art
Senior Member
Posts: 2111
Joined: Aug 2004
|
Tuesday January 27, 2009 12:08 AM
|
|
From:
Robert Reich's Blog
Robert Reich is the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is "Supercapitalism." This is his personal journal.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin
"In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this). My goal is and has always been to create as many opportunities for as wide a group as possible, and not exclude anyone from access. There is and has never been any ambiguity about this. "The hate mail I have received since your broadcast suggests that the mischievous consequences of your demagoguery are potentially dangerous, in addition to being destructive of rational and constructive political discourse. I urge you to take responsibility for your words. Words and ideas have real world consequences, and you have demonstrated a cavalier disregard for both."
(Emphasis added)
The above addressed and quite a number of unnamed others of similar ilk deserve to be called on this, (should have been a long time ago), those who now through their recent history of exaggerated, imaginary and histrionic exaggerations and intentionally deceptive reporting throughout the recent election have demonstrated their eager willingness to misrepresent the truth and facts. e.g. Fox played up the Obama's on-stage "fist-bump" as a "terrorist" gesture on their radio and TV assets as well as in their papers.
It's simple logic: 1) They truly, genuinely believed Barack and Michelle Obama were terrorists and their "fist-bump" the public equivalent of the terrorists secret handshake or 2) They really weren't that stupid and gullible and simply attempted (quite disingenuously) to intentionally deceive and mislead their audience by creating a (non)issue out of something they knew wasn't true and was only a fragment of their imagination intended to mislead their audience in an effort to sway opinion and influence the outcome of democratic process.
And they behaved similarly at every opportunity. I personally saw their on screen text display "Barack Osama" on 3-separate times yet not once on all the other networks combined. Long after the State of Hawaii announced his birth certificate was indeed legitimate and authentic and several independent websites both staunchly Conservative and neutral, public-interest had confirmed it, they still raised the issue as a red-herring in lieu of actually spending their time reporting on real news and genuine issues.
Deception in political reporting is nothing new, but the above and other un-noted examples were exceptionally obvious and to then self-describe as "Fair and Balanced" and a "No Spin Zone" is simply Orwellian.
By nature I can have a bone-to-pick with any media source, but Fox is the easiest target here as they were simply the most egregious and outright misleading. Intentionally so. And that is an attempt to thwart the legitimate democratic will of the People!
I'm just saying....
|
|
