Russian Journalist Stabbed 20 Times For Insulting Islam (Which Is Precisely Why American Journalists Will Only Insult Christianity)

Poor  Sergei. If he’d only stuck with the ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc., etc., etc. script and only attacked Christianity, he’d be fine now.

Fox News, of course, is very much hated by Allah for playing by a different script.

Journalist Assaulted In Moscow
11:39 29/05/2012
MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti)

Famous journalist and radio presenter Sergei Aslanyan has been assaulted late Monday night, Moscow police reported.

According to police, an unknown man called Aslanyan at 11.30 pm and asked him to come out for a talk. As soon as the Aslanyan left his house the man attacked him, hitting the journalist on the head and stabbing him on the chest, neck and an arm, before disappearing.

Aslanyan himself managed to call police and was later hospitalized at a major Moscow clinic where he was operated on. “The patient was brought last night to the operating room, now he is in intensive care,” said at the hospital.

Moscow police initiated an investigation over assault and seized CCTV footage hoping to establish the identity of the attacker.

It is believed the crime may be related to Aslanyan’s work. Newspaper Izvestia suggested it may be connected with provocative remarks by the journalist on religious themes

On May 14 on a live radio show on Radio Mayak, Aslanyan discussed the question of choosing a new car, and used the expression, “from rags to riches,” in the context of a discussion about the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, in a manner which has drawn condemnation from some parts of the Muslim community, with some pro-Islamic media publishing negative articles referring to the remarks.

The imam and the congregation of Kazan Zakaban Mosque and the Tatarstan community wrote a letter to the Prosecutor General of Russia, in which they stated that they were offended by Aslanyan’s comments.

The Islamic community is sensitive about perceived attacks on Islam, and its founder. The 2005 publication in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad led to a wave of protests and threats directed towards the newspaper.

In Russia, the November 2009 murder of Moscow priest Daniil Sysoev, who had been converting Muslims to Christianity, in St. Thomas’ church in southern Moscow has also heightened religious tensions in some sections of the community.

Sergey Aslanyan, who previously worked with liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, has been with Radio Mayak since 2008, taking part in a range of programs. Radio Mayak confirmed that Aslanyan had been assaulted.

If 43 Muslim organizations had sued the George Bush administration, you can damn well bet that every mainstream media “journalist” in America would have “courageously” devoted their lives to making sure every voter knew what a horrible human being Bush was.

Cardinal Wuerl expressed the essence of the story the media are refusing to cover in a way that helps you to understand why the media is refusing to cove it:

WUERL: This lawsuit isn’t about contraception. It is about religious freedom. Embedded in the mandate is a radically new definition of what institutes a religious community, what constitutes religious ministry — brand new and never fortified in the federal level. That’s what we are arguing about.
 
The lawsuit said we have every right to serve in this community as we have served for decades and decades. The new definition says you are not really religious if you serve people other than your own and if you hire people other than your own. That wipes out all of the things that we have been doing, all the things that we contribute to the common good — our schools, our health care services, our Catholic charity and even parish soup kitchens and pantries. All that’s wiped out.
 
WALLACE: Let me pick up on that, because the White House says — the famous accommodation by President Obama, that they changed the mandates so that the insurance companies that you are dealing with, to provide health insurance coverage to your employees have to provide the birth control for free and that the charities and the schools and the hospitals, don’t have to do anything.
 
WUERL: This is one of the reasons why we say the accommodation didn’t change anything, because so many of our institutions, certainly the archdiocese, is self insured. We are the insurer.
 
So, when you say, don’t worry, we changed this and only the insurer has to pay. And we are the insurer, there is no accommodation.
 
WALLACE: But they’re saying, well, over the next year, we are taking public comment on this. And we will tweak that regulation so that the self insurers will not have to provide the birth control.
 
WUERL: Last time the government said we are going to hear from you, 200,000 suggestions went in and not one of them was accepted.
 
What was in the presentation before the request for suggestions was exactly what the administration reported out. By the way, it’s a law. It’s a law right now.
 
All of this conversation about we’ll find a way around it, that’s conversation. What’s law right now, is that that definition is what we are going to have to live with. And that’s why we went to court, because in the United States, if there is an impasse on the individual rights, we’re going to court and that way you scrape away all of the politics.
 
