Tuesday, February 28, 2012

News Media Bias

In the following article, Doug Patton observes the upside down world of network news talking heads.  We do not understand what is occurring in this country today, it seems that common sense has become something that no one has.


Why is good sense so missing in government today?  It appears as if no one has the ability to "say what they mean and mean what they say."  Instead we have talking points that have been screened and tested to make sure that no one makes a gaff.  If someone is forthright, we do not know how to handle it.  


We also do not understand that people can mis-speak especially in the 24/7 media coverage to which all candidates are exposed.  If someone, like Rick Perry, cannot remember the third department he would terminate, it is treated as if he has full blown Alzheimer's rather than a momentary brain skip. He is far from having mental problems but the news media would not let it go away. Sorry, we are all not perfect ( and neither are they), or do our brains work perfectly all the time.  We think that just makes him human!


This is the media bias that we have seen over and over. Obama makes a gaff about the United States having 57 states and no one in the media covers it. Romney says his wife drives "two Cadillacs" and it is news for days. The news media, one day, will pay the price of its obvious bias. We do not know when, but it is coming!


Here is the article. Enjoy it!


Conservative Tom




Patton: When Common Sense Becomes Controversial

By Doug Patton 
Someone asked me at church last Sunday whom my "dream ticket" for president and vice president would include. (Yes, believe it or not, Americans can and do discuss politics at church — and it’s actually legal!) My answer was immediate: "Rick Santorum and Marco Rubio." Think of it. Pennsylvania and Florida. The Rust Belt meets the Sun Belt. A second generation Italian-American and a first generation Cuban-American. And both of them committed conservatives.
Then I realized that both men are Catholics, and that could be a problem, but not for the reasons John F. Kennedy faced a half-century ago when distrustful Protestant voters feared that a Catholic president might "take orders from the Vatican." Today, it is the out-of-touch snobs in the elite media who believe such things. Exhibits A and B are Santorum’s appearances Sunday on both NBC’s "Meet the Press," hosted by David Gregory, and ABC’s "This Week," with George Stephanopoulos.
Both hosts insisted that Santorum — who arguably has put forward more practical proposals to create middle-income jobs than anyone else in the race — was making "social issues" the primary focus of his campaign. Santorum responded that he has been trying to talk about economics but the media is obsessed with his personal opinions on contraception and abortion.
Stephanopoulos was especially obtuse. He seemed dumbstruck by Santorum’s statement concerning JFK’s 1960 "religion" speech, wherein Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, stated his belief that "the separation of church and state is absolute." Santorum said that statement made him "want to throw up." Not a terribly articulate response, perhaps, but he followed it with a pertinent question: Should people of no faith be the only ones allowed into the public square with their beliefs? To which Stephanopoulos conjured up a tweet (the new form of political analysis, apparently) from someone who wanted to know how Santorum could possibly represent an atheist.
A darned sight better than Barack Obama represents me, I’ll wager.
So tightly sealed is the bubble in which he lives, Stephanopoulos seemed almost disoriented in his confusion when Santorum criticized Obama’s insistence that everyone should go to college. Why would anyone oppose such an idea? Two reasons, Santorum argued. First, not everyone wants to attend college, nor should they be forced to do so when trade schools and job training are a better fit for that person. And second, the vast majority of colleges and universities are liberal incubators that destroy a student’s faith and crush his or her individual ability to think anything but politically correct liberal thoughts. Sixty-two percent was the staggering figure Santorum quoted for the number of students who enter a major college or university with a Christian faith — and leave without one.
Faith in government to replace faith in God? No wonder Barack Obama wants everyone to go to college.
George Stephanopoulos, David Gregory and their clique of overpaid media elites will oppose any candidate who dares to point out that a reverence for life and for monogamous, heterosexual marriage, devoted to the raising of children and the fostering of a strong family life, is preferable to the wreckage brought upon our culture by the sexual revolution, which has given us illegitimacy, STDs, abortion, divorce and poverty.
Wouldn’t it have been refreshing to see Stephanopoulos, Gregory, or anyone else on the left, take as intense an interest in Barack Obama’s long relationships with his hate-mongering pastor, Jeremiah Wright or admitted terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn as they have in Rick Santorum’s personal views on birth control?
And wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to hear someone — anyone — in the elite media suggest that Barack Obama’s vote in favor of infanticide when he was a member of the Illinois State Legislature was just a bit more "controversial" than Rick Santorum’s suggestion that traditional marriage and innocent human life are worthy of society’s protection. When evil is called good, and good is called evil, societies die. When common sense becomes controversial, we are on the brink.

1 comment:

  1. Fact-checking....

    I wonder whether this guy knows what Kennedy actually said in his 1960 speech that makes Santorum want to puke.

    Here are Kennedy's exact words...

    "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
    I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

    I see Kennedy's statement as a reaffirmation of the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom. I don't see anything in this statement that implies that Kennedy believed the government has the constitutional authority to prohibit either theists or atheists from speaking in the town square. Right?

    The intent of the speech was to reassure citizens that the first Catholic president would not accept directives from the Pope on how to run the government. That was the context for his "absolute separation" reference in the opening sentence. If I were in Stephanopoulos' shoes, that is what I would have said to Santorum.

    I watch all the news channels from the far "right" (FOX) to the far "left" (MSNBC), and my complaint about all of them is that they rarely ask intelligent follow-up questions when a politician tells a flat lie. This is why the public is so misinformed on the issues.

    --David

    ReplyDelete

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