| |
NOTE: Emphasized text in quoted material reflects emphasis by David Burton and not by the source of the quoted
text.
It’s unfortunate, but true: Bad News Sells! We could also just as accurately have written that
Fake News Sells! or that Biased News Sells! Today, America has all-too-often willingly allowed its free press
to become the purveyor of falsehoods and bombastic, but false or misleading headlines and stories.
A prime example of this disturbing trend in modern American journalism was the murder of 8 persons in Atlanta, Georgia
massage parlors. Six of these victims of a perverted mass-shooter were Asian Americans. The shooter denied killing them because of their ethnicity,
but this fact seemed to have escaped the attention of the media and a large segment of the American public. After all, it makes
better headlines to scream: ”Atlanta spa shootings spark conversation about hate crimes targeting Asian
Americans” (Ref. 1)
“If you rely on The New York Times, the Democratic Party, or CNN – they are interchangeable – for your perception of
reality, you would now believe that America was reeling from the latest expression of white supremacy: anti-Asian racism.
“It’s a lie, the purpose of which is to:
“a) further demonize America;
“b) further demonize white Americans;
“c) further divide Americans by race and ethnicity;
“d) reinforce – or create – the belief among Asian Americans that they are widely hated (and must therefore rely on the g
overnment and especially the Democratic Party); and
“e) engender ethnic identity among Asian Americans, most of whom have heretofore essentially considered themselves
Americans who happen to be of Asian descent.
“Is there anti-Asian racism in America? Of course. Ethnic bigotry is a tragic part of the human condition. There is
no country in which members of different races live that is bereft of ethnic or racial bigotry.
“Therefore, the only question decent, wise, or honest people ask is: How much? And the answer in America is: very,
very little.
“But the left lacks decency, wisdom, and honesty. Therefore, it offers continuous reporting about anti-Asian racism, most
of which so wildly exaggerates the issue as to constitute a lie.
“Let’s begin with {the} attack in Atlanta, in which a 21-year-old white man murdered eight people in Asian massage
parlors, six of them Asian-Americans.
“Thus far, there is not a shred of evidence that the Asian Americans were killed because they were Asian.
The reason the shooter killed them, according to those who knew him before the shootings and investigators who have spoken to him since the
shootings, was that he had an addiction, for which he had already been in rehab and had frequented some or all of the massage establishments he
targeted, which he blamed for contributing to his addiction.
“As of {26 March 2021}, there is also no evidence of the killer ever having expressed any anti-Asian sentiments on social
media or in private conversation. Nevertheless, the lying media – a term that has become redundant – have portrayed the shootings from the moment
they reported them as anti-Asian racism.
“The Atlanta lie is part of the greater lie that there is a national epidemic of white supremacist anti-Asian racism.
On March 18 {2021}, for example, The Washington Post reported: ‘Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked 150 percent since the pandemic began, according
to a recent study.’
“The study cited by The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and the other left-wing media is from the Center for
the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The 150 percent increase in anti-Asian American hate crimes is
contained in its ‘Fact Sheet: Anti-Asian Prejudice March 2020,’ according to which the number of anti-Asian American incidents rose from
{a grand total of} 49 in 2019 to 122 in 2020.
“So, the entire edifice of hate against Asian Americans is predicated on an alleged increase of 73
incidents.
“Given that there are about 330 million Americans, and assuming a different American was responsible for each of the 122
anti-Asian incidents, that would mean that 1 in every 2,704,918 Americans committed an anti-Asian incident. And ‘incident’ includes perceived
slights.
“As regards violent acts against Asian Americans, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics from September 2019,
blacks have committed the greatest percentage of violent crimes against Asian Americans. But the mendacious media do not report that.
“The New York Times, the leader in mass hysterias fomented by the left {printed this headline after the attack:}
‘Attacks on Asian-Americans in New York Stoke Fear, Anxiety and Anger.’ And the subhead {reads:} ‘Hate crimes involving Asian-American victims
soared in New York City last year.’
“Focus on the word ‘soared’ and you will appreciate the Times’ commitment to truth.
“If one reads past the headline – which most people do not – the article gives the actual numbers: ‘The number of
hate crimes with Asian American victims reported to the New York Police Department jumped to 28 in 2020, from just three the previous
year.”