WALLACE: I don’t know if you’ve heard about this. But if you haven’t, I’ll inform you. What do you make of the fact that the broadcast network spent grand total of 19 seconds on their evening newscast — 19 seconds — covering the lawsuits by the 43 Catholic organizations; what do you make of that?
 
WUERL: Well, it is puzzling because they are focusing so much attention on the pope’s butler. It seems to me that somehow they missed the boat. And they missed the story.
 
And that’s why it is so important that we have a moment like this.
 
WALLACE: You think it’s political bias on the part of the networks?
 
 […]

 WALLACE: Meanwhile, Mitt Romney came out this week for allowing federal funds to be used by low income parents to send their kids to any public school or even to some private school and parochial schools. You support that idea, don’t you?
 
WUERL: The idea that money should follow the child, we all pay the taxes. We are all paying taxes for education. Why doesn’t that money follow the parents of the kids?
 
For example, here, if you live in the District of Columbia, if you are very wealth or have a lot of support, you can send your child to a very exclusive private school. But if you live in this inner city, if you live in some of the poorest neighborhoods, you don’t get an option.
 
That’s why the Catholic Church is there, that’s why we have our schools in the inner city saying we’ll give you a chance to get a decent education and we’ll pay for it. But wouldn’t it be fair, wouldn’t be just, wouldn’t be really honest if every child a chance at a real, true, academically excellent education. And one way to do that is to let the parents have a choice.

Archbishop Wenski put the essence of the gigantic story that the mainstream media has steadfastly refesued to cover thusly:

“As Catholics, we help people not because they’re Catholic, but because we’re Catholic. And so our schools, our universities, our Catholic charities, organizations, our hospitals admit people regardless of their faith. What the government is saying to us is that then, we’re going to have to operate hospitals for Catholics only?”

What does the mainstream media scream in place of covering such a story from such a perspective?

Of course, American “journalists” are also pretty much okay if they attack American servicemen, too.  Those bastard troops should obviously all die for protecting the Great Satan America and for supporting Mitt Romney by 24 points over the mainstream media messiah Obama.

Daily Show Utterly Destroys The Self-Righteous Hypocrisy Of ‘Blind To Their Own Demagoguery’ Liberals

This is one that keeps getting better the more you watch it.  The Daily Show interviews Froma Harrop, the president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers’ Civility Project.  And then he went an interviewed Froma Harrop, the bomb throwing shrieking harpie who labelled the tea party as worse than terrorists.  And surprise, surprise, the politically correct self-righteous leftist journalist was the exact same shrieking harpie as the bomb throwing tea party bigot:

Must watch: “Daily Show” destroys liberal columnist over “civility” hypocrisy
posted at 5:12 pm on January 13, 2012 by Allahpundit

An instant classic, possibly even superior to their interview with that imbecile in San Francisco who wants to ban Happy Meals. Let me tweak the headline, though, since it’s not quite accurate. Better version: “Liberal columnist destroys herself as ‘Daily Show’ cameras roll.” It’s Froma Harrop, whom you’ll remember from her column in August comparing tea partiers — unfavorably — to terrorists who want to blow up the power grid. How they managed to pull off this goof without her wising up, I simply can’t imagine. She must have wised up but, for reasons known only to her, decided to play along with the humiliation. (Being a “good sport,” maybe?) Either that or what we’re seeing here is actually a tour de force of editing that turned what was a routine interview into a surreal expose of oblivious hypocrisy. No one be this clueless for real. Can they?

Besides, people like Harrop and the DNC’s current talking-points robot typically don’t do what they do because they’re blind to their own demagoguery, I think. To believe that is to let them off the hook for the cynical choice they’ve consciously made to smear their opponents for political advantage. There’s plenty of paranoia involved, no doubt, but it’s all in service to an agenda. If Harrop was genuinely this myopic, you could almost forgive her for it. Almost.

Update: Had a video glitch there for a second but it should be working now.

[Watch the video – and you HAVE to watch this video – here]

Froma Harrop had to be acting this out to spoof herself, you might think.  But no, she was that oblivious to her abject hypocrisy.

It’s too bad that the Daily Shows skews 99% to the left itself; because there is SO much material for these guys available if they ever decided to make the left their “special project” it’s not even funny.

