A few days ago, I found the CNN display of vice-President Cheney — a black “x” flashing across his face as he spoke and a headline at the bottom of the picture proclaiming: CHENEY: “I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS WRONG TO CRITICIZE” — a truly creepy example of (to put it politely) “media bias.” I thought then, and I still believe, that it was just one more example of the dark thread of evil which runs through the MSM. Only the strand seems to be assuming the proportions of a rope. One can only pray it is eventually long enough that they will all hang themselves from the pile of their own lies.
Commenters came to reassure me it was a “technical goof”, a “glitch,” etc. Michelle Malkin was pointed to as the final arbiter. Michelle says nothing to it, so nothing it is. I was skeptical, as I said at the time:
| I’m not the paranoid type except when it comes to the MSM. Too many decades of “true technical goofs” that somehow never happen to the politicians the MSM favors… | |
| …sorry, but I simply don’t believe them. Someone with better equipment than I –the political teen, I believe — had the video on just as I went to bed last night. So “the x marks the spot” went on for a while. | |
| …and Michelle Malkin is welcome to diverge from my belief; that’s okay. It doesn’t change my mind that some idjit was having a bit o’ fun… | |
| …who are you going to believe, CNN or your lying eyes? |
Well, readers, it turns out my intuition was correct. In fact, when it comes to the MSM, believe your worst intuitions because they will usually be correct, conditioned as they are by decades of lying, smearing, leaning, obfuscating and otherwise contorting the truth.
Surely a romp through one issue of the New York Times — lately known as the old Gray Whore as her numbers plummet — would convince you? If not willing to attempt that heady experience (I’m not — Shrinkwrapped does it for me), try:
- AL-Reuters
- NPR (National Palestinian Radio)
- Associated Press (Arab Press, which Wikipedia cites as having 210,000 hits regarding its slant — “slant” hell, it’s made-up news).
- And how could we leave out USA Today’s website picture of Condi Rice and her demon eyes?
- If the MSM coverage of Hurricane Katrina didn’t convince you of their mendacity, what will?
A picture, perhaps, of a reporter in a canoe “paddling” in a street flooded with three inches of water? Trying to be cute, the Today Show, just before going to a segment in which it would claim that the Administration staged its video of a conversation between the President and some soldiers, staged its own attempt to embarrass the President with the dangerous floodwaters of ace reporterette, Michelle Kosinski.
Well, Bill Quick has the story now. And you can forget the candy-land dreams of “glitches” and “goofs.” This is more in line with witches and cloven hoof:
| Unfortunately for CNN, a large number of their demographics also participate in Internet communities and Blogs, representing a large portion of their viewership and posing a threat to news cable and newspaper subscriber’s fees. | |
| Millions from across the country telephoned CNN to alert the network about an accidental “X” over the Vice President’s face, only to be told that the “X” was intentional against the present administration. |
Okay. At least they’re honest about it. Or does this represent a turning of the tide, an open break between the media’s hatred for this administration, referred to by many reasonable people as “Bush Derangement,” and their schizophrenic demand to be seen as neutral and unbiased?
They can’t have it both ways. Nor should we simply dismiss this as trivial. By itself, it would be nothing. But this disrespect, this targeting of vice-President Cheney, is part of a much larger system. And it is building. Fueled by lots of money from the Saudis, who spread their disinformation with impunity in this country, and driven by a visceral left wing hatred, this is a dangerous and growing phenomenon. Sure, this newest episode is just one stupid, sophomoric trick. But so have been many of the others.
And some are not so naïve; when Eason Jordan casually claimed that American soldiers were targeting journalists, he made the remark in off-the-cuff statement in Davos. He never expected to be called out for it, even though it was a lie, calumny against the military which defends his elitist ass. This episode is paradigmatic of the journaliste attitude to America’s foreign policy efforts. What Mr. Jordan said was not a political disagreement, it was a terrible slander of our military. We rose up against this lie and he lost his job. Deservedly so. He should have lost it years ago for his very unprofessional relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime. He sold his soul for access and hundreds of thousands of people died because of it. Unlike Duranty with Stalin in the 1930’s Mr. Jordan didn’t get away with it.
We are lied to every day and we are lied to relentlessly. The fact that we haven’t given up, the fact that we continue to make fun of them and to point out their wildly obvious biases shows that we’re in this for more than trivial pursuits. It speaks to our resiliency and to our on-going demand that the powerful media learn to discern the difference between the facts and what are merely their own opinions.
