Presswatch: None Dare Call It Bias
Corry, John
"Presswatch: None Dare Call It Bias" twenty minutes of impersonal, superficial banter. Eventually, she interrupts: "Philip, why do you want to be friends with me?" A smile teases his lips: "Oh, perversion..." Does it sound familiar?...
...So much for liberal bias...
...Arafat to whip his followers into a killing frenzy was the opening of an entrance to an archaeological tunnel that in no way desecrates any Islamic holy places...
...The pretext of the "offensive entrance" to the tunnel is utter nonsense...
...Meanwhile, at the same time they were ignoring the FBI files, the networks all did at least two stories on the decision by the House ethics committee to widen its inquiry into Newt Gingrich's college course...
...A strong Israel is America's most reliable anchor in the Middle East...
...Netanyahu will stand firm against all pressures...that he will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state...nor the division of Jerusalem...
...Responsible reporters now acknowledge, although very quietly, that they showed a tolerance that would have been unthinkable in a Republican administration...
...The facts in its story were accurate —the paper of record prides itself on that—but a liberal Democratic intelligence had been at work in arranging them...
...Dole asked in the final days of the campaign, and even though it was inspired by desperation, it was still a good question...
...Don't watch television...
...Upheaval in Israel Should Israel Make Further Concessions to the Palestinians...
...He re-invents himself, his policies, and even his memories with ease...
...They knew what the political guidelines were, and they had followed them, all the way to oblivion...
...Turkey, considered the staunch "eastern flank of NATO", has just elected an Islamic fundamentalist government...
...According to 58 December 1996 • The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
...This kind of thing did not defeat Dole—he was wonderfully inventive at finding ways to lose on his own—but surely it made it easier for Clinton...
...Descartes, or of Wittgenstein on a honeymoon...
...her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling...
...Probably he can be better explained by poets or psychoanalysts than by journalists, but in politics the journalists get the call...
...Marriage is ultimately only the research experiment for the art, and, if inthe process of dissection, the poor laboratory mice die, well, it's in service to a greater cause...
...The world has come to expect the "Moslem fanatics" to commit unspeakable crimes and acts of terror...
...If there were a six-month gap in the log showing who had access to the files, there would have been calls for impeachment...
...But there must be a limit...
...Dole at his best...
...The concept of civil rights was twisted into a previously unrecognized form, and made to rebound to Bill Clinton's credit...
...He is an amoral man, without the normal allotment of guilt or shame, and, as Senator Bob Kerrey once pointed out, he is also "an unusually good liar...
...The story did not mention the finding by the Justice Department that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had failed to go after thousands of illegal aliens who obtained documents from corrupt officials, and used them to get federal benefits...
...There is something vulgar, almost absurd, in the notion of a Mrs...
...Meanwhile, the press did not show any distress, or even much interest, when Dole charged it with bias...
...Not long ago, however, the Chicago Tribune reported in a front-page story that Democratic front groups in Chicago were bringing forth tens of thousands of immigrants to be processed as citizens with the understanding that they would then vote for Clinton...
...Your tax-deductible 55 contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...That, however, was not convincing...
...It's all for the next assault against Israel that, it is hoped, will finally drive the hated Jews into the sea and make Israel disappear from the face of the earth...
...Netanyahu will stand firm against all pressures: That he will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state in the 'West Bank...
...Then the Times dropped the whole thing...
...The story was accompanied by a box that listed "promises in the civil rights area" he made as acandidate four years ago...
...and it is practiced by journalists who may even be unaware they are doing it...
...Close to 1,000 have been injured...
...In years past, the networks tried to keep up at least the appearance of serious purpose, but even the appearance now has fled...
...11 could not speak English, and had received virtually no instructions on the rights or duties of citizenship...
...these Israel — America's steadfast ally...
...It began on page one, and took up almost an entire inside page, and said that while Clinton might have waffled on immigration, he had shown more compassion over the issue than the mean-spirited, xenophobic Republicans...
...04 PRESS WATCH by John Corry None Dare Call It Bias 0 bviously it had to happen sometime: Bob Dole would criticize the press...
...Where's the outrage...
...No peace by maldng more "concessions...
...The MTV generation arrived both in front of, and in back of, the cameras...
...Don't let them make up your mind for you...
...The answer is obvious...
...The process is done by rote...
...The Washington Post reported that when Senator John McCain was told of Dole's remarks he "rolled his eyes," and said it was "not productive to beat up on the press...
...More important, it did not mention the estimate by the FBI that as many as ioo,000 of the one million or so immigrants who became citizens in the last fiscal year— more than twice as many as had become citizens in the previous year—might have criminal records...
...Don't read that stuff...
...I pressed my thumbs into the hollow at the top of her breastbone and then, still pressing, slowly moved them both, one to the left, the other to the right, up towards her ears where the flesh was hard," he wrote...
