They want the TRUTH stopped no matter what
The liberal media propaganda experts had a huge leftist meeting to discuss how to stop the conservative message from getting out.
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http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewCulture.asp?Page=Culturearchive200506CUL20050603a.html
Liberal Media Reformers Call for 'Truth' Over 'Balance'
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
June 03, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - Claiming that conservative bias is a "major crisis in the U.S. media," a panel of liberal journalists and media analysts said news organizations should promote "truth" over "balance."
"The conservatives have got us, as a country, now believing that balance -- giving both sides -- is the same as truth, and there are some things that are just false," said Linda Foley, president of The Newspaper Guild, during a panel discussion on media reform at the "Take Back America" conference in Washington, D.C.
"The discussion that we have to have balanced reports is kind of crazy" when a story is false, she added.
Take global warming, said Josh Silver, another panelist and executive director of the Fair Press media reform organization.
Silver said the United States is the only developed, industrialized country that still debates in the mainstream media whether or not global warming is happening. No need to give the other side on that topic, he was suggesting, since global warming is the truth.
An audience member wondered how the press should have dealt with attacks on the military record of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Panelist Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a group dedicated to exposing "conservative misinformation" in the media, said something similar probably will happen in the 2008 campaign.
"We don't know exactly what form it will take because we don't know who the candidate will be, but there will be something similar," he predicted. According to Waldman, "Democrats could raise George Patton from the grave and he'd be attacked as weak and unpatriotic."
While noting that many media outlets did the right thing regarding the Swift Boat Veterans' claims, Waldman said "they did it too late.
"After the story had already been circulating around and was in hundreds of newspapers and TV shows, I think both the New York Times and the Washington Post did extensive investigations on the charges," he said. "But by the time they got around to doing it, the charges had already had their effect."
Waldman added that if newspapers had told the public they were investigating the Swift Boat claims, "conservatives would have charged that they were trying to hide this because of their liberal conspiracy to get Kerry elected."
Waldman also noted the impulse to "get it first." Once something becomes a story, he said, the fact that people are talking about it makes it newsworthy. "I don't know if there's a cure for that disease."
'Vile stew of bile'
Media Matters for America describes its mission as "monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," but it also has another goal, Waldman said. The group also aims to "discredit the right-wing media," he said.
According to Waldman, the "right-wing" media "gains the bulk of its real power when stories leap from programs hosted by conservatives like "Rush Limbaugh and his imitators" to the mainstream press.
Waldman said he doesn't believe most reporters listen to Limbaugh's radio show. "If they did, they would be appalled at the vile stew of bile" aired on his broadcast every weekday.
Some audience members asked how the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio can be "protected from political bias."
"This is another one of those cases where no one had really thought of injecting this kind of political bias before the Bush administration did," Waldman replied.
"One of their greatest political strengths is audacity," he added, noting that in a different administration, "someone would have said, 'We really shouldn't do that. We're going to get criticized.' And their response is: 'Who cares? We're going to do it anyway.'
"So now, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is financing secret studies on [retired PBS broadcaster] Bill Moyers and putting pressure to politicize CPB to 'turn' PBS and NPR," Waldman stated.
To help counter such efforts, he suggested people visit handsoffpublicbroadcasting.org, a sister site to Media Matters, or express their views to their local public broadcasting station or elected officials.
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