National news media biases?

My book—The Black Sword: The Secret U.S. Army in Vietnam—is available by mail (not yet in book stores). See post on July 31, 2008 entitled The Black Sword.

I suggest you check out the following website if you are a policy holder of Farmers Insurance Group or thinking about having them insure you in any capacity: www.farmersinsurancegroupsucks.com




https://affiliates.visionforum.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=367


The above link is for a company—Vision Forum—that provides unique products for the family. I am an affiliate for the company and receive a small commission whenever someone uses this link and then makes an unreturned purchase while using the link. Check it out. I think you might like the products offered. I do. See my more complete explanation on my post of February 1, 2008 entitled “Affiliate program with Vision Forum.”

Based upon past historical data: 3,287+ UNBORN BABY MURDERS have occurred in the last 24 hours in the United States. See my post “BABY HOLOCAUST” posted January 22, 2008.

I’ve been involved in a problem one of my clients has with Farmers Insurance Group. My previous posts in relation to this problem were:

September 10, 2007 post: “Beware of Farmers Insurance Group”
September 11, 2007 post: “Farmers Insurance Group’s response”
September 18, 2007 post: “Farmers Insurance Company received the requested list”
September 19, 2007 post: “Farmers Insurance Company’s response to the list”
October 16, 2007 post: “Farmers Insurance Group and my request for information”
November 27, 2007 post: “Farmers Insurance Group does not respond to my request”
January 11, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group latest stall”
January 12, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group is sent a response”
January 14, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group pays some money”
January 19, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group continues to be obstinate”
January 26, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group receives another request”
February 11, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group shows how low they will go?”
February 12, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group: If I were going to respond to the final letter”
February 13, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group and associated companies”
February 14, 2008 post: “Farmers Insurance Group and how others rate the company”

I will not be continuing my Creationism posts today. I do not plan to get to them until after the general election in November.

I do plan to discuss Iraq before the election. I am sorry for the change in plans. Plans, in reality, often are altered for one reason or another. “The best laid plans … often go astray.” Thank you for your understanding and patience.

How many unborn toddlers were murdered today because of the humanistic, paganish, barbaric decisions of the United States Supreme Court?

Stop the
Murder of
Unborn
Toddlers

“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4: 17 (NIV)

www.farmersinsurancegroupsucks.com

www.childpredators.com

www.lifedynamics.com

www.libertylegal.org

www.alliancedefensefund.org

www.searchtv.org

I have received one comment concerning my post dealing with flag burning which I hope to respond to in the next couple of days. However, because of time restraints and what I hope to cover, it may be the only time I respond to a comment from now to the election. At this time, comments are still welcome—just don’t expect me to necessarily respond.

The following is from a post done in 2005. I have expanded the original post and added a paragraph at the end.

Thursday, December 1, 2005 Public Opinion Polls

I have been reading the book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News written by Bernard Goldberg (Regnery Publishing, Inc.; One Massachusetts Avenue, NW; Washington, D.C. 20001; © 2001.) The major premise of the book is that the national mass media in general and TV news in particular has a strong liberal bias (not a surprise to an individual who actually does any critical thinking). He was a CBS news correspondent and said he is a liberal Democrat.

We know how the media loves to use public opinion polls and surveys especially ones that support their own biases. Mr. Goldberg identifies some opinion poll results that I doubt you will find too many reporters reporting, on the air or in newspapers. Of course, they select what is news worthy and what is not news worthy. Here are some selected quotes from his book.

“In 1985 the Los Angeles Times conducted a nation-wide survey of about three thousand journalists and the same number of people in the general public to see how each group felt about the major issues of the day:

1) 23 percent of the public said they were liberal; 55 percent of the journalists described themselves as liberal.

2) 56 percent of the public favored Ronald Reagan; 30 percent of the journalists favored Reagan.

3) 49 percent of the public was for a woman’s right to have an abortion; 82 percent of the journalists were pro-choice.

4) Seventy four percent of the public was for prayer in public schools; 25 percent of journalists surveyed were for prayer in the public schools.

5) 56 percent of nonjournalists were for affirmative action; 81 percent of the journalists were for affirmative action.” (page 126)

“… in 1996, the Freedom Forum and the Roper Center released the results of a now famous survey of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents.” (page 123)

“What these two groups found was that Washington journalists are far more liberal and far more Democratic than the typical American voter:

1) 89 percent of the journalists said they voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, compared with just 43 percent of non-journalist voters.

2) 7 percent of the journalists voted for George Bush; 37 percent of the voters did.

3) 2 percent of the news people voted for Ross Perot while 19 percent of the electorate did.” (page 123)

“What party do journalists identify with?

1) 50 percent said they were Democrats.

2) 4 percent said they were Republicans.

