It's no secret that the public's confidence in the mainstream media has been steadily dropping over the past few years. Just to give you an idea of how bad it has gotten, according to a Gallup Poll in May, only 28% of the general public had either "A Great Deal" or "Quite A Lot" of confidence in Television News and Newspapers.
There are a myriad of good reasons to be suspicious of the mainstream media, starting with things said by members of the MSM over the last few years. Here are just a few examples that help explain why the public is losing faith in the press:
"Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces...And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country. But me, and others who felt the same way were not listened to by the Bush administration...That is why now America is re-appraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week, and re-writing the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance now they are trying to write another war plan." -- CNN's Peter Arnett in an interview with Iraqi TV on March 30, 2003, during the invasion of Iraq
"Here we will have possibly a bunch of tax dodgers deciding the election." ? Time's Margaret Carlson on Florida absentee ballots from military personnel, on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Nov. 8. Florida does not have a state income tax.
"So now the question is, basically, right now, how will (the Osama Bin Laden tape) affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." -- Walter Cronkite, former CBS anchor, once known as the "Most Trusted Man in America," on the Bin Laden tape that showed up right before the 2004 election.
"We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.
We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity -- for evil -- and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone." -- New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who "was booed off the stage Saturday at Rockford College’s graduation because he gave an antiwar speech"
"The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.
Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.
We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that." -- in a memo leaked to the Drudge Report, explains that there is no need to hold both Kerry and Bush equally accountable
“Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are ‘conservative positions.’...”
“The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war....It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy....It remains fixated on the unemployment rate....”
“The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race....On the strength of all the negative coverage of the President and all his own positive coverage, Senator Kerry heads into today’s twin primaries on a roll.“ -? ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin.
"(T)he fact of the matter is that the United States has got itself in a terrible bind here without regional allies” and suggested that “without UN legitimacy -- forget it, never work, Vietnam quagmire next stop." -- Arthur Kent, NBC's former "scud stud" on the invasion of Iraq
"Barely a week into the war, with coalition forces sweeping through Iraq, ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS's Lesley Stahl decided to raise the ghost of the Vietnam quagmire. Jennings teased Wednesday's World News Tonight by hyping how “one Marine” told an ABC reporter that given the landscape, weather and guerrilla tactics, “sometimes” Iraq “feels like Vietnam.” The night before, on CBS's 48 Hours, Lesley Stahl asked a Vietnam vet: “You fought in Vietnam. Are you getting any feelings of deja vu?” -- Peter Jennings And Leslie Stahl on March 26 & 27, 2003.
"Just one last thing. We are always looking for signs that the country is behaving like its old self again. Tonight at the World Series, if the Yankee fans boo the President, it won't mean necessarily they are unhappy with his leadership, but he did say that he would cheer for anyone but the Yankees in the series. So if New York fans give him the business it just means they're acting like their old selves. And that's probably a good sign." -- Peter Jennings on the World Series in October of 2001
"Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard, awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
...I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely." -- CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan in a New York Times column, admitting that CNN often didn't report newsworthy events in Iraq out of fear of what the regime might do
"We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist....To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack." -? Steven Jukes, global head of news for Reuters News Service, in an internal memo
"Lucky though he was, Bill Clinton never had his shot at greatness. He could lower the jobless rate, balance the budget, console us after the Oklahoma City bombing. But he never got the opportunity George W. Bush was given this Tuesday: the historic chance to lead. Our American spirit, power and enterprise now stand ready for orders. Only the president can give them." -- Chris Matthews after 9/11
"There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing it's job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor." -- ABC's Terry Moran
“When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread. -- Bill Moyers on PBS’s Now
"I think if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think there would be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly." -- Bill Moyers from PBS's Now show
"Times journalists have so far uncovered new problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles Mr. Blair wrote since he started getting national reporting assignments late last October. In the final months the audacity of the deceptions grew by the week, suggesting the work of a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction." -- The New York Times on their reporter Jayson Blair
"Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? OF course it is.