They want to be respected but they’re not because they’ve thrown away their good name repeatedly. The MSM in this country is a joke. A sick joke played at our expense. Fortunately, like Dan Rather and Mary Mapes and Eason Jordan and the photographers in Palestine who set up their “candid” pictures, and the reporters who claimed Jenin was a “massacre,” they will be uncovered and booted. But only if we keep the pressure on.
So good on you, Bill Quick. Thanks for the effort, thanks for the capture of their self-condemning audio.
And good on us, everyone of us out here who refuse to simply glance at the mayhem out the window and drive on by. “Not my problem”? The hell it’s not. It’s my country, dude. And it’s your job, you “journalists” at CNN, to present the facts — in this case, the speech being given by the vice-president — without your slimy, dangerous editorializing.
CNN has a new motto: “X” Marks The Spot. They deserve it.
One of the biggest turning points for me in my journey from knee jerk Democrat from a knee jerk family to… well, something else, was seeing the vast difference in the amount of professionalism shown by major news organizations and what I had to show working at a tiny little CSU college newspaper.
We couldn’t afford lawyers, ya see.
The news organizations are attempting to be the hand that rocks the cradle – just as I grew up nourished on 60 minutes and NBC Nightly News.
Luckily we have a different nanny in our house. My three kids read World Magazine (the version corresponding with their ages) and my 13 year old checks LGF.
I had an interesting email exchange with Aaron Brown once. I don’t like him.
“Fueled by lots of money from the Saudis, who spread their disinformation with impunity in this country“
—
Why would they do that? Aren’t they our friends and allies?
“Talibans with Oil and a Good P.R. Company“
THanks, Doug!
The Baron printed that out for me today and I plan to post on it…got sidetracked by the last two posts…
The one you link to is the real deal, though.
Happy T’giving, Doug — I was just sure someone would pick up on that comment and make it paranoid. Now I realize it reflects my reading earlier this morning…
…as if we didn’t already know it. The slave owner in Colorado is up on terrorist charges now…I need to get to that one, too.
So many egregious stories. So little bandwidth…
airforcewife:
It’s a long, slow journey, isn’t it? On Neighborhood of God, I was reminiscing about Thanksgivings Past and remembered I tried Susan What’s Her Name’s (on NPR)cranberry sauce recipe one year. I loved it but no one else did.
Now I haven’t heard that station in years. Except for jazz on Saturday nights.
Confusion. When I click on the “Shrinkwrapped” link in the post, I get a FORBIDDEN 403 error. Clicking on the comments, I see a lot of them have disappeared. Then when I click (on the comments page) to show the original post, I get a different link to Shrinkwrapped that does not reveal the quote Dymphna put on the home page of Gates of Vienna.
It sure looks as if technical problems are getting in the way.
Reading that CNN admitted “…the X was intentional and against the present admistration” hit me pretty hard. This would be the first candid open admission to the public that CNN is a politically motivated propaganda organization devoted to, among other things, bringing down the Bush administration. (Other such admissions have been leaked, such as the infamous ABC memo that told staffers that ethical reporting was not required, given that Bush was up for re-election and obviously had to be defeated.)
If CNN actually told people the X on Cheney was a political statement, then the arguments over media bias have just exploded into declared, admitted and very open war.
Up to now, the liars have insisted they are reporters, not propagandists. Now CNN is claimed to have broken ranks and admitted its frankly adversarial role.
Or….?
My view is that if CNN did in fact tell people the X was deliberate, political and expressive of network policy, this will precipitate a seismic event with virtually no precedent in US history.
If this is what we face, and I hope very much that it is because I want to be part of the army that tears CNN to shreds, facts are absolutely required. No laundry list of past deceits and bias will suffice: what is absolutely essential is the solid evidence that CNN told the public that it has gone to war with the Bush administration, and that CNN will use tactics of all sorts to discredit and defeat its enemy.
Proof. Facts. So where do we get them?
It would be great if the links on Gates of Vienna were working properly; this declaration of war must be verified or shown to be an empty rumor.
I would like to see the comments restored, as well. It is not a good idea to allow the appearance of censorship to creep in and raise doubts, now is it? That’s what CNN did when it made sure nobody could ever view that videotape of Eason Jordan shooting his mouth off.
Now I’m off to try to find information on other websites.
I erred in my post: the 403 Forbidden Error is what I get when I click on the link to Bill Quick’s weblog, not what comes up when I click on “Shrinkwrapped.” The Shrinkwrapped link does not lead to info on CNN and the X. Mea culpa, and sorry to have mixed those two up!!