...Any pretext, however flimsy, will suffice to provoke Arab/Muslim fury...
...But the Times could see no news value in a story like that...
...What may (or may not) turn out to be a technical violation of campaign-spending law was seen as more important than the White House misuse of the national police force...
...The Tribune reported that the general counsel for the Immigration and Naturalization Service had said procedures like this were "improper" and violated federal law, but that this had been ignored...
...Dole tried, they never were able to close it...
...Right, and the Times was being fair-minded and non-partisan, and there is no such a thing as liberal bias...
...As the days dwindled down and his time grew short, he said that "the country does not belong to the liberal media...
...When I, c said he vividly recalled seeing black churches burn in Arkansas as a child, apparently he believed it...
...The Media Studies Center, best known for its finding that 89 percent of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton four years ago, has offered a reason for this: Women do not know as much as men...
...Consider what would have happened if, for example, goo confidential FBI files had turned up in the Reagan or Bush White House...
...Egypt is armed to the teeth with the most advanced conventional and "unconventional" weaponry and is frantically engaged—just as Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Iran—in the production of atomic weapons, biological weapons, and poison gas...
...How else to explain, say, his late, and almost imperceptible, embrace of the California Civil Rights Initiative, the disappearance of partial-birth abortion as an appropriate subject for discussion, or the reluctance to raise the so-called, and improperly labeled, character issue...
...Can this situation be calmed by Israel's making further concessions to the Palestinians...
...For Israel to allow itself to be dismembered, allowing the creation of a Palestinian state, and be made helpless and at the mercy of its sworn enemies, would be suicidal folly...
...Clinton got a break when, just as they were in George Orwell's Newspeak, the words "honor," "justice," and "morality" were dropped from the correspondents' vocabulary...
...I'm not being entirely metaphorical here...
...We must hope that Mr...
...their part of the city, destroyed all synagogues and Jewish holy places, and used the headstones of Israeli cemeteries as paving stones and to build military latrines...
...In other words, Dole was lost from the start...
...The bloody rioting in Israel under the ridiculous pretext of a tunnel entrance was carefully programmed and orchestrated by Arafat and his cohorts, in an attempt to destabilize the peace process and to press for further concessions by Israel...
...There are many minorities in the world, who would be deeply grateful if they were given even half of the autonomy that Israel is granting the Palestinians...
...Almost 100 people—Israelis and Palestinians—have been killed...
...What makes the world's hypocritical indignation to this alleged desecration particularly disgusting is that during the 19 years that the Jordanians occupied East Jerusalem prior to the Six-Day War, they drove all Jews out of are soldiers, trained to attempt the destruction of Israel in the final assault on the Jewish state, a destruction that, so far unsuccessfully, they have unremittingly attempted for almost 50 years...
...for...
...In a herd of independent minds everyone thinks alike...
...The previous Israeli government imprudently allowed Yasser Arafat to form a fully armed and equipped "police" force that now numbers 45,000 men...
...Republican presidential candidates always have a gender gap...
...The media in general, and television in particular, approved of Clinton's policies, and so they excused his behavior...
...ABC, CBS, and NBC were not interested...
...Television news grew softer and sillier...
...Not long ago, an accusation like that would have led to many cries of denial and perhaps a town hall meeting on "Nightline...
...It was not abortion, family leave, or Medicare, stupid...
...Israel alone is America's steadfast ally in the entire Middle East...
...The week after the Times examined Clinton's immigration policies, it looked at his record on civil rights...
...it is also frivolous, irresponsible, and stupid...
...Althusser is the noted French philosopher, though these days he's not noted at all for his philosophy but only for his resolution of the conflict between his calling and his domestic arrangements in that hotbed of French intellectualism, the Ecole Normale...
...It is the final transformation of their relationship, from life to art...
...The world, now so critTim Russert, NBC's fatuous Washington bureau chief, "It's awful, it's serious, it's devastating...
...The coffee, the silence, the banter, the teasing smile...
...That is without question the highest police-to-population ratio anywhere in the world...
...Meanwhile, the character issue disappeared...
...But of course...
...It is possible that we have a way now to explain one of Dole's problems...
...This was an emancipation of sorts, and for once Dole seemed to be enjoying himself...
...Campaign coverage was reduced—by 40 percent from four years ago, according to one estimate — while twenty-something producers whose interest in, and knowledge of, government and politics was minimal, were given the responsibility for what was left...
...Immigration workers simply handed out certificates...
...We've read the scene in a hundred novels, including a few by Roth...
...Dan Rather allowed his hair to go gray, but that was mere cosmetics...
...What are the facts...
...Among them were promises to work for passage of the Motor Voter bill, support statehood for the District of Columbia, and require employers to spend 1.5 percent of their payrolls on education and training...
...What is news, and what is not, is arrived at by consensus...
...mind...