“You read that right: The number of incidents ‘soared’ and ’jumped’ to 28 – in a city
of 8.4 million people, including, as of 2010, over one million Asian Americans. So, about 1 in every 300,000 New Yorkers committed a hate crime
against an Asian American, and about 1 in every 36,000 Asian Americans living in New York was a victim of a hate crime. To put this number into
perspective, the odds of your dying in a motor vehicle accident are about 1 in 9,000.
“Another New York Times article, under the headline ‘A Tense Lunar New Year for the Bay Area After Attacks on
Asian-Americans,’ opens with this: ‘The videos are graphic and shocking. In January, a local television station showed footage of a young
man sprinting toward, then violently shoving to the ground, a man identified as . . . 84, who had been out for a morning walk in the Anza
Vista neighborhood of San Francisco. He later died.’
“The Times piece never reveals the name or race of the perpetrator: . . . a 19-year-old black man. {Heaven forbid that
the N.Y. Times should even hint that Blacks commit crimes!}
- - -
“Meanwhile, the blanketing of the country with the Atlanta lie and the anti-Asian violence continues. The cover of this
week’s Time features a drawing of a young Asian woman under the headline: ‘We Are Not Silent: Confronting America’s Legacy of
Anti-Asian Violence.’
“It’s all a lie in service to the left’s hatred of
America. (Ref. 2)
Today, it’s not just bad news and bad journalism that sells, but so does biased journalism. All too often these days,
instead of reporting the facts and the truth, our representatives of a formerly strong unbiased free press now resort to reporting what they or
their bosses have decided is what the unwashed masses want to see and hear. Journalistic integrity seems to have gone out of style and been
replaced with a strong left-leaning liberal bias. Where are today’s Walter Cronkites and Edward R. Murrows? Is journalistic integrity
dead?
“ Ask journalists, and they'll likely tell you they play things right down the middle. They strive to be ‘fair.’ They're
‘centrists.’ Sorry, not true. The profound leftward ideological bias of the Big Media is the main reason why America now seems saturated with ‘fake
news.’ Journalists, besotted with their own ideology, are no longer able to recognize their own bias.
“Despite journalists' denials, it's now pretty much a fact that journalism is one of the most left-wing of all
professions. But until recently, that wasn't thought to be true of financial journalists — who have a reputation for being the most
right-leaning and free-market-oriented among mainstream journalists.
“If that was ever true, it sure isn't today, a new study suggests.
“Researchers from Arizona State University and Texas A&M University questioned 462 financial journalists around the
country. . . The journalists worked for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and a number of other
newspapers.
“What they found surprised them. Even the supposedly hard-nosed financial reporters were overwhelmingly
liberal. . .
- - -
“What about the mythic ‘conservative’ financial journalist? In fact, a mere 0.46% of financial journalists called
themselves ‘very conservative,’ while just 3.94% said they were ‘somewhat conservative.’ That's a whopping 4.4% of the total that lean
right-of-center.
“{The study turned up} a ratio of 13 ‘liberals’ for every one ‘conservative.’ Whatever happened to ideological
diversity? Please remember this as you watch the business news or read a financial story in the paper. You might want to take its
message with a grain of salt. That's especially true if the piece seems unduly harsh on the free-market system and its many proven benefits.
Or if it lauds socialism as an ‘answer’ to society's ills.
“This is an enormous problem for the media — perhaps bigger than they realize. A Rasmussen Reports survey in late October
{2018} found that 45% of all likely voters in the midterm elections believed ‘that when most reporters write about a congressional race, they are
trying to help the Democratic candidate.’
- - -
“. . . this ‘helps explain why Democratic voters are much bigger fans of election news coverage’ than others. They see it
as favorable to their own beliefs.
- - -
“It's time the journalistic mainstream addresses this problem. Smug denial is no longer an option. It starts with owners,
publishers and editors demanding fairness in their reporting and weeding out obvious bias. While they're at it, they should elevate the idea of
unbiased news coverage to a goal, even if it's not attainable.” (Ref. 3)
A RAND Corporation study reported upon in Market Watch in 2018 took note of the shift in media reporting. The report stated
that “U.S. news has shifted to opinion-based content that appeals to emotion” and “American journalism is losing its objectivity.” RAND is a
nonprofit nonpartisan think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif.
