Press-release lap dogs
By Tom DeWeese
web posted September 22, 2008
"We're supposed to fall for a candidate who has to play up her eight years as the mayor of a town of 6,715 - where the Associated Press devastatingly remarked the "biggest civic worry is whether there will be enough snow for the Iditarod dog-mushing race" - and her time on the PTA to round out her resume." The news media - just being fair.
America's news media is surprised and appalled at the accusations that it has been too hard on Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Says the media, "examining the record of the Alaska governor, of whom not much is known about, is the legitimate line of inquiry for the press. Time Magazine's Joe Kline believes the McCain team's attacks on the media are simply a tactic meant to thwart inquiries into Palin's history. "This is a smoke screen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media - about the substance of Palin's record as Mayor and Governor," said Klien. Said one reporter, "should (reporters) have stuck to the press release, like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it)?"
So, with the media's all-out effort to dig down and get the "truth" (because they are just journalists doing their job), here's what we know about Sarah Palin: Her 17 year old daughter is unmarried and pregnant; an Alaska state legislative panel is investigating if Gov. Palin improperly dismissed Alaska's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire an Alaska state trooper who happened to be divorcing Palin's sister; Palin has a new baby with Down syndrome, which she didn't abort; She's in the PTA; Her husband is a blue color worker and union member; she was a beauty queen; she hunts; she is a member of the NRA; she is against placing Polar Bears on the Endangered Species list (they aren't endangered, by the way); she's anti-abortion and anti-evolution; and, horror or horrors, she "hasn't uttered a word about racial diversity or civil rights."
It's certainly true that the media has a right and a duty to check her out. She was an unknown on the national political scene. So why is the McCain camp, along with many Americans in general, so upset over the coverage Palin got in the first week of her candidacy? The media's coverage is neither fair nor balanced. Far from it. It's obvious that the news media used its attack dog ruthlessness to "expose Palin" but has literally ignored much more important facts about Barack Obama. In Obama's case, the media has certainly "stuck to the press release."
Davis |
The media has refused to publish, or has white washed reports, of direct connections between Barack Obama and several known communists. In fact, Obama's "mentor" as a child was a well-documented Marxist named Frank Marshall Davis. Obama actually mentions him only by his first name in his 1995 book, Dreams from my Father. Further, in a report prepared by the Obama campaign to rebut Jerome Corsi's best selling book, Obama Nation, Obama admits to a personal relationship with Davis, all the while calling Corsi a liar for saying the same thing. Instead of investigating the facts, the news media sticks to the Obama press release.
If the media mentions Davis at all, it calls him a "civil rights activists," a "labor leader" and a "poet." In fact, some of the poems Davis wrote were in praise of the Red Army and mocking Christian missionaries. Davis, who died in 1987, appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1956 and took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions about his Communist Party USA (CPUSA) activities. His lawyer was Harriet Bouslog, another CPUSA member.
The Associated Press did run a story about Barack Obama's Marxist mentor without ever mentioning him as a CPUSA member. The story, with a headline that read, "Writer offered a young Barack Obama advice on Life," simply calls Davis a "left-leaning journalist and poet." As investigative journalist Cliff Kincaid reports in an extensive expose`, Davis "was not a journalist in any real sense of the term. He was a propagandist and racial agitator for the CPUSA."
Rather than try to present evidence to refute such charges, Obama attacks critics like Corsi as "liars." For obvious reasons, he wants the issue to just go away. And the news media, unlike in the Palin case, just sticks to the Obama press release. There is no attempt to investigate the charges by mainstream media.
There is much more evidence of Communist influences over a young Barack Obama and more evidence of attempts to wash it from the record.
More than a year ago, reports surfaced of a connection between Obama and William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Doran. Obama and Ayres sat on a board together for three years. They have made speeches together from the same podium. Ayres even sponsored a fundraiser in his home for Obama's Illinois state senate campaign.
