the opinion and letters pages of the Irish Times) a pro-American agrument that does not include some reference to bias in the supposed 'left-wing media elite' which is out of touch with the views of the majority and without which there would be no dissent at all to this righteous crusade against the axis of evil.

I just wanted to redress the balance. If you want to see right-wing loons popping up in the media with rants like this they're pretty damned easy to find. Just read Mark Steyn in the Irish Times, for example. Or Kevin Myers ditto. Or Tony Allwright (who he?) whose semi-permanent presence in the IT letters page (once a fortnight on average) means he's almost as frequent a commentator in the Times as Steyn.

sackville wrote:

Total Strawman argument the HH.

To hold a non-news neocon propaganda station up as an example of all media is spurious in the extreme.

The point is not that ALL media is like this. The point is that major news stations that broadcast this type of tripe do exist. Lest anyone follow the line that 'the media is all left-wing biased' which appears frequently and without a trace of irony in the, er, media.

Magnolia_Fan wrote:

there is a huge Left Wing Bias in the media,

I beg to differ. See previous item.

If you want to read arguments criticial of the US position in Western media, you can do so. However, there is just as much if not more rabid right-wing rhetoric out there. (eg in Ireland there's the Sindo, Magill, the Irish Times maybe conor o'clery excepted but he's still outnumbered by Waters, Steyn and Myers)

The difference for me is that most of the anti-US-foreign-policy journalists can construct their own arguments convincingly without continually bleating about their rivals elsewhere in the media. Talk about straw-man arguments.

Don;t take my word for it. Get the Sindo this Sunday and see if the likes of Halley, Harris or Dooley can write a column on Iraq or our peace process without mentioning (without any itemised reference of course) the supposed bias in the media with which they have to contend.

Redleslie2

Hairy Homer wrote:

Don;t take my word for it. Get the Sindo this Sunday and see if the likes of Halley, Harris or Dooley can write a column on Iraq or our peace process without mentioning (without any itemised reference of course) the supposed bias in the media with which they have to contend.

Eoghan Harris has gone very quiet about the war in Iraq lately I noticed. He doesn't mention his crooked mate Chalabi anymore anyway. He prefers to bang on about how evil IRA/SF are.

Hairy Homer

Redleslie2 wrote:

Eoghan Harris has gone very quiet about the war in Iraq lately I noticed. He doesn't mention his crooked mate Chalabi anymore anyway. He prefers to bang on about how evil IRA/SF are.

I did notice that Chalabi has dropped off the radar of late. :-)

Interesting too that some genealogists think Bush is descended from Diarmuid McMurrough, the chap who invited in a rapacious, technologically advanced, army of outsiders to assist him in a little local difficulty with his unruly neighbours way back in 1179.

Plus ca change.....as they probably don't say on Capitol Hill right now.

Redleslie2

I suggested ages ago that the americans should do large scale yugoslavia style ethnic cleansing if they want to win. Nobody would do anything to stop them. They could get away with many more Fallujahs. Of course it's a little bit easier if they train up Iraqis to do the messy business for them, like in latin america.

Sand wrote:

The anti - war groups in the UK were run and organised primarily by a hard core of cold war USSR fan boys. The SWP and Sinn Fein did their best to hijack the ones here. By your logic anyone who protested the war was obviously in favour of all their policies....

Ah quit bleating. Nothing alters the incontrovertible fact that the anti-war side, even the nutters, were right. The pro-war side, even Peter Stringfellow and George Best, were wrong and the war is the massive bloodbath every non-idiot predicted it would be.

Nuttzz

Redleslie2 wrote:

He prefers to bang on about how evil IRA/SF are.

Indeed how dare he, its almost as if they're common criminals and murderers rather than the Orphan rescuing heroes we thought they were...

The Corinthian

Hairy Homer wrote:

Lest anyone follow the line that 'the media is all left-wing biased' which appears frequently and without a trace of irony in the, er, media.

I don’t think the accusation that 'the media is all left-wing biased' is very credible any more (the entertainment media probably still largely 'left-wing biased', but this is not the same thing as journalistic media). You’ll always get some whackos who’ll claim it but by and large most right wingers would not consider it as left-leaning as it once was.

And certainly it once was, in the Irish context, for example, the slant often taken on stories such as the X Case or the Stag-Phoenix Park scandal were blatantly biased towards a left-wing agenda and similar, if less obvious, biases existed in the US media. This is one of the reasons that Fox News has been so successful, because it enfranchised a large segment of society that was not represented by what it considered to be left-wing reporting.