The Rand researchers found a major shift had occurred between 1989 and 2017 as journalism expanded beyond traditional media,
such as newspapers and broadcast networks, to newer media, including 24-hour cable news channels and digital outlets. The report discussed “Truth
Decay” along with the declining role of facts and analysis in civil discourse and its effect on American life. “Journalism in the U.S. has become
more subjective and consists less of the detailed event- or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage.”
Researchers analyzed content from 15 outlets representing print, television and digital journalism. They found a “gradual
and subtle shift” between old and new media toward a more subjective form of journalism.
Before 2000, broadcast news segments were more likely to include relatively complex academic and precise language, as well
as complex reasoning, the researchers said. After 2000, however, broadcast news became more concerned with on-air personalities and talking heads
debating the news.
The RAND report was not the only report to find a shift toward opinion and subjectivity in news. “Tumultuous news cycles
have made an impact on global opinions regarding media,” according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 countries ranking released earlier this year.
Some 63% of people say that there are no longer any objective news sources they can trust, and 66% say internet news and content is dividing people
rather than uniting them. What’s more, more than 50% agree that political and social issues around the world have gotten worse over the past
year.
In the U.S., former President Trump famously labeled media outlets that had reported critically on his administration as
“fake news,” and described CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and the New York Times NYT, as “the enemy of the American
people.”[4]
Although the term "fake news" took center stage during Donald Trump's presidency, it actually first emerged toward the end
of the 19th century - and indeed, false and distorted news has been a part of media history long before social media.
There are tons of examples of false news throughout history. It was used in Nazi Germany to build anti-Semitic enthusiasm.
In America during the 1700s and 1800s, rampant racism led to the spreading of false stories about African Americans’ supposed crimes and inferiority
to whites, some of which still linger today. In the 1890s, “yellow journalism” or reporting sensational news and rumors as facts, helped lead the
United States into the Spanish-American War.
Eventually, there was criticism of the lack of journalistic integrity. As a result, fake news declined until we saw an
increase in web-based false stories and misinformation.
Many of us recall The National Enquirer at the checkout counter of grocery stores. While the tabloid was readily
available and many read it, it was also well known that it contained false news stories and misinformation. We also have parody news productions,
which were – and still are - common on Saturday Night Live, that are generally satire but are also incorrect depictions of real current
events. Most of us don’t generally confuse SNL for real news.
Today’s fake news is different from what we have seen in the past because of the speed at which it is spread and the way
it can influence consumers.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of hard news sources that clearly report information based on specific political agendas
or other forms of bias. There are also numerous instances of hard news sources using staging, adding a particular slant, or making mistakes in their
news coverage.
Much of this fake news involves sensational headlines or stories, distorts the facts, and can be quite deceptive.
The creator of the fake news story may take a piece of information that is true, such as a picture, and then create a completely different
narrative.
For instance, a few years ago there was a post being shared widely on social media that showed a border fence with the
caption that the fence was in Mexico on the border with Guatemala that was intended to keep so-called "freeloaders" out of Mexico. The caption
compared this to the border wall that was proposed to be built on the border of Mexico and the U.S. In this example, the picture was of an actual
border fence, but the fence was not in Mexico and was not on the border with Guatemala. Instead, it was a picture of a fence that Israel built in
2013 along their border with Egypt in an attempt to keep terrorists and illegal African immigrants from entering Israel.
Our news media should return to old-fashioned fact checking and unbiased reporting. Americans deserve to receive facts
and accurate information from its news media. Better steps need to be taken to avoid perpetuating mistakes, staging events, exaggerating facts,
and exhibiting bias in reporting. Consumers need tools to help them identify fake news when they see it, and fact check information with which
they are presented.[5]
Mark R. Levin paints a disheartening picture of American journalism in his book American
Marxism.[6] In what follows, I have extracted some relevant observations of Levin from
Chapter six, PROPAGANDA, CENSORSHIP, AND SUBVERSION of his book.
In Levin’s view, many in the media have become “propagandists for an anti-American, pro-Marxist agenda.” These so-called
journalists “have abandoned the traditional role of reporter for that of social activist – driving most of the same issues and agendas as the
various Marxist movements in the United States.”
As already noted, newspapers are under strong pressure to distort in the interest of holding attention. . . . It is an
inescapable fact that newspapers thrive on friction and conflict and not necessarily on facts. Journalism today has become so politicized that
“social activism in support of various American Marxist movements has engulfed the former profession of journalism, and substituted slanted and
biased opinion for news.”