Unfortunately, I think the reason Daily Show caught Froma so completely off-guard and oblivious was because, as a liberal, she had every reason to believe that she would be “in” on whatever joke the Daily Show was playing rather than “the joke.”  It is hard to believe that this woman would have gone on Sean Hannity and fallen for this trap – because she would have understood that she was being set up.  Versus, oh, say the reliably liberal Daily Show.

Btw, there’s another guy they could have played this same trick on with the exact same results:

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do — it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. (Applause.) — Barack Hussein Obama, Arizona Memorial Service, January 12, 2011

Versus:

“My plan says we’re going to put teachers back in the classrooms, construction workers back to work,” President Obama said at a campaign event today. “Tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for hiring veterans, tax cuts if you give your workers a raise –- that’s my plan.”

The Republicans plan, Obama says, boils down to this: ‘Dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance.’

And:

One vision has been championed by Republicans … says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves. — Barack Hussein Obama, April 13, 2011

Yes, the same guy who talked about “polarized discourse” in Arizona was the same guy who had said only a couple of months before that:

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

The world is filled with liberals who couldn’t be more abjectly clueless to their own incredible self-righteous hypocrisy.

If Democrats actually want to end the vicious discourse, they will impeach their own president, because he is more polarizing and more divisive than anyone who has ever inhabited the White House bar none.

 

Keith Olbermann Demonizes Fox News As Biased; Gets Caught Donating Max Amount To Über-Liberal Democrats

Fox News is biased.  It’s advocacy journalism.

But don’t believe me.  Believe Keith Olbermann.  Now there’s a fair-minded journalist for you.

Oops:

Keith Olbermann suspended after donating to Democrats
By SIMMI AUJLA | 11/5/10 6:00 AM EDT Updated: 11/5/10 6:22 PM EDT

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after POLITICO reported that he made three campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement Friday: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Olbermann, who acknowledged the contributions in a statement to POLITICO, made the maximum legal donations of $2,400 apiece to Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. He donated to the Arizona pair on Oct. 28 — the same day that Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show.

NBC has a rule against employees contributing to political campaigns, and a wide range of news organizations prohibit political contributions — considering it a breach of journalistic independence to contribute to the candidates they cover.

The network originally announced that Chris Hayes, the Washington editor for The Nation, was going to fill in for Olbermann. But the network announced late Friday that Hayes would not be the substitute host, after Hayes’ previous donations to two Democratic candidates in 2008 and 2009 came to light. […]

Olbermann is one of MSNBC’s most recognizable faces, and has emerged as one of the country’s most prominent liberal commentators. A former ESPN star, Olbermann’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” started in 2003 as a traditional news show but evolved into a left-leaning opinion program – and in some ways, led the network into its new identity as the cable-news voice of the left and an attempt to be a counterweight to Fox News. […]

Inside MSNBC, employees were shocked at the news of Olbermann’s suspension. Despite a reputation for a prickly personality off-air, Olbermann was given wide berth inside the network because of his stature – and his ratings. […]

In addition, Olbermann has been a critic of the political donations made by Fox News’s parent company, News Corp., which contributed $1 million each to a pair of organizations trying to defeat Democratic candidates.

You’d think that Olbermann’s head (and the heads of every liberal) would explode from trying to contain all the hypocritical contradictions.

I must point out that this story about Olbermann follows the revelation that “journalists” at a CBS affiliate actively sought to find stories damaging to Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller out of an obviously blatantly partisan and ideological mindset.

As for the News Corp. donation, Keith Olbermann, objective journalist extraordinaire, railed as follows:

Oct. 7 — On his MSNBC show, “Countdown,” Olbermann went after News Corp. and Fox News, highlighting the political donation and describing the network as “a national cable news outlet that goes beyond having a point of view … and actually starts to donate to partisan groups of one party.”

What’s it like to walk around without a single honest bone in your entire body, Keith?

And which Democrats did Keith Olbermann choose to give to?  Was it those decent, moderate Democrats?

Nope.  Rabid, rabid liberals.

Meet Raul Grijalva:

It is well-documented in this space that Raul Grijalva is known for stealing his political opponents’ yard signs, even back in the early days when he ran for school board and Pima County Board of Supervisors.

So should it surprise us that his congressional campaign uses the same dirty tricks?

