Cutting through the media's lies and distortions



As I was growing up in London, at a time when England was still a glorious land in which to live, the BBC was a rock-solid source of dependable, unbiased information. One knew that it could be relied upon to meticulously choose every word in news reporting, so that only the most accurate, balanced reports reached its viewers and listeners. In those days, if a news presenter gave a biased report or used an unwise word, as used to happen only very occasionally, there would often be a discussion about the offending sentence the next day in the House of Commons. Those were the days.

Recently, the BBC's headline was "Gaza hit by Israeli air strikes" The story began: At least three Palestinians have been killed and many others wounded in a series of Israeli air strikes on Gaza City. The Palestinian Prime Minister condemned the strikes, saying they made it harder for Israel and the Palestinians to hold talks on ending violence." Quite apart from the fact that there are no such people as Palestinians, and that they cannot possibly have a Prime Minister because their imaginary country has only an imaginary government, you are supposed to infer that Israel decided to bomb civilians for no apparent reason, killed three innocent people for no apparent reason, and are the sole aggressors. And it is because of Israel's actions that peace in the Middle East is elusive.

Even the Jerusalem Post, which is not especially pro-Israel, headlines the same story thus: The IDF (Israel Defense Force) declares war on Hamas weapon industry: 3 IAF air strikes in Gaza killed 2 Hamas officials and destroyed a Hamas weapons factory and warehouse.

So what are the facts of this story? Israel killed two terrorists and destroyed an illegal weapons factory. It's a start but there's much more to be done. The rest of the terrorists are still free to kill Israeli civilians, and there is little doubt that they will do so in coming months.

Ironically it was the BBC's Diplomatic Editor, John Simpson, who once wrote about the sad state of the American media: "The freest society in the world has achieved the kind of news blackout which totalitarian regimes can only dream about." (The Spectator: July 18, 1992). Like the BBC, National Public Radio is as left-biased as it's possible to be. Where have these people been for the past quarter century? Do they not know that the fate of communism and socialism has been decided? Yet they continue to propound these delusions, as if that hadn't happened and as if they contained not just a grain of truth, but ultimate truth.

Former CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg once wrote in The Wall Street Journal "the old argument that the networks and other 'media elites' have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore." Oh, but it is worth discussing! CBS, of course, has openly admitted that they aim their news to people with a mental age of 12.

In 1996, William Bennett told us about his campaign against drivel and filth on television. He told USA Today: "Civilizations don't collapse all at once; they do it one degree at a time." And as Dr. Bennett predicted, American and Western civilization as a whole are headed for collapse. One primary reason is that we allow lies to become established as truth without combating them. No enduring civilization can exist on a bedrock of lies, only on a foundation of truth.

Jesus told the parable of the foolish man who built his house on sand. He said "The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." (Matthew 7:26-27) That is the fate which awaits the West and especially the United States if it continues to embrace media lies.

Know this: you can rely on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS and also now the BBC for only one thing: to give you a distorted, untruthful presentation, despite being laced with partial truth, deliberately angled in such a way that you gain an incorrect perspective on the facts. Ordinary folks might call that deception, and they would be right. And we know where deception comes from, don't we? It comes from the devil himself.

As we wrote in March 1996: "The networks' so-called 'news' programs usually contain a few minutes of opinionated reporting, which passes as 'news', and the rest seems like a poorly manufactured sausage, padded with irrelevance, sensationalism and liberal agenda items. There is just enough mention of real events to leave the audience believing that they have probably heard all they need to know of the outside world.

Bias is not the only distortion of the news: there is, in fact, a complete atmosphere of disinformation, which seeks to conceal, confuse and distract. Sadly, many Americans have been conditioned to prefer the artificial world painstakingly created over past decades by the media, as their submission of perfunctory proof that all was well in America.

"How can anything possibly be wrong?", they seem to say, "We're discussing trivia and sensationalism." The implication is that if anything really worth reporting were going on in the outside world, they would tell the audience, rather than fill their 22 minutes with drivel and disinformation. This is about as logical as deducing that Rome cannot be burning because the fiddle is playing such beautiful music."

Like much else in America, this is a spiritual battle. Paul, a rabbi with a keen sense of the difference between the old ritualistic way of life and the vital newness of a life lived for God, advised: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." (Philippians 4:8). Paul's words contain the simple recipe for fixing what's wrong.

The networks have cogently demonstrated the case for abolishing VHF (Channels 1-13), which disappeared almost 30 years ago in most other countries. And that is the first step towards ending media bias. VHF is 1950s technology. In most other countries, television operates on UHF, which allows bonuses like Teletext, an on-screen, web-like, information source still virtually unknown in America. The abolition of VHF television would instantly end the dominant role of ABC, CBS and NBC.

As televisions are upgraded, they would be operated by a remote control with preset stations - like a car radio - so that more channels would be easily accessible. If all Americans could freely choose between the dozens of channels available, how many would actually choose to watch the VHF networks? Every country in the Western world abolished this technically obsolete medium over 30 years ago. Why doesn't the United States?

Furthermore, a tax deduction could be given for a satellite dish or cable fees, so that channels could compete equally, with a proviso that cable companies must be compelled to stop acting as censors and carry all available channels; their power to control the distribution of free speech is probably unconstitutional and must be ended.

Those technical changes would go a long way towards ending media bias, but the moral argument must also be won against left-wing presenters. As one former British Cabinet member said: "They think their personal and political opinions are equally important as those of elected leaders." Are there any politicians in Washington with the courage to confront the media like that?

In some countries, the penalty for biased or tasteless programs is the execution of the broadcasters! While this is certainly a most effective cure, there is a more benign solution: to make the renewal of broadcasting licenses dependent upon a report showing the channel to be free from bias, violence and pornography, thus providing both incentive and penalty.

William Bennett is right: civilizations collapse slowly. Pursuing these sensible steps towards ending media bias would signal a bold beginning to the task of restoration in America. Step One should be to switch off the TV, and leave it off. Steve Myers © 2003, 2006