16: More on Kerry...

EVENT

Right about now, Democrats don't want Sen. John Kerry's snakebit support. The senator's "botched joke" about bad students getting stuck in Iraq unleashed venomous GOP reaction.

What do we suppose the source of this quote is? Is it a conservative blog? Is it Fox News? No. It's CNN.com. Their front page. To continue on, looking at the headlines and the quotations surrounding this situation, it's one of the most emphatic blatant examples I've ever seen that America is not burdened with a "liberal media" -- that, in fact, our media is at the very best so profit-oriented as to be contextually aloof and at the worst to be be filled with conscious effort in favor of conservatives.

That Kerry's comment was not directed at American troops is almost painfully obvious... to anyone who has the benefit of either general skepticism or reasonable reportage. I benefited from the latter... when my mom sent me the original Yahoo! News article, I went to the New York Times and read their account. This was yesterday, just shortly after the story first broke. The Times presented the Kerrey quote in its original context: that it had followed on a series of depricatory comments about Bush. It then followed with the backlash from the White House (c.f. Snow), including the entirety of his rationale, and then gave the same treatment to Senator McCain's comments, Kerry's two rebuttals, and ultimately Bush's own argument.

It may be observed, and probably fairly, that the New York Times is a case of a liberally-biased newspaper. Any newspaper whatsoever that is going to even bother with an editorial page will have to choose some arguments and pass over others, and when that is extended to journalists' and publishers' own views, a critical reader will have to accept the presence of bias.

Nevertheless, bias is not the same as journalistic reletivism. What the New York Times did for both liberal and conservative parties was select a headline and byline suggesting the essence of the situation (at this moment "As Vote Nears, Stances on War set off Sparks") and present the arguments of both sides with inclusion of the situations in which the arguments were made. This is fundamentally more an issue of journalistic integrity than it is of talent, and a certain amount of rigor here is why the Times can be quite fairly described as one of that nation's very best newspapers, regardless of what its editorial scruples may be.

But many of its media peers have not held themselves to such high standards.

Here then, is something you can do, and ought to. Look at NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, Fox, and any other news distributor that is responsible for diseminating information to a large number of people. Also look to your local periodicals: the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the London Times, the Flint Journal, whatever. While it is clear with but a moment of circumspection who Kerry was really addressing in his comments, you don't have to write and defend him.

Why?

Because any newspaper presenting the Kerry situation without providing context of one position necessary to understand its position, while providing a robust argument for the oppositing position is ACTIVELY exercising bias, is ACTIVELY promoting the interests of the latter, is ACTIVELY seeking to damage the former, and thereby guilty of LIBEL.

And LIBEL is ILLEGAL.

No well-worded condemnation can be too vigorous in this debate.

All I ask is that you send an email.

END OF POST.