"The conservatives have got us, as a country, now believing that balance -- giving both sides -- is the same as truth, and there are some things that are just false," said Linda Foley, president of The Newspaper Guild, during a panel discussion on media reform at the "Take Back America" conference in Washington, D.C.
In other events at the panel at the conference in DC, people talked about the misinformation about John Kerry.
An audience member wondered how the press should have dealt with attacks on the military record of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Panelist Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a group dedicated to exposing "conservative misinformation" in the media, said something similar probably will happen in the 2008 campaign.
Gee, misinformation like being in Cambodia in Christmas of 1968 changing your life? Nope, that was from Kerry himself. Tales of CIA ferrying in one of the noisiest boats in the service and a magic hat from a CIA operative? Nope, liberal stuff again. Boy, Paul, you certainly are crazy.
Now, if you want to talk about liberal misinformation, let's see--Bush paid for an abortion (no evidence), Bush was AWOL (no evidence, well we have some fake documents that some call fake but accurate), Bush knew about 9/11 in advance (courtesy of the DNC chair), and other sundry loads of crap. I see nothing about conservative misinformation. Oh, Paul, could you mean voted for it before voted against it? Sorry, that came from the candidate himself.
Waldman continues in lunacy:
"We don't know exactly what form it will take because we don't know who the candidate will be, but there will be something similar," he predicted. According to Waldman, "Democrats could raise George Patton from the grave and he'd be attacked as weak and unpatriotic."
But they could only have raised him from the dead if Kerry and Edwards would have won, as John Edwards claimed they could do with Chris Reeve. But wait, the madness in the echo chamber of the left continues:
While noting that many media outlets did the right thing regarding the Swift Boat Veterans' claims, Waldman said "they did it too late.
He is right. The media didn't even start reporting the charges until they had been out for over a month or so on the blogosphere, and could have actually investigated them rather than seek to besmirch them before checking them.
Now the descent into madness:
Media Matters for America describes its mission as "monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," but it also has another goal, Waldman said. The group also aims to "discredit the right-wing media," he said.
Funny, I thought such a job would be to report the facts, to tell the truth. Yet nowhere do you see anything about the truth, rather, you see discrediting and "correcting." Interesting, isn't it? Sounds like something out of Goebbels. But wait, there is more craziness ahead:
Some audience members asked how the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio can be "protected from political bias."
"This is another one of those cases where no one had really thought of injecting this kind of political bias before the Bush administration did," Waldman replied.
"One of their greatest political strengths is audacity," he added, noting that in a different administration, "someone would have said, 'We really shouldn't do that. We're going to get criticized.' And their response is: 'Who cares? We're going to do it anyway.'
"So now, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is financing secret studies on [retired PBS broadcaster] Bill Moyers and putting pressure to politicize CPB to 'turn' PBS and NPR," Waldman stated.
Excuse me, anyone who has listened or been forced to watch PBS (outside of Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, two faves)or NPR could tell it had a left wing bent. I mean, BILL MOYERS USED TO GET DIRTY INFO ON BARRY GOLDWATER'S WORKERS FOR LBJ FROM THE FBI! He was a plumber for LBJ! He called Sean Hannity ponography! Come on! Listen to most of NPR and you get little beside death toll in Iraq and Bush is evil. Mr. Waldman is showing his own self-loathing projection. Seeking balance is only fair. It is only right, that something with public money should represent the public, not the lunatic fringe. PBS hasn't had conservative programming since Firing Line with Bill Buckley went off the air.
Get out of the echo chamber....come out into the light...see reality...OR
continue to pass the bong around the shadows.
