Journalistic Ethics

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Ann Coulter
May 13, 2004

Last week, John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, delivered a lecture during "Ethics Week" of the Society of Professional Journalists. The speaker has not yet been announced for "Abstinence Week" of the Society of Professional Whores.

Showing the fierce independence of the mainstream media, Carroll's speech was yet another liberal rant about the threat to freedom and democracy posed by the Fox News Channel. Carroll cited the hoax poll liberals quote every 10 minutes that purports to show people who watch Fox News are ignorant retards.

The poll was taken by the "Program on International Policy Attitudes," which specializes in polling Americans about pointless little factoids loved by liberals. One PIPA poll, for example, asked whether "so far this year, more Israelis or more Palestinians have died in the conflict, or is the number roughly equal?" To the shock and dismay of the researchers, "only 32 percent of respondents were aware that more deaths have occurred on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side."

There was no poll question about which group was more likely to die as a result of suicide bombings against innocent civilians and which as a result of strategic strikes against known terrorists. During World War II, PIPA would have been issuing indignant press releases announcing that "only 32 percent of respondents are aware Hitler is kind to his dog."

The most famous PIPA poll claims to demonstrate that "the Fox News audience showed the highest average rate of misperceptions" about the war with Iraq -- by which they mean "misperceptions of pointless liberal factoids about the war with Iraq." You say the average American can't regurgitate liberal talking points on command? Well, I'll be darned! And the public schools are trying so hard!

The poll asked questions like this: "Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?" Sixty-seven percent of Fox News Channel viewers said the United States had found evidence of a link. Liberals view this as a "misperception."

Admittedly the evidence may not be as "clear" as the evidence proving a link between Osama bin Laden and Halliburton, but among other evidence connecting Iraq to al-Qaida, consider just these three items.

Last year papers were found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters documenting Saddam's feverish efforts to establish a working relationship with al-Qaida. In response to Iraq's generous invitation to pay all travel and hotel expenses, a top aide to Osama bin Laden visited Iraq in 1998, bearing a message from bin Laden. The meeting went so well that bin Laden's aide stayed for a week. Iraq intelligence officers sent a message back to bin Laden, the documents note, concerning "the future of our relationship."

In addition, according to Czech intelligence, a few months before the 9-11 attacks, Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague.

Finally, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer, has made a legal finding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks -- a ruling upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last October. When some judge discovers a right to gay marriage in a 200-year-old document written by John Adams, Americans are forced to treat the decision like the God-given truth. But when a federal judge issues a decision concluding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks, it is a "misperception" being foisted on the nation by Fox News Channel.

Interestingly, liberals refuse to believe Czech intelligence on the Prague meeting ... because the CIA doesn't believe it. Apparently, this is the lone, singular assertion by the CIA that liberals wholeheartedly trust. The CIA also concluded that evidence of WMDs in Iraq was -- in the words of CIA director George Tenet -- a "slam dunk case." But liberals hysterically denounce that CIA conclusion as a "misperception" created by Fox News Channel.

Thus another question in the PIPA poll was this: "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?" Thirty-three percent of Fox News viewers said they believed the U.S. had found WMDs, compared to only 11 percent of those smart NPR listeners. (How about asking NPR listeners which kills more children -- handguns or buckets?)

By "weapons of mass destruction," what liberals mean is: missiles pointed at Washington, D.C., with their "Ready to Fire" lights blinking ominously and their warhead payloads clearly marked "Weapons of Mass Destruction! Next Stop, The Great Satan America!" -- basically what you might see on an episode of the original Batman TV series. When we didn't find that, the "Bush lied, kids died!" screaming began.

David Kay's report said we hadn't found "stockpiles" of WMDs in Iraq, but we have found:

-- chemical and biological weapons systems, plans, "recipes" and equipment, all of which could have resumed production on a moment's notice with Saddam's approval;

-- reference strains of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents (found in the home of a prominent Iraqi biological warfare scientist);

-- new research on brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin;

-- a prison laboratory complex for testing biological weapons on humans;

-- long-range missiles (prohibited by United Nations resolutions) suitable for delivering WMDs;

-- documents showing Saddam tried to obtain long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea;

-- facilities for manufacturing fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles.

Sorry to bore Fox News viewers with these facts. I'm doing it as a favor to readers of the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/ac20040513.shtml
 
Journalistic ethics--now there is an interesting oxymoron.