I can’t get through to dailypundit at all; all I get is 403 Forbidden Error. Maybe later it will clear up.
Meanwhile I see nothing else on this event anywhere. The claim is, according to the quote from Quick as presented on Gates of Vienna, that “Millins from across the country telephoned CNN…(and were) told that ‘X’ was intentional against the present administration.”
OK, we have millions of earwitnesses, then, who were clearly and explicitly told that CNN has declared war. This should be easy to establish.
One nagging thought: remember Mad Mary Mapes…..who knew Bush was AWOL from the Air Guard…..knew she could prove it……..
Zwergle-
The comment about Shrinkwrapped: I probably shouldn’t have linked to him at all since it seems to have confused the issue. HOwever, he writes a lot about the MSM and since I mentioned his name, I thought a link was in order just on general principles.
The remark about his “reading the NYT so I wouldn’t have to” was a response he made to me once when I inquired how he could bear to read that stuff…we’ve tossed it back and forth and for a long time.
Then, a few months back we put up an illustration of a brain on our sidebar with a link to Shrinkwrapped and that same quote: “He reads the New York Times So You Don’t Have To..” It was just friendly banter.
I think we ended up replacing it with the OSM trademark but now that has to change…
…so maybe you didn’t happen to be reading our blog when that thing was up — it was big and colorful and hard to miss…
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I just tried the Bill Quick link and it worked. THere was probably a lot of traffic since he was the first one to really get the info.
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I’m unclear about what you mean about comments. Is that the comments here? We were away so we couldn’t have deleted any…thought we’d have computer access but we didn’t.
If it’s the comments here you couldn’t access it’s definitely a blooger goof, not ours.
Hope you found the info you needed.
1. Link to Bill Quick does not work for me; I continue to get 403 Forbidden error. I also tried the link posted in the left margin of Gates of Vienna(to dailypundit) and got the Forbidden error there, as well. I have no explanation; maybe someone else knows what is going on?
2. There were quite a few comments on the original post, beginning with my brief note pointing out that Michelle Malkin’s site contained information on the X. Those comments included a later, rather long one from me. Perhaps ten comments in that original thread have disappeared.
Michelle Malkin had little to say about the X, and merely passed along comments and information from folks who claimed to know something. This discussion is not to be interpreted as a dispute between Gates of Vienna and Michelle; that should be clear to anyone reading Michelle’s site.
If in fact “millions” of people called CNN and were told the X was deliberate political commentary, there is a lot of evidence available to show what happened and why. For now, I hope that everyone will simply take the attitude that not enough is known yet, and that we need to withhold judgment on this particular incident.
The record of media bias, deceit, lies, distortion and refusal to report news that is not politically correct is overwhelming. That much is known and agreed upon. I find it distressing that I must point out that none of this is evidence that the CNN X was malicious. The X could have been a technical goof, and there is evidence to support that explanation. May I respectfully suggest that the comments on Michelle’s site do deserve to be read?
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003970.htm
Zwergele — I just tested our Bill Quick/Daily Pundit links 3 times, and they work fine; I can bring up his whole blog.
Unfortunately, your difficulties are not connected with our blog or our links. There may be problems with your computer, or there may be problems with your ISP. If the latter — are they connecting you properly to a reliable DNS?
But I’m not enough of an expert to troubleshoot any better than that.
Do any of our expert readers have any ideas to help Zwergele?
Update: friends both here where I am (Bangkok) and in the USA have confirmed that the dailypundit site is easily accessible. No other website fails for me — so it’s just one of those things we’ll never figure out, and the problem might stop any minute. (Could be something in my satellite link; that’s a convenient thing to blame because it’s relatively arcane, sarcastic grin.) Meanwhile I have requested the web pages be forwarded to me from the USA.
I continue to be amazed that this story has received such paltry coverage, but will have to suspend judgment until I read Quick’s final remarks, which were linked to by Instapundit.
Doubtless when I know more, I’ll have more to say. I always do….
I finally got Bill Quick’s full version of events, and I suggest a visit to his website will show that the current post here on Gates of Vienna is not correct.
It is not the case that “millions…telephoned CNN…(and) were told that X was intentional against the present administration.” At most, one person made a remark like that to one or more callers; anyone who got through to that idiot also heard a recording saying that he did not speak for CNN. So the guy who created the “prank” X was supposedly exposed and fired; it was in all probability an act of malice, and not a technical glitch.
Read it all at http://dailypundit.com and make up your own mind.
I conclude that CNN has NOT openly declared war on the Bush administration. The struggle remains just as dishonest, deceitful and dirty as ever.