Research? No way!

Two recent news items illustrate (to me anyway) that the mainstream media are biased and have no journalistic integrity.  By this I mean that they decide how they want to report a story without doing any research on their own.  This leaves us common folk outside the media to spend the time trying to figure out what is true and what is hype.  Sadly, we don't have the time nor do we care enough to do this as much as we should.

Story number one - Y'all may think this is a silly example, but I think it illustrates my point very well.  It has to do with the reality show Survivor.  A few weeks before the current season started, news was released that there would be four teams this season and that they would be separated by their race.  The media had a field day with this.  Finding anyone and everyone that would possibly have a problem with this and quoting them on every TV show or news article they could.  Because separating by race obviously wrong and must be stopped!  What's the problem you ask?  Well, for one I would be willing to bet that the people who had problems with this had never watched survivor.  Because if they had, they would know that any time there has been four teams, those teams were merged within a couple of competitions.  The media could have done some research and found this out too.  But did they?  Nooooo.  Well, sure enough, last night the teams were merged from four teams to two, with the races all intermingled.  How did this get reported today?  Was there an apology from the press for making a big deal out of nothing?  Of course not.  From this Associated Press story today

All the hubbub about the "Survivor" ethnic experiment turned out to be pretty worthless.

Why? Because after only two episodes, producers merged the black, white, Asian and Latino tribes into two mixed-race gangs. No explanation was given for the quick abandonment of segregation; it seemed to pass by so quickly as to mean nothing.

All the hubbub?  What?  How about, "All the hubbub that WE CREATED"!!!!

 

Story number two - The other day Senator James InHofe gave this speech on the Senate floor about how global warming is way over-hyped by whackos and the mainstream media.  It is quite a long speech, but it is very good.  Especially this point:

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age.

From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.

He goes into much more detail, providing examples of stories in various publications over their years.  Amazing!  Do you hear any of this from the media today?  Of course not!  They love to put Al Gore or any other environmentalist on that will proclaim doom and gloom, but they rarely (if ever!) put on anyone with an opposing viewpoint.  Even worse, Senator InHofe's direct attack on the media was largely ignored!  They won't even defend themselves because they know that they risk people actually researching this on their own!  Amazing!

 

It is so sad that we cannot trust our own news sources for truly fair coverage of the important issues that face us today.  Even more sad, we have become so lazy that we don't challenge them enough and force them to do the right thing.