The Society of Professional Journalist is an organization to which a large percentage of journalists belong.

Spend some time browsing the site and a lot of what passes for news and journalism is put into perspective.


www.spj.org
 
Most of what passes for news today is actually 'news analysis' (read propaganda) and is served up by folks with a socialist driven agenda. Fox, which plays the other side of the card, is no better dispite catch phrases such as 'fair and balanced' and 'the no spin zone'.

FOX is necessary, however, to counter the overwhelming leftist message bombarding us daily from the three major networks as well as CSPAN and NPR. That the left continues to get SO worked up about FOX news is worth keeping them around, dispite their hypocracy.

Ethical journalists are as hard to find as rocking horse doo doo. (apologies to Art's grammaw). Straight news reportage has gone the way of the dodo. The media needs subscribers to pay the bills and that makes them agenda driven prostitutes.

Ann Coulter is a hottie who can snuggle up close and whisper sweet conservative
dogma to me all day.
 
But even FOX is being infiltrated and diluted.

ALthough, neither Greta or Geraldo are nearly as liberal as they were. You get the fleas of whatever dog which with you lie. ;)
 
The press -- as understood by the founders -- was not a source of unbiased and balanced facts, but a source of propaganda. A critical trick of successful propaganda is to pretend you are unbiased and balanced so that people will be lulled into applying less critical thought to what you present.

I am not offended, angry or shocked that propagandists would construct an ethical system to make me (and themselves) believe they are are not propagandists for the purpose of furthering the propaganda -- it is a fact of life, like rain, that I deal with.

The press never was and never will be anything but a propaganda vehicle. The myth that the press once was trustworthy, balanced and unbiased is false.

But most reporters aren't scheming propagandists. Most reporters are either too overworked or too lazy to purge their biases from what they present. (I know this from personal experience as a reporter and managing other reporters).

OTOH, many reporters -- especially those fresh out of J-School -- are victims of their professors' propaganda memes. I had a discussion with a young reporter about 10 years ago -- two years out of Indiana -- who said she believed and practiced her professor's lesson that the duty of reporters was to help shape opinions to those ideas that would make society a better place. She did not see this as propaganda, but as a noble mission (a propagandist unaware that she is a propagandist because she was the victim of propaganda).

And for all I know, the professors are similarly deluded that they are not propagandists -- a conspiracy of the blind.
 
had a discussion with a young reporter about 10 years ago -- two years out of Indiana -- who said she believed and practiced her professor's lesson that the duty of reporters was to help shape opinions to those ideas that would make society a better place. She did not see this as propaganda, but as a noble mission (a propagandist unaware that she is a propagandist because she was the victim of propaganda).
Lemme see here! We have a budding propagandist that didn't realize she wasn't a propagandist. Without doubt the most dangerous mindset possible.

The term "useful idiot" comes to mind.
 
right on target

7.62 thanks for posting that, I hadn't seen it yet! Now if more people could see the Majority of the media for what they are.

-Well, very well, put.

Is Anne Coulter married? Does she have a twin somewhere? I need a woman like this!
 
My observation is that there are three occupations where you can consistently be wrong, and cause harm (in varying degrees) to those you are supposed to be serving, and still keep your job. Those occupations are:

1. Weather forecaster

2. Politician

3. Journalist



FWIW,

emc
 
dischord wrote:
The press never was and never will be anything but a propaganda vehicle. The myth that the press once was trustworthy, balanced and unbiased is false.

There is some truth in what you say, but I remember the time when there was no such thing as reporting anything unless the "sources" were NAMED. None of this crappola that "reports" all sorts of garbage and attributes it to annonymous paragons of virtue was permitted. If the reporter didn't come up with a name of a real person, it didn't get reported.

Nowdays, it has become the norm. the Bell Curve of reporting values has gone through a Six Flags over Texas roller coaster ride in my lifetime.

And not for the better.

:mad:

Ron
 
but I remember the time when there was no such thing as reporting anything unless the "sources" were NAMED.
That's because the press, in general, was pro-government and pro-industry/business (Yea USA! and Yea USA-knowhow!) Thus the propaganda rules favored protecting government and business with the hurdle of finding named sources.

Now the press has swung the other way.

However, suppressing the facts with the excuse that you don't have a named source to hang your story on is just as wrong as hanging an untruth on an unnamed source.

:)
 
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