Read the KGUN 9 story and watch their news report below:

Gabby Mercer, a naturalized American citizen from Mexico, went with a few other military wives to Raul Grijalva’s campaign office to ask Grijalva about his stance on the wars.

What she found shocked her: In the trunk of the car owned by Ruben Reyes — Grijalva’s chief of staff and husband to city councilwoman Regina Romero — was a stack of Ruth McClung signs that he had stolen. So she filed a police report.

Here is page one, page two, and page three of the police report.

Here is the Arizona Daily Star’s write-up:

A campaign volunteer for several Republican candidates filed a Tucson police complaint Wednesday, alleging theft of Ruth McClung’s campaign signs by a staff member of U.S. Congressman Raúl Grijalva.

Gabriela Mercer, 46, said she saw two political campaign signs in the back of district director’s Ruben Reyes’ vehicle.

Mercer, who has a daughter serving in the Marines on her second tour in Afghanistan, had visited Grijalva’s congressional office with a small group of military parents to ask for information about his stance on war. She and two others then headed to his campaign office, hoping to speak with him there.

As Reyes approached them to tell them their issue was being resolved, he opened the back of his sports utility vehicle, where two yard signs were visible.

Mercer, who has volunteered for both Republican congressional candidates McClung and Jesse Kelly, said when she asked why he had them, Reyes became defensive and eventually said he was going to “put them up.”

She said she found it “unbelievable” that a high-ranking staffer would steal a political opponent’s signs.

And what happened to Gabby Mercer?  She came out of a speaking engagement to find a rock had been thrown through her back window.

In addition, this noble candidate who is getting Keith Olbermann’s money was caught committing widespread voter fraud.

And Grijalva is the kind of race-baiter who is not above using racism to attack his Caucasian – or should I say “white bread” – opponent.

Jack Conway?  How about his “Aqua Buddha” ad that was so vile it probably derailed his entire candidacy.  Even the liberal New Republic characterized Conway’s vicious attack piece as “The ugliest, most illiberal political ad of the year.”

As for Gabrielle Giffords, all I have to say is “Nancy Pelosi.”  Giffords has been described as a Pelosi protegee, and was a doctrinaire liberal who voted with Pelosi 94% of the time.

You can see why Keith Olbermann would support such toad.  Because lowlifes flock together.

For a personal note, I don’t mind journalists donating to political causes or to politicians.  In fact, I’m all in favor of it.  It’s not like these “journalists” don’t have political opinions merely because of some network policy against political donations.  I prefer knowing where these people are coming from to having some bogus facade of “objectivity.”

Sarah Palin Continues To Confound Bitter Left

Remember the avalanche of political obituaries journalists wrote following Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as governor?

Sarah Palin was 14 for 14 defeating one trumped-up “ethics” violation after another from unhinged leftists who were using the courts as a means to attack her.  But in today’s caricature of justice that liberalism has created, one can win big and lose huge: she was at least $500,000 in debt – and I’ve heard figures close to $1 million – fending off these frivolous lawsuits.  With her own children under vile personal attack, with her family deep in debt through no fault of her own, and with her very ability to govern hamstrung by “Sarah Palin Derangement Syndrome,” she stepped down and left the governance of Alaska to her trusted lieutenant.

And it was revealing how the very same people who unrelentingly dumped on Sarah Palin as some kind of inbred hill-billy chick who wasn’t qualified to manage a 7-11 were outraged by her decision to step down as governor.

In any event, if I had a nickel for every mainstream media entry into the “Sarah Palin is finished” narrative, I’d be so filthy rich it would be unreal.

Sarah Palin redefined the entire debate on ObamaCare with a single Facebook entry submitted while she was on vacation.

Not bad for a political has-been who destroyed her platform and popularity by stepping down.

Now we learn another little factoid about Sarah Palin’s ongoing relevance:

Palin worth $100,000 per hour; over 1,000 invitations so far

August 31, 9:57 AM Fresno Political Buzz Examiner Nicco Capozzi

Many pundits, Alaskans, and simple political observers have pondered why Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin resigned from office. One answer now seems apparent—money. Since her resignation, Palin has been offered over 1,000 invitations to make paid speeches, appear, and campaign on behalf of politicians and political groups.

