Author Topic: Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS from glass house  (Read 655 times)

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Offline Dali Llama

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Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS from glass house
« on: October 05, 2004, 12:42:02 PM »
Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS from glass houses

By Edward Olshaker
 
 OpEdNews.com
Predictably, the most passionate expressions of outrage over CBS’s forged-document error have come from some of the media’s most brazen fabricators—yet no one seems to have noticed the breathtaking hypocrisy and double standard.
 
A derisive radio commentary by Rush Limbaugh—posted on his website under the title “CrackinÂ’ Dan Has History of Shoddy Reporting—compares the CBS mistake to the crimes of Watergate, asking, “Is there a cancer growing at CBS? Is the problem limited to Dan Rather? Â… Is this how CBS operates? Is it the top-down philosophy of Dan Rather, this cancer on CBS? Has it affected everybody?”  (Last year, Limbaugh displayed the same kind of outrage over reporter Jayson BlairÂ’s falsehoods, righteously declaring that the New York Times “has suffered blow after blow when it comes to its integrity and competence,” and indignantly complaining, “Look at how long they were able to tolerate this behavior in the name of diversity.”)
 
Remarkably, this outspoken critic of “shoddy reporting” is the same man who, on March 10, 1994, urgently warned his audience, “Brace yourselves,” and then shared a report “that claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton…”
 
As recounted at fair.org (Extra!, July/August 1994), “Limbaugh took this baseless rumor from a small insiders’ newsletter and broadcast it to his radio audience of millions, adding his own new inaccuracies: The newsletter did not report—as Limbaugh claimed—that Foster was murdered, or that the apartment was owned by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Limbaugh’s repetition of an unfounded rumor has been credited (Chicago Tribune, 3/11/94; Newsweek, 3/21/94) with contributing to a plunge in the stock market on the day it was aired.”
 
Questioned about his falsehood on a Ted Koppel ABC Viewpoint special on media coverage of the Whitewater scandal, Limbaugh responded with yet another lie, claiming, “Never have I suggested that this was murder.”  Unlike other figures in the media who have been caught spreading false stories, Limbaugh did not lose his job;  instead, later that same year he would be honored as keynote speaker at the “freshman orientation” for incoming Republican U.S. Representatives, who, exceedingly starstruck in the presence of the mediaÂ’s number-one fabricator, lined up to have their picture taken with him.  
 
A less-known but more outrageous falsehood was Limbaugh’s claim that the motion-triggered car bomb that wounded environmentalists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland on May 24, 1990, shortly after they received a flurry of death threats, was a weapon that they were transporting with the intention of committing a terrorist act In reality, the investigation of the blast by the district attorney had found that it was an assassination attempt on the two nonviolent activists (something that was obvious early on to anyone with common sense—how likely is it that any real terrorist would plant a motion-triggered bomb under his or her car seat and then drive the car?). Unable to find any real evidence of criminality commensurate with his emotion-based hatred of the two left-wing activists, but determined nevertheless to declare them guilty no matter what, Limbaugh resorted to the only remaining alternative—outright fiction.
 
The timing of this defamatory lie—March 3, 1997, one day after Bari died of breast cancer, leaving behind two young daughters—was convenient for Limbaugh, who no longer had to be concerned that she might defend herself. For good measure, Limbaugh crossed the line of decency and humanity by making joke after joke about Bari Â’s painful, untimely death in the same broadcast. If CBSÂ’s mistake justifies a massive letter-writing campaign calling for Rather to be pulled off the air, then surely there is ample reason to protest the slanderous falsehoods spread by Limbaugh on this and other occasions.  His bosses at the Clear Channel Communications Corporate Board are: Lowry Mays, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, LLowryMays@clearchannel.com; and Mark Mays, President and Chief Operating Officer, MarkPMays@clearchannel.com.