“The combination of propaganda, pseudo-news, and social activism in America’s newsrooms has resulted in the disastrous
state of the modern press.” Consequently, “the American media have become special pleaders for the Marxist ideology, or at least advocates for
those who apply it to numerous aspects of society.”
The ’wokeness’ that now pervades American journalism “combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyper-liberal
white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and educational critical race theory.” The results are not encouraging. Throughout the media,
we now see “Repression, not engagement; compliance, not speech; conformity, not independence; and subjugation, not liberty”, which are all
hallmarks of American Marxism. Our free press is fast ceasing to be ‘free’.
The effect of all this on the average American has been a loss of freedom of speech. “. . . self-censorship among Americans
has soared. In the late 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, 13.4 percent of Americans reported that they ‘felt less free to speak their minds than
they used to.’ In 1987, the figure reached 20 percent. By 2019, 40 percent of Americans reported that they did not feel free to speak their
minds.” [Emphasis mine]
Adlai Stevenson once quipped that “a publisher is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff – and then publishes
the chaff.” Significant segments of America believe just that: that the media are in the business of selling “product,” no differently than
plastic goods manufacturers or car dealerships.
Indeed, an increasingly media-savvy citizenry understands that media companies target their market, and then select story
lines, headlines and quotes in order to optimize clicks, shares and revenue. For many Americans, the First Amendment is less a vital constitutional
guarantee than a protection racket, shielding elites who think they are better than their readers and viewers from liability for false or biased
reporting.
The Washington Post today ranks as one of the worst sources of accurate reporting. Over the last half century,
it was synonymous with historic reporting. The winner of over 70 Pulitzer Prizes, justly venerated for its courageous publication of the Pentagon
Papers and its breaking of the Watergate scandal, it has taken quite a plunge of late. Recently, it has suffered dramatic losses in revenue.
But it has lost more than revenue; its credibility has taken a beating. The Post’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has
ranged between error-prone and openly skewed. It turns out that at least six journalists on the paper’s foreign desk worked for Al
Jazeera, based in and substantially funded by Qatar, which also bankrolled Hamas and hosts its leadership.
The Post isn’t the only journalistic enterprise to conduct itself in ways that torch the profession’s standing. Two
former New York Times reporters published first-hand accounts of The Times’ toxic enforcement of political orthodoxy in the newsroom
and a culture that evoked eighth grade cliques. A National Public Radio’s former editor disclosed the ostentatious liberal bias of that outlet,
whose editorial staff consisted of 87 Democrats and exactly zero Republicans. “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue
and how they should be framed,” the former editor observed before he was disciplined for making the observation. “It’s almost like an assembly
line.”
Then there’s Fox News, which raised corrupt journalism to an art form after the 2020 election, as documented in
the litigation that ultimately forced the conservative broadcasting corporation to fork over nearly $800 million to a voting system company it had
defamed. Petrified of losing market share to an even more conservative cable station, and knowing that its reporting was false, it repeated Donald
Trump’s stolen election hokum endlessly – in order to keep its cash registers ringing.
There can be no joy in Mudville at the self-inflicted damage the media has wrought. The fact remains that we badly need a
free and robust press if we are going to persist as a democracy. But the profession is going to have to look in the mirror if it wishes to survive
as we once knew it.[7]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
- 360: Atlanta spa shootings spark conversation about hate crimes targeting Asian Americans, msn:com,
29 March 2021.
- The Left’s Latest Lie: Anti-Asian Racism, Dennis Prager, The Jewish Press: Page 6, 26 March 2021.
- Media Bias: Pretty Much All Of Journalism Now Leans Left, Study Shows, Investor's Business Daily,
16 November 2018.
- American journalism is suffering from ‘truth decay’ — the media have become more biased over the last 30 years,
RAND study says,
Quentin Fottrell, MarketWatch, 28 May 2019.
- How Today's Fake News Is Different Than in the Past, Chrysalis L. Wright Ph.D., Psychology Today, 9 May 2020.
- American Marxism, Mark R. Levin, Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, Inc., July 2021.
- Journalism takes a hit, and so does America, Jeff Robbins, Boston Herald, 25 June 2024.
| |