So, to a degree, I do have to laugh; because reading/watching that interview you’re probably feeling much of what your average Opus Dei supernumerary would have felt in the early nineties for the integrity of the journalistic community.

Redleslie2

Nuttzz wrote:

Indeed how dare he, its almost as if they're common criminals and murderers rather than the Orphan rescuing heroes we thought they were...

I don't object as such, but he's been busy excusing the theft and massacres in Iraq and accusing anyone opposed to the war of being pacifists and fascists and trots and god knows what else. Everyone has double standards to an extent but that's taking the wee wee I'm afraid. I can't help wondering if Mr.Chalabi, whose rubbish 'intelligence' is partly responsible for the war, has him on his payroll or something.

Sits back and waits for thread to turn into another same old same old SF bash.

Nuttzz

Redleslie2 wrote:

Sits back and waits for thread to turn into another same old same old SF bash.

After over a year of GWB bashing this forum needs a change of direction

Back on topic, Fox is there because there is a demand of its point of view in the US, just like there is a demand for Ann Coulter of Michael Moore etc, all media companies are there to turn a buck, its up to them all to find there market, Fox finds the right works for them.

Redleslie2

Jon Stewart on Fox's Crossfire trying to be serious.

Vid here.

Hairy Homer

The Corinthian wrote:

.

And certainly it once was, in the Irish context, for example, the slant often taken on stories such as the X Case or the Stag-Phoenix Park scandal were blatantly biased towards a left-wing agenda and similar,

There was certainly a major concern that the Stickies (SFWP) had infiltrated the RTE newsroom and current affairs editorial staff back in the 1980s and skewed news coverage accordingly.

Irony of ironies, one of the most influential such manipulators was a certain Eoghan Harris.

But of course he's more sensible now :rolleyes:

mike65

Hairy Homer wrote:

There was certainly a major concern that the Stickies (SFWP) had infiltrated the RTE newsroom and current affairs editorial staff back in the 1980s and skewed news coverage accordingly.

Irony of ironies, one of the most influential such manipulators was a certain Eoghan Harris.

But of course he's more sensible now :rolleyes:

That needs putting in context - in the 70s the RTE newsroom was split between the stickies and the Provos. To be honest I'm not sure who won as to me the RTE newsroom has been tradtionally both leftish and green, it's still is left (witness the Morning Ireland reaction to Bushs' win and Iraq generally)but not very green now.

Mike.

toiletduck

All media is biased in some way. Even if what the reporter is saying is neutral, you can tell what they really think by their body language and facial expressions. I find that Channel4 news is the fairest news programme on.

true

mike65 wrote:

That needs putting in context - in the 70s the RTE newsroom was split between the stickies and the Provos. To be honest I'm not sure who won as to me the RTE newsroom has been tradtionally both leftish and green, it's still is left (witness the Morning Ireland reaction to Bushs' win and Iraq generally)but not very green now.

Mike.

You are right, Mike65, except for the last four words " not very green now ".
RTE is quite green is the same. Perhaps it is to do with the influence of certain Northern catholics who work in RTE, I do not know why, but it is. It always seems to be giving things in a green tinged light. Even Pat Kennys soft interview of Gerry Adams a month ago on the late late tells it all.

mike65

true wrote:

You are right, Mike65, except for the last four words " not very green now ".
RTE is quite green is the same. Perhaps it is to do with the influence of certain Northern catholics who work in RTE, I do not know why, but it is. It always seems to be giving things in a green tinged light. Even Pat Kennys soft interview of Gerry Adams a month ago on the late late tells it all.

I really dont think its as bad as it was (I was around in the old days!). Regarding those in RTE from the North its interesting that when the current DG of RTE TV was being sought, of the 5 final canditates 2 or 3 were Norn Iron nationalists.

Mike.

Hairy Homer

mike65 wrote:

That needs putting in context - in the 70s the RTE newsroom was split between the stickies and the Provos. To be honest I'm not sure who won as to me the RTE newsroom has been tradtionally both leftish and green,

Depends how deep a shade of green you mean. RTE was banned from broadcasting the words of Sinn Fein spokesmen from the 1970s until quite late on (can't remember exactly when it was lifted) by an edict from Conor Cruise O'Brien when he was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the FG/Labour coalitioin of 73-77.

The point is that the RTE hacks were much more compliant in enforcing that ban than their counterparts in the British media who operated under a similar ban for a time. The Beeb and ITV would get around it in imaginative ways by rnning the film of the Shinner talking with the sound down and then get an actor to say the same words. They would point out to viewers they were doing this, but it got quite comical as they tried to match the appearance of the person being filmed with the sort of voice they might credibly have spoken with.