Entire books have been written detailing LimbaughÂ’s falsehoods, with one in particular, The BumÂ’s Rush: The Selling of Environmental Backlash, by Don Trent Jacobs, focusing strictly on his long trail of inaccuracies regarding the environment. Yet Limbaugh has been featured on Nightline as an environmental expert, debating Al Gore on the subject. He has appeared as a news commentator on Meet the Press, This Week, and other programs, and has written columns for publications such as Newsweek and the New York Times.  He is treated as a respected journalist—but one who enjoys immunity from the professionÂ’s standards, for reasons that have never been explained.
 
In a similar vein, syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan demanded, “Where is the outrage?…Where is the righteous rage of Dan Rather at the forgers of faked military records of George W. Bush, who played him for a fool?…While CBS probably did not know the documents it used were blatant forgeries, it is guilty of having aired a bigoted, misleading attack ad on George Bush masquerading as an investigative report.”
 
But whatever merit there might be to BuchananÂ’s criticism of CBS, he is hardly in good standing to point a finger, in light of his own long and ugly history of politically motivated journalistic deception and outright lies, going back to his days as a St. Louis Globe Democrat editorial writer.  As Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) note in Wizards of Media Oz, “The FBI used ‘media assetsÂ’ to plant smear stories in the press—some insinuating that King was a Soviet agent.  One FBI media asset against King in the early 1960s was Patrick Buchanan…”
 
The defamation campaign that used “assets” such as Buchanan was one of a variety of weapons employed by Hoover ’s FBI to achieve its declared goal of “neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.” Other tactics included extensive surveillance, disruption of King’s efforts through dirty tricks, planting of informants, and even a blackmail attempt in which the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize recipient was urged to commit suicide “before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation”—tragic proof that the FBI literally wanted King dead.
 
Years after King was no longer a “threat,” Buchanan candidly described how he had misrepresented FBI-supplied propaganda as his own original journalism. In his autobiography, Right From the Beginning, he proudly recalled how he misled readers, bragging that “We were among Hoover ’s conduits to the American people” in the effort to preserve white supremacy and destroy Dr. King.
 
But this was far from BuchananÂ’s worst journalistic offense.  In his March 17, 1990, syndicated column, he denied that diesel gas could have possibly killed 850,000 Jews at Treblinka.
 
“The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody,” Buchanan wrote. “In 1988, ninety-seven kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington , D.C. , tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after forty-five minutes.”  Insanely equating a well-ventilated subway with an airtight room designed as a death chamber, Buchanan concluded, “Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill,” and, for good measure, mocked Holocaust survivors as liars with “group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.”
 
When The New Republic asked for the source of his information, Buchanan replied, “Somebody sent it to me.” The magazine's investigation of his sources found that “much of the material on which Buchanan bases his column is sent to him by pro-Nazi, anti-semitic cranks.”
 
Dan Rather unwittingly used a phony document in a report and got pilloried for it.  Buchanan lied about the Holocaust and ran for President of the United States two years later, a campaign during which the “character issue” would be raised by the media—but only about Bill Clinton.   Buchanan ran again in 1996, a campaign memorable for his victory in the New Hampshire primary as well as the astounding “information” posted on his website—that the Israeli Mossad, whose agents included First Lady Hillary Clinton and White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, had murdered Foster.  Even in his weakest presidential run, representing the Reform Party in 2000, Buchanan was significant enough to take in 17 million of our tax dollars in federal matching funds.  Despite his record of malicious smears and crackpot falsehoods, Buchanan never lost his status as a powerful insider, serving three presidents and maintaining high visibility as a respected journalist on television and in print.    
 
Columnist and television personality Ann Counter eagerly chimed in with her own outrage over what she labeled “forgery-gate.”  Yet her characterization of the networkÂ’s transgressions is also a fitting description of her own error-packed best-seller Slander.  She wrote, for example, “Conservatives do not stoop to name-calling.  Liberals do it all the time;” yet elsewhere in the book she calls Jim Jeffords a “half-wit,” Katie Couric “Eva Braun,” and Christie Todd Whitman a “birdbrain” and a “dimwit.” Nor does she mention that name-calling was official conservative policy when House Speaker Newt GingrichÂ’s organization, GOPAC, distributed a list of negative words that he urged GOP candidates to use to label their Democratic opponents.  Â“The words and phrases are powerful,” the memo said.  Â“Read them.  Memorize as many as possible.  And remember that, like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”  The recommended terms included “sick,” “bizarre,” “pathetic,” “lie,” “betray,” “traitors,” “disgrace,” and “criminal rights,” among others.
 