The fattest file on my hard drive is jammed with letters from the disappointed, the dismayed and the irate who find in this newspaper a liberal bias that infects not just political coverage but a range of issues from abortion to zoology to the appointment of an admitted Democrat to be its watchdog. (That would be me.) By contrast, readers who attack The Times from the left -- and there are plenty -- generally confine their complaints to the paper's coverage of electoral politics and foreign policy.
I'll get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall (I want to watch the campaign coverage before I conclude anything), but for now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed.
But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world." -- Daniel Okrent, the New York Times Public Editor
"As I watched Tuesday night's network coverage of the unrelenting political propaganda hour known as the Republican National Convention, the first thought that came to mind was of old newsreels of those self-congratulatory Nazi rallies held in Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler." -- Hugh Pearson, Newsday
“I think the fact that someone has told a lie, even a big lie or maybe several big lies over a lifetime, does not mean that they’re an inherently dishonest person....I believe in redemption and that Bill Clinton ? is he an honest person? I think he is an honest person. Did he lie? Yes, he lied, and on those occasions he was dishonest.” -- CBS anchor Dan Rather
"The story is true. The story is true....I appreciate the sources who took risks to authenticate our story. So, one, there is no internal investigation. Two, somebody may be shell-shocked, but it is not I, and it is not anybody at CBS News. Now, you can tell who is shell-shocked by the ferocity of the people who are spreading these rumors.” -- CBS anchor Dan Rather on the fake memos related to George Bush's National Guard
"U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, New Yorker Magazine reported.
..."They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
...Hersh, however, quoted the former intelligence official as saying the war was now a stalemate.
Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the article said.
"The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive," the former official said." -- Reuters on March 29, 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, quoting from an article that was to be released in the April 7th edition of Newsweek
“I don’t think history has any reason to be kind to him.” -- CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer recalling Ronald Reagan
Then there’s Sy. He’s the public speaker, the pundit. On the podium, Sy is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. “I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”
...Seymour Hersh has always had a rather loose relationship with literal truth. He seems to share with many of the people he writes about the belief that in certain circumstances, the end justifies the means. When Hersh was pursuing the My Lai story, he tracked down the lawyer of William Calley Jr., the man later convicted of participating in the 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians. Hersh intentionally inflated the number of deaths for which Calley was charged, in order to get the attorney to tell him the correct number, 109. A few years ago, Hersh told a crowd at Duke, “a word for what I did?an actual word, it has three letters?it’s called ‘lie.’” -- Chris Suellentrop
The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.” -- Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek
"Seven weeks into an examination of former USA TODAY reporter Jack Kelley’s work, a team of journalists has found strong evidence that Kelley fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major stories, lifted nearly two dozen quotes or other material from competing publications, lied in speeches he gave for the newspaper and conspired to mislead those investigating his work." -- USA Today
“This is not, in my estimation, a good war....I don’t know how we got into a position where our present Commander-in-Chief and the people around him had the guts to take our kids and send them on what seems to be ? it sure is not a noble enterprise.” -- CBS’s Mike Wallace on the war in Iraq
"Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees that triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 15 people died.
Editor Mark Whitaker expressed regret over the item in the magazine's "Periscope" section, saying it was based on a confidential source -- a "senior U.S. government official" -- who now says he is not sure whether the story is true." -- The Washington Post
"The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don’t have an opinion on that and it’s important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my capacity right now. The way I conceive my job running a news organization, and the way I would like all the journalists at ABC News to perceive it, is there is a big difference between a normative position and a positive position. Our job is to determine what is, not what ought to be and when we get into the job of what ought to be I think we’re not doing a service to the American people. I can say the Pentagon got hit, I can say this is what their position is, this is what our position is, but for me to take a position this was right or wrong, I mean, that’s perhaps for me in my private life, perhaps it’s for me dealing with my loved ones, perhaps it’s for my minister at church. But as a journalist I feel strongly that’s something that I should not be taking a position on. I’m supposed to figure out what is and what is not, not what ought to be." -- ABC News President David Westin
"Seven years ago, when the last referendum took place, Saddam Hussein won 99.96 percent of the vote. Of course, it is impossible to say whether that’s a true measure of the Iraqi people’s feelings.” -? ABC’s David Wright, World News Tonight
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."-- Senator Dick Durbin, June 14, 2005
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