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Jewish World Review Oct. 12, 2005 / 9 Tishrei, 5766 Such brilliant, substantive journalists By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
During the Reagan years, and even during the Gingrich years, the
central complaint about the mainstream media by conservatives was that they
misrepresented the substance of our policy proposals. A 4.5 percent budget
increase (after adjusting for inflation and the size of the beneficiary
class) of the hot lunch program was characterized by the media as a cruel
cut in the program that would leave poor little children hungry and with
empty tummies, thus causing empty minds. (The second part was true, but that
was due to the damage caused by National Education [SIC] Association — not
the government-provided nutrition programs.)
A guarantee that the current traditional Medicare program would
remain available for any beneficiary who wanted to participate in it was
called an end to such benefits. Increases in spending were called cuts.
Guarantees were called broken commitments.
Reagan's war efforts to defeat communism and create democracies
in Central America were called support for fascism and brutal right-wing
regimes. (Funnily, the effect of his "support of fascism" resulted in an
unprecedented blossoming of democracies in Central America.)
Oh, for the good old days. Then, at least the media cared about
the substance of our proposals — even if they lied about them. (Of course
they also calumniated the personalities of conservative leaders, but that
was only part of the coverage. We should have been grateful.)
Today, big media has lost interest in policy substance almost
altogether. Analyses of major policy announcements are viewed, almost
exclusively, through the prism of polling numbers.
If the president were to call for two plus two to equal four,
the media would report that such a proposal had the support of only 42
percent of likely voters, and a slippage of even conservative support from
87 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps on the jump page, in the 38th inch of the
story in the New York Times, they might get around to quoting a professor of
mathematics from MIT to the effect that, in fact, the president was right
that two plus two still equals four. But for television and radio break
news, the story would end at the polling result, which is bad news for the
president.
What brings this melancholy observation to mind was the
grotesque non-reporting of President Bush's arguably historic remarks last
week concerning the nature of the enemy in the "War on Terror," that until
last week was the enemy of which we dared not mention the name.
For the first time the president of the United States named the
enemy: "islamfascist" and "radical, militant Islam." He compared it to the
Nazi and communist ideological threat of the previous century.
I and others had been calling for precisely such language. From
what one had heard, there had been a powerful debate going on within the
administration for over six months on the advisability of such verbal
boldness. So long as political correctness blocked even the president from
naming the enemy, he — or future presidents — would be unable to provide
leadership to the nation. If a president could not name the enemy, how could
he provide the vital war leadership of explaining the danger and advising
the public on the necessary strategies? How could the progress or lack of
progress be rationally discussed with the public?
And in this shadow war that lacks the classic war battles that
told previous war generations of victory or defeat, how could the public
begin to even understand that there is nonetheless a battle raging that may
define their lives and safety for generations to come?
There were serious arguments against such language being used.
Reasonable people feared that any mention of Islam in the context of the war
on terror might needlessly outrage and estrange countless millions of
non-radical Muslims around the world — thus driving them into the enemy
camp.
Countering that argument, I, and others, made the case that, to
the contrary, by defining precisely and explicitly the enemy as only the
radical, jihadist, fascist element, we were narrowing the scope of our
definition of the enemy. And anyway, even unstated, doubtlessly millions of
people falsely had assumed we thought we were at war with an entire
religion — rather than only with those who espoused and acted on their
violent ideology.
But million-dollar nincompoop television news stars led with the
absurdly ignorant observations that there was "nothing new" in this speech,
and that the president was not likely to improve his reduced 35 percent
public support for the Iraq war.
Having decided that the speech (which they manifestly did not
substantively understand or report) was not going to make the president
immediately more popular, their reporting trailed off into a rehash of his
other current political problems.
One doesn't mind, so much, mainstream journalists being
b-st-rds. It's being such dumb b-st-rds that one finds so irksome.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