Coulter also wrote, “Jim Jeffords always votes for higher taxes,” although in fact he voted against Clinton Â’s tax hike and for George W. BushÂ’s tax cut.  She alleged that The New York Times, motivated by liberal elitist bias, was virtually alone in failing to carry the news of racecar driver Dale EarnhardtÂ’s death on the front page;  in reality, the Times carried the news on page 1 the day after Earnhardt died.  Many more of CoulterÂ’s emotion-driven fibs have been compiled by dailyhowler.com, mediawhoresonline.com, Scoobie Davis Online, spinsanity.com, Joe Conason in Salon.com, and Tapped, the weblog of The American Prospect.  
 
Weekly columns by both Buchanan and Coulter are featured at worldnetdaily.com, the influential website run by Joseph Farah, so there was striking irony in FarahÂ’s recent complaint that “Rather not only practices bad journalism, but he does it with a purpose, with an agenda, with a missionÂ…Now nobody believes Dan Rather. Nobody believes CBS News. That's great because there is no reason to believe them. They have squandered any credibility they had.”  If accuracy is really a crucial concern for Farah, then he might appreciate a reminder that BuchananÂ’s history of Holocaust denial and journalistic fraud, and CoulterÂ’s hate-driven inaccuracies, render them unworthy of being carried on his website.  He welcomes reader feedback at Jfarah@worldnetdaily.com.  
 
 Unlike CBSÂ’s careless error, the fictions disseminated by prominent right-wing serial liars are malicious, designed to incite hatred against fellow Americans disparaged repeatedly by Limbaugh as “human debris”—minorities, the poor, environmentalists, womenÂ’s rights advocates, homosexuals, and anyone who questions George W. Bush.  
 
Unlike Dan Rather, they are rewarded and celebrated instead of condemned.  According to an Associated Press article last year, “The success of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and other conservative authors has led many publishers to turn more to the right.”  The story describes how the Book-of-the-Month Club, Penguin Putnam, and the Crown Publishing Group all announced the formation of new divisions devoted to “conservative” books similar to Slander and The Savage Nation.
 
And they neednÂ’t worry about being taken to task by influential media analysts such as Howard Kurtz, who has supported Limbaugh in his column—maintaining that the hate-radio icon is by definition a “mainstream” journalist because he did election-night coverage on NBC with Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert —while showing no interest in exploring his long history of falsehoods, even as he devotes column after column to CBSÂ’s negligence.  This truly bewildering double standard will only encourage some of the mediaÂ’s most flagrant fabricators to continue their pattern of journalistic fraud.
 
Edward Olshaker is a longtime freelance journalist whose work has appeared in History News Network, TomPaine.com, CrisisPapers.org, and the New York Times.
AKA "Blademan52" from Marlin Talk

Offline magooch

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Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2004, 03:45:41 AM »
What is so hard to understand about the difference between a news person and an entertainer.  

I don't think it is too much to expect a news reporter to be as factual as possible.  When they do inevitably make a mistake, it should be owned up to.  