When they were asked, ‘How do you characterize your political orientation?’ 61 percent said ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate to liberal.’ Only 9 percent said they were ‘conservative’ or ‘moderate to conservative.’” (page 124)

The following are quotes also given in the book about the above survey which I did not use in the original post:

“After the survey came out, the Washington Post media writer, Howard Kurtz, said on Fox News Sunday, ‘Clearly anybody looking at those numbers, if they are even close to accurate, would conclude that there is a diversity problem in the news business, and it’s not just the kind of diversity we usually talk about, which is getting enough minorities in the news business, but political diversity, as well. Anybody who doesn’t see that is just in denial.’” (page 124)

“James Glassman put it this way in the Washington Post: ‘The people who report the stories are liberal Democrats. This is the shameful open secret of American journalism. That the press itself … chooses to gloss over it is conclusive evidence of how pernicious the bias is.’” (page 124)

“Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says, ‘Bias is the elephant in the living room. We’re in denial about it and don’t want to admit it’s there. We think it’s less of a problem than the public does, and we just don’t want to get into it.’” (page 124)

“Even Newsweek’s Evan Thomas (the one who thought Ronald Reagan had ‘a kind of intuitive idiot genius’) has said, ‘There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic; they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias.’” (pages 124-125)

Back to my original post:

“A poll back in 1972 showed that of those reporters who voted, 70 percent went for McGovern, the most liberal presidential nominee in recent memory, while 25 percent went for Nixon—the same Richard Nixon who carried every single state in the union except Massachusetts.” (page 125)

If you have bothered to read the editorials written by employees of the Peoria Journal Star (I generally don’t unless they deal with the murder of the unborn, religion, homosexuality, or similar moral, value related issues), I ask this question. How would you identify their political philosophy? Conservative, conservative to moderate, moderate, moderate to liberal, or liberal. Do the views represented in the local editorials reflect the views of the majority of the individuals in central Illinois? Do they represent your views?

This is more material from the book:

“On April 14, 1999, I sat in on a CBS Weekend News conference call from a speakerphone in the Miami bureau. It’s usually a routine call with CBS News producers all over the country taking part, telling the show producers in New York about the stories coming up in their territories that weekend. Roxanne Russell, a longtime producer out of the Washington bureau, was telling about an event that Gary Bauer would be attending. Bauer was the conservative, family-values activist who seven days later would announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.

Bauer was no favorite of the cultural left, who saw him as an annoying right-wing moralist. Ann Quindlen, the annoying left-wing moralist and columnist who writes for Newsweek, once called him ‘a man best known for trying to build a bridge to the 19th century.’

So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I heard next, but I was. Without a trace of timidity, without any apparent concern for potential consequences, Roxanne Russell, sitting at a desk inside the CBS News Washington bureau, nonchalantly referred to this conservative activist as ‘Gary Bauer, the little nut from the Christian group.’

The little nut from the Christian group!

Those were her exact words, uttered at exactly 12:36 P.M. If any of the CBS News producers on the conference call were shocked, not one of them gave a clue. Roxanne Russell had just called Gary Bauer, the head of a major group of American Christians, ‘the little nut from the Christian group’ and merrily went on with the rest of her list of events CBS News in Washington would be covering.

What struck me was not the obvious disrespect for Bauer. Journalists, being as terribly witty and sophisticated as we are, are always putting someone down. Religious people are especially juicy targets. In a lot of newsrooms, they’re seen as odd and viewed with suspicion because their lives are shaped by faith and devotion to God and an adherence to rigid principles—opposition to abortion, for one—that seem archaic and close-minded to a lot of journalists who, survey after survey suggests, are not especially religious themselves.

So it wasn’t the hostility to Bauer in and of itself that threw me. It was the lack of concern of any kind in showing that disrespect so openly. Producers from CBS News bureaus all over the country were on the phone. And who knows who else was listening, just as I was.

So I wondered: would a network news producer ever make such a disparaging remark, so openly, about the head of a Jewish group? Or a gay group? Or a black group?” (pages 127-128)

The following is the first sentence in chapter 12 which is entitled “Liberal Hate-Speech.” “If arrogance were a crime, there wouldn’t be enough jail cells in the entire United States to hold all the people in TV news.” (page 179)

Remember during the 2004 election, when Dan Rather broke the “news story” that CBS had conclusive documents that President George W. Bush never completed his service in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam Conflict? Did you ever wonder how a junior Senator from Illinois who had served in the U.S. Senate for just over two years when he announced his run for the Presidency of the United States was so completely catapulted into the national limelight and eventually won the nomination from the wife of a former President? Do you think he may have had some help from the national media?

Do you think the national media scrutinized him the way they have already begun to scrutinize Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin? Do you think they researched him as well as they did John Edwards who two years ago was accused by the National Inquirer of having an extramarital affair? Which national media do you expect to be present over the next two months? Where are the national media’s biases?