Proctor: Roasting the Biased Media

by Maurine Proctor

Watching how opinion is shaped by the media in America is one of my favorite spectator sports. This is because at Family Leader, we see how the socially conservative values are distorted, misrepresented and often ignored by the press. That’s why we dig out the information, the story behind the story, and send it on to you-and hope you are sending these emails on to your friends.

We’ve mentioned that not only the funding, but the very concept and definition of abstinence education is at risk now in Congress. So it was disturbing to note that when a press conference was held recently at the National Press Club featuring a recent study by the Heritage Foundation and another by Stan Weed that clearly demonstrated the power of abstinence education to help teens avoid risky behavior, the press didn’t show up. Apparently, those who think that teens should indulge in sexual activity and that it is natural that they do so, didn’t want to publish a different perspective.

You know the old adage about a tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it-did it make a sound?

Though there are some enclaves of fairness, conservatives are often frustrated at the liberal bias in the mainstream media. This matters to us as citizens concerned about families and the moral strength of our nation because so often our issues and views are unfairly presented in the media and social conservatives are portrayed as narrow, oppressive and on the margins of society.

The Media Research Center pores over and analyzes the work of the mainstream media, holds their feet to the fire for bias and makes annual Dishonor Awards for some of the most over-the-top reports. They skewer the media in the easiest way-they simply quote them, letting their own words do the job.

We share a few of these here with you, not only for the fun of it, (sometimes laughter makes the bias a bit more bearable), but also so that you’ll know that you can’t always take what you hear at face value.

Quote of the Year

The press is not big on reporting any success on the war in Iraq, which engendered a remarkably ridiculous headline.

The Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Headline of the Year went to this doozy from October 16, 2007 by the McClatchy News Service. Apparently bad news pays and especially if it is bad news about the war in Iraq. As the surge began to succeed, the news service reporters just had to find something negative to say, and here’s the headline they came up with:

“As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.”

Heroism in war is also a subject to be overlooked.

Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL, earned the Medal of Honor for his heroics in Afghanistan. When his unit was ambushed and vastly outnumbered in a ferocious firefight, Lt. Murphy stepped into the open-and line of fire and certain death-to make a satellite phone call that would bring the help that would save his buddies. During the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only three Medals of Honor have been awarded and the only one in Afghanistan.

Despite these heroics, according to William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, Lt. Murphy and his Medal of Honor did not receive 1/1000th the coverage of the Nobel Prize, though it is a more rare award, and was not even mentioned in the New York Times, Murphy’s home town newspaper.

Stupidest Analysis

A nominee for stupidest analysis was Katie Couric who was interviewing the creators of The Nativity Story about Hollywood movies based on Biblical themes during Christmas of 2006. Her question to them, oozing with sympathy and meant to signal how inappropriate a religious movie would surely be, was this:

“Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we’re so divided about so much?”
(Translation: telling the nativity story is a purposely divisive thing to do-even if the majority of the nation is Christian.)

Dewy-eyed Bias

Chris Matthews on his Hardball show, apparently doesn’t have any hardball for his favorite politicians. On the air he described the Obamas with this effusiveness: “They are cool people, they are really cool people. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy. They are great looking and they are young. If you are in with Obama you feel the spirit moving.”

Regarding Bill Clinton’s address at Coretta King’s funeral, Matthews said, “There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. An amazing ability to transcend ethnicity, race we call it, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way.”

Host Bill Maher rocked Catholics to the core with his scathing remarks about the Pope during his recent visit, but less well known and just as egregious were his remarks on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, 2007 discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset that an attempt to kill Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan had failed. He said, “I’m just saying if he did die, other people would live. That’s a fact.”

How about those Polls?

Pollster Kellyanne Conway notes that we are swimming in polls. Some of them are geared to asking people questions that they know absolutely nothing about. Her all-time favorite happened in 1986 when President Reagan was diagnosed with a mild form of treatable cancer. She said, “The media couldn’t help themselves. That night, it was asked of Americans nationwide, “As you may or may not know, today President Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with cancer. How serious do you think this cancer is?” She laughed that there was no option that said, “I don’t know; I’m not an oncologist.”