Entertainers are not under the same obligations as news people and the readers and listeners know, or should know the difference.  I do find it interesting that liberal entertainers are much more likely to be given a pass on their exaggerations.
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Offline TomVan

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Thanks to Rush!
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2004, 12:17:25 PM »
We have much to thank Rush Limbaugh for.  Rush led the way in exposing the mainstream media's liberal bias.  He also created a forum and atmosphere that helped get conservatives out of their shell and actively involved in the political movement.  He exposed the Democratic party's departure from the issues of the working man to their embracing of liberal ideals.  The vast majority of the working class were hard working individuals, with solid moral values, that just wanted to recieve what was rightfully theirs.  They weren't looking for handouts or someone to tell them what to think.  Rush has energized those who listen and exposed the truth of the direction the democratic party is heading.  I was a democrat until the democratic party left me.  Thanks to Rush, I reviewed the Federalist papers and saw for myself the intent of the framers of the Constitution and their dream for this nation.  The Republican party is far from perfect but it has given us a great President in George W. Bush!  God bless him and this nation.

Offline DPRinks

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Ran Dither
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2004, 03:42:03 PM »
Gentlemen;
Ran Dither is a serious embarrassment to Texas, Rot Limburger should be in Federal Prison as a drug dealer, considering the amount of drugs he illegally purchased, notice , today the police were justified in getting the records of his multiple, simultaneous purchases of drugs from many sources.
The sign of a drug abuser, in passing , how many wives has he had?
A great advertisement for family oriented , conservative causes.
Buchannon was just a bad joke, Bill is just a cheap pol and sex fiend, Hillary is an anticonstitution freak, as are her good buddies Diane, Teddy and John, I went to the same school that shaped W, Odessa, fortunately, after 1 year we moved to Big Spring and I recovered, mostly.
In Odessa, they can play football, but in next door Midland , they can even spell it.
It is said, you get the government you deserve, have we really been this bad?
Don
D. Rinks

Offline Mauser

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Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2004, 10:39:32 PM »
To compare Limbaugh, Bucannon, and Coulter to Dan Rather is just another demonstration of how the truth is the most endangered resource today.  These folks have never, ever said they are unbiased journalists.  They all admit to a point of view and an agenda.  Dan Rather and the rest of the mainstream media consistently deny a bias.  That distinction is never mentioned.  

I don't agree with everything Limbaugh, et al say, but I at least know where they are coming from.  The fact that the New York Times, for example, holds itself out as unbiased is a joke.  

I could care less what Peter Jenning's politics are and I don't care if that makes it into his broadcasts (which only an idiot or someone with an agenda would deny) but what bothers me is that he and the rest won't admit it.

The "conservative media" is still, despite what liberals and mainstream journalists would say, dwarfed by the "liberal media."  With the exception of Fox, the conservative media are also willing to be honest about their point of view.  All one needs to do is go to any university with a journalism school to find out that the journalism or communications students there aren't exactly lining up to vote Republican or libertarian but rather are conflicted about Nader vs Kerry.

Offline magooch

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Re: Ran Dither
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2004, 03:19:25 AM »
Quote from: DPRinks
Gentlemen;
Ran Dither is a serious embarrassment to Texas, Rot Limburger should be in Federal Prison as a drug dealer, considering the amount of drugs he illegally purchased, notice , today the police were justified in getting the records of his multiple, simultaneous purchases of drugs from many sources.
 
What Rush Limbaugh did is inexcusable, but to say that he is just like any other drug dealer or addict, doesn't begin to tell the whole story.  

Rush got addicted to pain killers because of a neck problem.  There is an operation that might be successful in alleviating his pain, but it involves going in through his throat.  This operation is treacherous at best and there is no guarantee of total success.  It isn't too hard to understand that a person who makes his living by talking, would be a little reluctant to have an operation that involves his throat.  A friend of mine had this operation and it put him out of commission for quite a while.
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Offline powderman

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Right-wing media stars hurl grenades at CBS
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2004, 03:25:40 AM »
MAGOOCH. I agree Sir. POWDERMAN.  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)
Mr. Charles Glenn “Charlie” Nelson, age 73, of Payneville, KY passed away Thursday, October 14, 2021 at his residence. RIP Charlie, we'll will all miss you. GB

Only half the people leave an abortion clinic alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAiOEV0v2RM
What part of ILLEGAL is so hard to understand???
I learned everything about islam I need to know on 9-11-01.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDqmy1cSqgo
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