It’s fun how the Internet now makes it possible to see how liberal media bias works. Today’s case in point is a Reuters wire service dispatch about a survey of church-going Americans. The original article starts with this lede:
Church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey released on Saturday. At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others—even at the risk of offending someone.
Notice the keyword in there? “Intolerant.” Something tells me that most people would hesitate to call themselves “intolerant” (except for curmudgeons like me who hold it as a badge of honor.)
Wire service stories aren’t just published on their own web sites. They’re supposed to be picked up by subscribing media organizations an published by them. Those media organs are allowed to edit for style and correct errors. So what did, say, the Boston Globe do with this obviously slanted story? They essentially ran it unchanged from its original bias and slap on the headline: “Poll: Churchgoers more rigid.” It’s subhead was “Seen less willing to compromise on abortion, gays.” Less willing than what? Before? I don’t know about anyone else, but I was never willing to compromise. And notice that other slur on the politically incorrect: “rigid”. (I wear that word with pride, too.)
Thanks for reporting this, Dom. Even more amazing is that when one prescinds from the Reuters article and goes straight to the source—in this case, the press release from Public Agenda (http://www.publicagenda.com/research/pdfs/religion_2005_press_release.pdf)
you discover just how slanted the Reuters piece really is.
NOWHERE in the press release are the words (or even the IDEAS) of “pushing their views on others” or “rigid” or “intolerant.” These words are all directly from the REPORTER rather than from the ITEM.
How does one go about reproaching a reporter and a news agency?
The old media is dead.
Long live the new media.
It was noted that persons living in the former Soviet bloc learned to get their news by reading “Pravda” in a highly selective way, discounting the ubiquitous propaganda and reading in between the lines, almost intuitively.
Many US residents also are now developing new skills in assessing which news is pure Leftist propaganda, and what the actual facts are. Matched with the appearance of blogs, these skills are invaluable in gaining a better comprehension of facts. Not to mention avoiding the snake oil the the MSM peddles as objective news.
Long live the new media.
And Mallard Fillmore
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/mallard/about.htm
Kelly <—-who truly believes the real Boston Globe news comes from a duck
There was another instance of this bias with the report that Focus on the Family had accused the cartoon series Spongebob Squarepants of being pro-gay. Turns out FOTF wwa objecting to a separate oragnization using the cartoon character in their pro-gay message meant for school distribution. Quite a difference.
I was suspicious of the report, given FOTF’s generally reasonable approach to things, but obviously the media wanted to depicted them in the “intolerant” and rigid light that suits their purposes.