Often a bias is built right into the polling question itself. Here’s a funny example. In Oct. 2004, ABC News asked people, “How much do you blame the Bush administration for the shortage of flu vaccines? The options ranged like this: 1) A great deal. 2) A good amount. 3) Only some or 4) Hardly any. There was no option that they should get no blame whatsoever.

Conway laughed about this poll as well. ABC News asked in April 2007. Which of the following do you think is the primary cause of gun violence in America. A. The availability fo guns. B. The way parents raise their children. C. The influence of popular culture, movies, television and the Internet. Conway said, “I scrolled down to page two looking for another option, “D the person pulling the trigger,” and it wasn’t there…Sometimes the best answer is conspicuous by its absence.”

The lesson in all this? Be analytical in listening to or reading the news. Don’t abandon your values if you hear stories that undercut them. Look for multiple sources on stories that really matter to you.

Center for Moral Liberalism contributing editor, Maurine Proctor, is the publisher of Meridian Magazine, and President of Family Leader.

McKay: The Great Responsibility of Christians and Citizens Everywhere

No greater immediate responsibility rests upon members of the Church, upon all citizens of this Republic and of neighboring Republics, than to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.

President David O. McKay of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Benson: The Great Struggle for Freedom, Here and Abroard

Today, there is a great threat to freedom. The Church is prospering and growing, but all over the world the light of freedom is being diminished. A great struggle for the minds of men is now being waged. At issue is whether or not man’s basic inalienable rights of life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness shall be recognized. It is the same struggle over which the war in heaven was waged. In undiminished fury, and with an anxiety that his time is short—and it is—the great adversary to all men is attempting to destroy man’s freedom and to see him totally subjugated. There are evidences of this struggle all about us. A system of slavery, communism, has imprisoned the minds and bodies of over one billion of the earth’s inhabitants. Today, forty-five percent of the people of the world, in sixty-five nations, live under totalitarian dictatorships or forms of government that deny people most or all of their political and religious freedom. We further read and hear about international terrorism where nations are blackmailed and there is no regard for human life.

Even among free nations we see the encroachment of government upon the lives of the citizenry by excessive taxation and regulation, all done under the guise that the people would not willfully or charitably distribute their wealth, so the government must take it from them. We further observe promises by the state of security, whereby men are taken care of from the womb to the tomb rather than earning this security by the “sweat of their brow”; deception in high places, with the justification that “the end justifies the means”; atheism; agnosticism; immorality; and dishonesty. The attendant results of such sin and usurpation of power are a general distrust of government officials; an insatiable, covetous spirit for more and more material wants; personal debt to satisfy this craving; and the disintegration of the family unit.

Ezra Taft Benson, This Nation Shall Endure, 1977

American Minute with Bill Federer: Reverend Robert Hunt of Jamestown, Virginia

The first permanent English settlement in the New World began at Jamestown, Virginia, MAY 13, 1607.

Plagued by hunger, malaria, exposure and Indian attacks, many of the 100 settlers sent out by the London Company died, including their minister Robert Hunt, of whom they wrote:

“1607. To the glory of God and in memory of the Reverend Robert Hunt, Presbyter, appointed by the Church of England. Minister of the Colony which established the English Church and English Civilization at Jamestown…

“His people, members of the Colony, left this testimony concerning him. Rev. Robert Hunt was an honest, religious and courageous Divine. He preferred the Service of God in so good a voyage to every thought of ease at home.

“He endured every privation, yet none ever heard him repine. During his life our factions were often healed, and our greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison with what we endured after his memorable death.

“We all received from him the Holy Communion together, as a pledge of reconciliation, for we all loved him for his exceeding goodness.”