Why does a relationship with Ayres matter? Both Ayers and Doran were founders of the 1960's era domestic terrorist group called "The Weathermen." That group planted bombs in the U.S. Capitol Building, organized riots, set fires to buildings on college campuses, and plotted the overthrow of the United States. The Weathermen were known as the most violent and most dedicated communists of the 1960's revolt. They had direct ties with Moscow and made numerous trips to Cuba and North Viet Nam in support of the world-domination goals of the Communist revolution.
Of course, Obama denies any connection with Ayers and Doran. When pressed in a debate, Obama said he barely knew Ayers and then dismissed Ayers' history of violence against the country by saying whatever Ayers did occurred when Obama was eight years old. Obama seems to have left out some details from his press release, so the media didn't think is was important to mention.
And there's more. Corsi's book reveals that Obama's wife Michelle was influenced by black Marxist revolutionary Stokely Carmichael when she formulated her Princeton thesis on black separatism. Again Obama calls it a lie. Again, the news media simple accepts the "press release."
However, as Kincaid reports, "...turning to Page 139 of his memoir, 'Dreams,' we find that he himself (Obama) was inspired by Carmichael." While living in New York, according to Obama's book, he was in "search of some inspiration" one day and "went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and Black Power fame, speak at Columbia."
Carmichael |
During the 1960's Stokely Carmichael was recognized as one of the most violent and dangerous radicals in the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King was appalled at his coining of the phrase "Black Power" and attempted to discredit him. Carmichael was also the originator of the phrase, "Burn, Baby, Burn," as he rejoiced over the burning of American cities during the riots of the late 1960's.
In a speech at the Oakland Auditorium, February 17, 1968, Carmichael accused white Americans of harboring a goal to commit genocide on the black race. He said the nation was built on the genocide of the red man. Then the whites dropped the Atomic bomb on "some helpless yellow people in Hiroshima." He then when on to rationalize that black people were no longer needed to pick cotton in an increasingly technological America. "When the need for black people disappears, so will we, and he (the white race) will consciously wipe us out."
This is the man from whom Barack Obama - and his wife - went to for "some inspiration?" This is where the man who may soon lead our nation gets his ideas? And the nation's news media doesn't think such details warrant even a question or two? Rest assured, had Sarah Palin ever walked on the same side of the street as a member of the KKK she would now be drawn and quartered for such an "association."
These facts took me about two hours to investigate. I knew none of it before starting the effort. It wasn't hard to find. The fact is, today's news media, led by the likes of Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Keith Olbermann, Chris Mathews, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, MSNBC, and so many more, are not journalists. They do no investigation. They do not attempt to tell both sides of the story.
As this gang is tearing Sarah Palin apart because she may blunder on some specific detail as she stands in the spot light, Americans should ask the news media this question: name a single "change" that Barack Obama is advocating in his campaign of "change we can believe in." Name one, Katie Couric, and tell us how it will impact on our nation's economy and our individual lives. Charles Gibson, have you asked a single question about allegations against Democrat Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden for plagiarism? The charges were strong enough to throw him out of the presidential race a few years ago. Isn't that worth a question or two? Bias combined with ignorance is not journalism.
Americans who read or hear their nightly news reports are not informed of the issues - they are instead victims of an elitist propaganda for what the media determines to be "globally- acceptable truth." Real facts be damned.
To further make the point, consider this fact. As Ron Paul's supporters, 10,000 strong, met across town from the Republican National Convention, in a historic effort to literally found a new movement of dedicated, freedom loving activists, not a single major media outlet gave it the time of day. Had Hillary Clinton done it, the reports would have overshadowed the Democratic Convention as "monumental," "revolutionary," a "moment of hope," and an endless list of superlatives, ad nausea.
The media decide ahead of time who will get their support, based on their own political agenda. And they decide anyone who dares challenge that agenda will be ripped to shreds. The media offer themselves to be benign lap dogs for their chosen ones, and killer attack dogs for those who dare speak in opposition. And they call it journalism. The propaganda machine of Hitler's Nazi Party couldn't have done it better.
Remember that the next time you see Brian Williams, or any of his ilk, whining that the media is a hard working group of dedicated journalists who deserve our respect. Simply regurgitating someone's news release is not hard work, it's cowardice.
Tom DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center and the Editor of The DeWeese Report.
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