She has received offers from numerous speakers’ bureaus (scouts for speechmakers) and has reportedly signed with at least one of them, the Washington Speakers Bureau. Washington Speakers Bureau’s clientele currently consist of Former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, Bob Woodward, Katie Couric, Colin Powell, Rudy Giulianni, Alan Greenspan, and many others. For a full list of speakers click here.

Nearly all of the over 1,000 invitations include request for speeches. On top of the speeches, over 120 political candidates from all levels of federal and state government have requested Palin to appear on their behalf at various political events. She will also make cameos for charities, Christian organizations, and other related social causes and groups.

So when Palin beckoned to Alaskans that she would better serve them not as their governor but as a private citizen, what she really meant was, she will raise a tremendous amount of money so that she could have a better chance of running for President in 2012.  Or, she could have resigned simply to make money without having any plans to run for higher office.  Of the 1,000 speech invitations, almost all will be bring the former governor $100,000 each.

Palin has not yet confirmed where she will be speaking or campaigning, but responses to the invitations are expected to begin this week. However, one cannot expect Palin to hurry in confirming such invitations as she has her book to finish (reported to be 85% complete), and a giant file of other offers ranging from cable to business ventures that she is still considering. With all the possibilities, it is no wonder Palin left a $100,000 government job as she can now make that in one hour of work—a sum to which soccer moms and plumbers can certainly relate.

Now, of course, that last sentence immediately above is just pure bitter leftist showing through.  Sarah Palin could be the most successful human being who ever lived, and the leftwing wouldn’t allow her so much as one yoctogram of praise or credibility.  Comprehending reality is just not in their nature.

Not only has Sarah Palin not lost her relevance; but she has gained more than she had when she was serving as governor of Alaska.

You know who really SHOULD step down?  Every single “journalist” who discredited himself or herself trying to tear Sarah Palin down.  How much credibility do the people who wrote Sarah Palin’s obituary deserve?

ABC Journalist Damns Whole Field Of Journalism Over “DANGEROUS” Bias

This is as powerful as it is frightening, coming from a fourth-generation journalist with ABC named Michael S. Malone.

ABC News
Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline
Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE

Oct. 24, 2008 —

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living — and when I knew her, scary — grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I’ve spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist,” you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word “said” — muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. — to influence the way a reader will comprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty — especially in ourselves.

Reporting Bias

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the ’60s I saw a lot of subjective “New” Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from “real” reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I’d spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else’s work — not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I’d always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes — and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who’d managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation’s leading newspapers, many of whom I’d written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith — and I know the day and place where it happened — was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I’d already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNN would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.

The Presidential Campaign

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass — no, make that shameless support — they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather — not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake — but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far — such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends — can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer — when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Joe the Plumber

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it’s because we don’t understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide — especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain’s. That’s what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I’m still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren’t those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Bad Editors

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe — and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway — all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself — an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country…

PISS OFF THESE DISGRACES TO FAIRNESS AND TRUTH IN THE MEDIA; VOTE REPUBLICAN ON NOVEMBER 4!!!

I have been writing about the horrendous media bias – and how terribly destructive it is to democracy, and to the American political process – for some time.  My point has been: when the media – which has been charged with the Constitutional duty to keep the political process honest and fair – itself becomes the propaganda arm for one political party, it becomes impossible to sustain a democracy.  If the truth is misrepresented, or distorted, nor simply not reported, in the interests of advancing one particular political ideology, a fatal cancer is introduced in the democratic process.

We have seen the very likely death of two precious institutions during this campaign: 1) of the media’s integrity and honesty; and 2) of public campaign financing.

The media has stooped to misrepresentation, propaganda, demagoguery, and flat out lying, in order to elect Barack Obama for President.  And Barack Obama – in order to win election – abandoned his own promise to accept public campaign finance and – in the words of The Associated Press – “doomed” public finance.

What major candidate for President will ever again accept public funding if he realizes he might very well find himself or herself outgunned by a 4-1 margin by electing to do so?  Enter big money the likes the American political process has never before seen, thanks to one Barack Obama.

You can’t put either genie back into the bottle.  If media propaganda obtains its intended result, if massive campaign money obtains its intended result, both institutions are doomed forevermore.  And democracy itself is doomed along with them.