...In 1994, George Steiner wrote, as one great thinker on another, "The thinker inhabits fictions of purity, of reasoned propositions as sharp as white light...
...Take my wife...
...it was the news...
...Please...
...In particular he was annoyed with the New York Times — "They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times, only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times" — and the day after he said that, he cast an even wider net...
...Helene's face was calm and motionless...
...But deep in the story the Times did quote a memo to Al Gore from an aide last March: "Unless we blast the INS headquarters...we are going to have way too many people still waiting for citizenship in November...
...Philip has become "Philip" and Claire "Claire": he's not capable of being her ex-husband, only of playing him—auditioning the moment for some great work as yet unwritten...
...The Times, of course, saw things differently...
...None may dare call this bias, but it is...
...To diminish Israel's strategic potential by attempting to truncate it would be a major policy blunder...
...that he will not yield the strategic Golan to Syria...
...Iran was America's great ally...
...The enjoinder not to read that stuff and not to watch television might have come from a pixie...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FL AIRE Facts and Logic about The Miclie East PO...
...Plato or a Mme...
...It also found that women were less likely than men to listen to news on the radio, or to read newspapers, newsmagazines, or books about politics or government...
...This one examined immigration policy...
...in the Clinton era, even the concept of citizenship is debased...
...People around him got a blank check, too...
...The Media Studies Center hesitated to put it that way, of course, but it found that women relied more on television than men did for news about the campaign, and that women were more likely than men to rate the coverage as "excellent" or "good...
...As of this writing, the situation in Israel has gravely deteriorated...
...The American Spectator December 1996 57 stands the test of logic or represents Mr...
...Without any provocation, the Palestinian police turned its weapons on Israel...
...Saudi Arabia, the kingpin of our Arab policy, is shaky and could be toppled any day by internal unrest...
...A story on immigration policy might also have said that cheap politics and the multi-cultural impulse had joined...
...Bar 590359 ^ San FtanccACA 94159 FLAME is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
...Advocacy replaces reporting...
...You make up your JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...Critical faculties are suspended...
...But these are not really "police", of course...
...Orders to waive the rules had come from Gore's office...
...it did not exist, but even if it did, it was scarcely worth talking about, and anyway no newspaper, and certainly not the Times, had been soft on Whitewater, or on any of its tributaries...
...What ical of Israel, stood silently by...
...None may dare call that bias, either, but it is...
...This time, though, it barely made the Sunday morning talk shows, and the Times dismissed it with a lofty inference in its presidential-endorsement editorial for Clinton...
...It followed this with a denial by a Clinton aide that the White House was speeding up the naturalization process because it believed the new citizens would vote Democratic...
...The gender gap, along with so many other things, was firmly etched in stone...
...Women vote for them in disproportionately fewer numbers than do men...
...It said that neither his "15 percent tax cut nor his wild charge that newspapers have pulled their punches on Whitewater Dole was right to kvetch, not that he deserved sympathy...
...Those who believe that peace with the Arabs can be obtained by making concessions to them and by giving them moreland are dreamers...
...The pretext that was decided upon by Mr...
...Perhaps Louis Althusser was enacting a necessary axiom or logicalproof when, on the morning of November 16,198o, he throttled his wife...
...In Dole's case, though, the gap was a chasm, and as hard as he and Mrs...
...all during the campaign, Dole and his advisers had been reading the Times and watching television...
...In the interest of the world, the interest of the United States, and, of course, the existential interest of Israel itself, we must hope that Mr...
...Some things are emphasized, and some are not, and a damning memo is casually mentioned, and then dismissed...
...we've seen it in a thousand movies, including a few with Miss Bloom...
...The outrage Dole wondered about would have been boundless...
...and that he will not countenance the division of Jerusalem...
...The same day the Times reported Dole's plea not to read that stuff or watch television, it also ran another installment in "The Clinton Record" series...
...The Palestinians have exploded into murderous rage, into violence, and into bloodshed...
...As writers go, Claire Bloom could have done worse than Roth, and, if it's any consolation, she was lucky to escape with purely mental torture...
...In fact, only CNN reported the six-month gap, as well as the disclosure that the White House knew it was collecting files on Republicans...
...But he was ignoring the irony that Dole had spent most of his disastrous campaign in thrall to the liberal media he now was attacking...
...The FBI files in the Clinton White House, however, barely made the evening news...
...it is now our most implacable enemy...
...We've got to stop the liberal bias in this country," he told a Texas audience...
...A carefully programmed riot...
...He knew what the political guidelines were, and he followed them into oblivion...
...The vaunted peace with Egypt is a sham...
...Last August, in a mass ceremony at Soldier Field, some ii,000 immigrants were sworn in as citizens even though many44 Dole had been reading the Times and watching television...
...Marriage is about roughage, bills, garbage disposal, and noise...
Vol. 29 • December 1996 • No. 12
