Herman

Cain

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September 15, 2008

The Media’s Attempt to Use Your Brain As a Garbage Dump

The Media Research Center has quantified, documented and exposed media bias for its 20 years of existence. But media bias has a new dimension – media garbage, which is false information or unsubstantiated rumors.

Media garbage is an outgrowth of the speed and proliferation of 24/7 news, the Internet, the blogosphere and the race to be the first to report a sensational story, sensationalize a non-story or capture the often-desired mantel of journalistic achievement called “gotcha”.

Ever since Dan Rather of CBS News was fired for insisting that phony National Guard records about President Bush were true, most media outlets have been more careful about accuracy, but most have not tempered their bias tendencies.

Now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has confiscated the rock star status from Sen. Barack Obama, the liberal left is working overtime to try to destroy her reputation and suitability to be vice president of the United States. Without much substance for their mission, a lot of cyberspace garbage has surfaced, much of which has been false.

Ironically, a CBS News investigative reporter, Laura Strickler, chased down some of the rumors about Gov. Palin in Wasilla, Alaska, the governor’s hometown. Strickler, in a report aired on Sept. 12, was able to set the record straight on a few of the more popular rumors floating around.

Rumor: Governor Sarah Palin cut funding for special needs children as governor of Alaska. This is false, she actually increased spending.

Rumor: When Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, she sought to ban a list of books from the Wasilla Library. This is false, and the list of books floating around on the Internet has one book on it that was not even published in 1996 – part of the Harry Potter series.

Rumor: When Sarah Palin was mayor she hired a lobbyist to get more federal earmarks. This is true. The nearly $10 million she sought was for Wasilla infrastructure projects. Name one mayor that has not tried to get federal assistance for infrastructure projects. And this is a long way from earmarks abuse, which is what the Democrats are trying to say it is.

Now here’s the real garbage:

Rumor: Sarah and Todd Palin’s business partner, Scott Richter, sought to have his divorce records sealed because he had something to hide. A companion rumor was that Sarah Palin was mentioned in the records.

Laura Strickler reported that CBS News and at least a dozen other national reporters found absolutely nothing in the documents except Scott Richter’s phone number, which he wanted to keep private.

In the professional field of information technology, there is an expression for inaccurate information and what it produces. It’s GIGO, which stands for “garbage in garbage out”.

Media garbage can destroy a promising career of public service, a reputation or even a business. Just ask United Airlines, whose stock price went from $12.50 a share to a penny a share in one day, because of a four-year-old story about its bankruptcy, which circulated on the Internet mistakenly.

The public is waking up to the bias and the garbage in the media. A recent Rasmussen poll found that Americans believe by a five-to-one ratio that the media is trying to help Barack Obama. They also believe by a 10-to-one ratio that the media is trying to hurt Sarah Palin.

The poll results are good news!

It means that more voters are becoming better informed voters, and they are not allowing the media to use their brains as a garbage dump.

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