Ending their tribute to Rev. Robert Hunt, Virginia’s first settlers wrote:

“He planted the first Protestant Church in America and laid down his life in the foundation of America.”

Center for Moral Liberalism contributing editor, William J. Federer, is author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion.” A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet.

Caruba: Living on the Edge of Destruction: Israel’s 60th Anniversary

by Alan Caruba

“Trusting in the Rock of Israel we now place our signatures in witness to this proclamation, sitting as the Provisional State Council, on the soil of the homeland, in the city of Tel-Aviv, this day, Friday afternoon, the 5th of Iyar, 5708, the 14th of May, 1948.”

This was the moment of the re-birth of Israel announced by Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. I would call your attention to the year of the Jewish calendar he cited, 5708. It reaches back over the millennia, deep into the Torah, the Old Testament, with its long history of a people chosen to be “a nation of priests and a holy people.”

This fact alone eviscerates all arguments and lies put forth that the Jews do not have a right and a claim to their own homeland. Historians put the birth of Judaism at approximately two thousand years before the advent of Christianity. When the Roman Empire fell, it was restructured as the Holy Roman Empire with Christianity at its core. Jewish resistance to the Roman Empire shaped much of its early history.

At the heart of the Islamic protestations of modern Israel is their contempt for the two faiths that preceded their own that began in 622 A.D. By then Judaism was already a very ancient faith. To be anything other than a Muslim, then and now, was declared to belong to an inferior faith. Islam is distinguished by its inflexible fixation on Allah, a former moon god worshipped in Mecca, and the cult of Mohammed.

More than a billion of the world’s population is Muslim. More than a billion is Christian. Billions believe in Hinduism and Buddhism. Judaism, which was never an evangelizing faith, existed in small numbers, but for reasons of faith, both Christianity and Islam persecuted the Jews in their midst because their very existence raised questions of spiritual legitimacy.

Throughout this long history, the Jews remained steadfast to their ancient faith under circumstances that would have destroyed a people less committed. In the last century, an evil so vast that it defies comprehension attempted to kill every Jew in Europe and Russia.

Out of the ashes of an estimated six million Jews the Zionist movement that had been established at the very end of the previous century reached its moment in history when a re-born nation of Israel was the sanctuary needed for the survivors and others who would flee persecution in Arab nations, in Russia, and elsewhere.

“After the people were forcibly exiled from their land,” said Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, “they kept the faith with it in all the lands of their dispersion, and never ceased praying and hoping to return to their land…”

Within hours of Ben-Gurion’s announcement Israel was attacked by Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. By June 11, 1948, a truce was arranged. Thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers had arrived from around the world. Hostilities resumed on July 8, but it went poorly for the Arabs as the Israelis won about 20% more territory than was originally granted.

There has never really been any peace since then. Several more wars and the Intifada declared by the Palestinians have been markers in Israel’s short history. There has only been the tiresome demand that it return to 1967 borders. Even when Israel relinquished Gaza to the Palestinians, it has not stilled their rockets for a single day.

Today, Israel remains surrounded by its enemies, despite a peace accord with Egypt and Jordan. It remains a tiny nation and Jews worldwide remain a minority. These days Israel is directly threatened by two Palestinian entities, Hezbollah and Hamas, assisted by Syria, funded and armed by Iran, a nation led by men who promise to destroy Israel.

The failure of the Middle East as a society is the failure of Islam, a faith whose name translates as submission. The success of Israel is the success of Judaism, a religion whose believers have greatly blessed the modern world. It is the success as well of the support of Christians who are Judaism’s spiritual heirs.

There are serious lessons to be drawn from this sixtieth anniversary and serious threats on the near horizon. If we permit the destruction of Israel, we nullify the values of both Judaism and Christianity. We put our souls at risk.

Stiff Right Jab contributing editor, Alan Caruba, writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. He blogs at Facts Not Fantasy.

© Alan Caruba, May 2008