3.14.2005

What media bias?

An English friend of mine e-mailed me this morning with this subject line:

this is scary stuff...
He linked to this NY Times article (free login required). He's right: it is scary stuff. The government is using taxpayer dollars to manipulate the way people think.

I want to know why this is only an issue when President Bush does it, though. Where was the outrage when Clinton was doing the same thing? Where was the outrage when California was using cigarette tax money to fund propaganda depicting tobacco companies as evil and murderous, leading to a change in public opinion that led to higher cigarette taxes and more anti-smoking laws?

The New York Times, in this instance, goes so far as to bury any mention of anyone other than the Bush administration doing this in the 12th paragraph. And there, they limit it to a single phrase: "The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration..."

It's no wonder people overseas have such a distorted anti-Bush (and still extremely pro-Clinton) point of view. Their own newspapers and broadcast news reports get a good deal of their U.S. news and views from sources like the allegedly reputable New York Times.

New York Times, your partisanship is showing!

1 comment:

traderrob said...

Wake up, they have been doing this in one form or another for 3 decades. They are called "Public Information Campaigns". Why all the sudden interest now? Oh yea, Bush is in office.

Happy Super Tuesday!