I have been itching and moaning about what the news media does and doesn't do for over a decade. When I first started writing for WorldNetDaily in 1998, my second column was about Selective reporting.

Even before joining WND, I recall interviewing Tony Vercillo about his 1996 book "Death By Media." Recent books about media malfeasance and bias have raced up bestseller lists (Bernie Goldberg's "Bias," William McGowan's, "Coloring the News").

Aubrey T. DeVera once observed, "Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain."

Consider just three ubiquitous practitioners of the Big Lie(s) and ask yourself how and why they have been allowed to maintain careers constructed on bovine excrement:

• Yasser Arafat has been consistent in his routine prevarications since he first crawled out from under a rock and will continue to lie with gusto until he eventually takes the long dirt nap.
• Bill Clinton elevated the Big Lie to an art form sparked with epic chutzpah.
• Jesse Jackson has complemented his serial lies with race baiting and extortion.

 

 

Each case study is different but similar. However, one common denominator in the sustenance of all three bad guys has been (and continues to be) media malfeasance and/or complicity.

Each man has his defenders and detractors -- a blue team and a red team, "us" and "them," defenders of the indefensible and Don Quixotes.

Ambrose Bierce once said "Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage." But where is the private advantage in the entire mainstream homogenous goo of (to use a Drudgeism) ABCCBSNBCTime
WarnerDisneyGeneralElectricCNNFoxNews
MSNBCCNBCMicrosoftNewYorkTimesWashingtonPost et al. consistently giving political cover to these weasels?

I have never been able to fully corroborate a notorious quote widely attributed to David Rockefeller from the June 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany. Supposedly, then Governor Bill Clinton and then Vice President Dan Quayle were in attendance when Rockefeller allegedly said, "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years." He allegedly went on to explain: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years."

Is that the deal? Are the conspiracy theorists right? Was Mel Gibson's "Conspiracy Theory" fiction or a Scribean foreshadowing?

Almost five years ago, I wrote, "Notwithstanding the obvious liberal bias of the mainstream media, many of us continue to wonder at what point will either embarrassment or territorial imperative compel the dominant media to return to the journalistic foundation of actually reporting Who, What, When, Where, rather than obfuscating the Why and the How, and/or committing mortal sins of omission."

I have used a line that has become an annoying refrain about fairness, and the ability (or inability) of people to "... not want to be confused with facts which contradict their preconceived opinions." People incorrectly assume that the mainstream is reporting objectively. In fact, the mainstream media is neither fair nor balanced.

Hey, this is an opinion column. Opinions are like intimate body parts -- we all have them, me, you, he, she, them. I can't -- and wouldn't want to -- compel you to agree with me, but please, look and listen.

When will the presumed keepers of the Fourth Estate acknowledge their responsibility and report a full and complete journal of the facts -- and allow the people the luxury of making their own fully informed decisions? Anytime before Hell freezes over?

The remarkable growth of WorldNetDaily, other "New Media" venues, and talk radio -- I believe -- is a function of physics. I'm not a scientist (and, no, I have never played one on television either), but I did retain enough to recall, "Nature abhors a vacuum."

Goldberg says, "in 1980, the three networks had 75 percent of the people who were watching anything during the dinner hour watching one of the network shows ...Today, it's down to 43 percent." Where has the audience gone? Sure there are a lot more options today than in 1980, but one major factor has been the audience seeking (and finding) what the networks refuse to offer.

I have asked Goldberg, Jack Germond, Bob Novak, Dave Barry, Reed Irvine, John Stossel, Matt Drudge, Bill O'Reilly -- even Reed Hundt (Clinton's former FCC commissioner) the same question. When are the networks going to get hip and acknowledge that all they have to do is provide the audience what they want and what they are not getting in the mainstream now?

Bernie doesn't "think that the news guys will do it, because they don't even acknowledge they have a problem."

Well there is a problem. And it is contributing to the maintenance of slugs like Arafat, Clinton and Jackson. Confucius said, "To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle." Metcalf says, "It is both."