Shinners in the 80s hated RTE more than the Beeb. I remember it well.

mike65

Hairy Homer wrote:

RTE was banned from broadcasting the words of Sinn Fein spokesmen from the 1970s until quite late on (can't remember exactly when it was lifted) by an edict from Conor Cruise O'Brien when he was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the FG/Labour coalitioin of 73-77.

It was lifted in January 94

Hairy Homer wrote:

The Beeb and ITV would get around it in imaginative ways by rnning the film of the Shinner talking with the sound down and then get an actor to say the same words. They would point out to viewers they were doing this, but it got quite comical as they tried to match the appearance of the person being filmed with the sort of voice they might credibly have spoken with.

I well remember, it got to the point where the actors gave the words added gravitas, when the voice of the Provo in question might have been weedy or squeaky!

Mike.

elvenscout742

Hairy Homer wrote:

How did we end WWII? By dropping Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not to veer off topic, but WWII ended because the ministers in Japan finally had to give in to the emperor's wishes and end the war that he had been opposed to from the beginning. Had the emperor HAD supreme power, none of that would have happened.

true

Hairy Homer wrote:

Depends how deep a shade of green you mean.

Shinners in the 80s hated RTE more than the Beeb. I remember it well.

This is the 21st century , not the 1980's, but I remember the 80's only too well too. During the hunger strikes, whenever a provo came off hunger strike, it would be on one news bulletin, and one only. However, when the same provo was dying for his country, RTE were blabbing about it all the time, and how the British were letting him die. I think RTE must be one of the most biased TV and radio services I have ever seen and heard , as far as politics is concerned. Apart from that, its not bad.

Hairy Homer

Hairy Homer wrote:

The difference for me is that most of the anti-US-foreign-policy journalists can construct their own arguments convincingly without continually bleating about their rivals elsewhere in the media. Talk about straw-man arguments.

Don;t take my word for it. Get the Sindo this Sunday and see if the likes of Halley, Harris or Dooley can write a column on Iraq or our peace process without mentioning (without any itemised reference of course) the supposed bias in the media with which they have to contend.

Yup. In the Sindo today, Harris can't write about Iraq without referring to 'the RTE-backed insurgents' and wondering 'Why is it that RTE and the Irish Times [he must skip over the Mark Steyn, John Wates, Kevin Myers bits] never suspected that such passion for freedom slumbered in the breasts of the Iraqi people?'

He should have watched the Late Late on RTE on Friday night when Robert Fisk and Mark Dooley of the Sindo went head to head, in the course of which Mr Dooley had his head surgically removed and handed back to him my the said Mr Fisk. (Figuratively speaking of course)

During the debate it emerged that Mr Dooley has never been to Iraq, never been to Israel/Palestine and gets his information about the Middle East from Blogs.

Contrast that with Fisk who lived in Beirut for years, speaks and reads Arabic fluently, and actually goes to Iraq to speak to people before reporting on it.

I can see why people might take a dislike to Fisk. He quivers with righteous indignation, and doesn't really take one side or another preferring to talk about the wrongs and atrocities of both sides. He once famously said of Beirut: 'The thing you;ve got to remember about the Lebanon is there are no good guys. They're all bad.'

It does make him, however, a great reporter and a superb person to write 'the first draft of history' by which he defines journalism in general.

As for Mark Dooley, well he came across, to me anyway, as an ignorant smug middle-class git who by his own admission gleans his information from blogs and, for all we know, sites like this one.

Funny how people who depend on other people's writings for their opinions are always the one who say 'Don't believe what you read. It's all written by people who disagree with me'

Listen up, Mark, if you're reading this. (I can think of a few bonkers right-wing regulars here who you might be)

Read on. You might learn something.

sovtek

Orizio wrote:

And those left-wing sources would be what?Frontpagemag?Washington Post?Fox news is a right wing channel,CCN,CBS and PBC are all moderates.

....who continue to pander to the right wing more and more every day....Tucker Carlson is no commie...nor is Jim Lehr...and I think we've all seen Dan Rather's pathetic affirmation of his patriotism.

sovtek

Redleslie2 wrote:

He prefers to bang on about how evil IRA/SF are.

He'd fit right on in here then.

Redleslie2

Another example of lefty bias. CBC story.

Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"

McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter: "I don't think that's right."

McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"

McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."

Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."

McKeown: "No."

Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."

Hairy Homer

Redleslie2 wrote:

Another example of lefty bias. CBC story.

Heh Heh Heh.

Ah well. We all make mistakes some time.

As I've said before: You gotta love Canadians.

Or should that be Caneedians?