Yeah, well, Bush only squeaked into office in the first place because of some VERY questionable electioneering (primarily in Florida), plus having the mass media AND 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices on his side. Without those, he never would have made it into the White House to begin with.
In 2004, there were similar electoral shenanigans in Florida and Ohio (massive voter suppression, "fixed" voting machines, etc.) - all of the polls had challenger John Kerry doing much better than the "official" results ended up. But that's neither here nor there, since Kerry decided to be a big fat wimp and concede the election within hours, even despite the evidence that something was fishy. (And again, thanks to the Republicans' stranglehold on the mass media, none of this got reported properly.)
It's only been in the past couple of years, with the news from Iraq getting worse and worse (even despite the mainstream media's attempts to minimize it a la the official government line), and the multiple Republican scandals bursting out, that the media has stopped giving Bush and the Republicans a 100% pass. Even now, their anti-Democratic bias is deeply ingrained: for instance, CNN showed (defeated Republican incumbent Senator) George Allen's concession speech in its entirety, then cut away from (victor and incoming Senator) Charles Webb's speech after only a few minutes.
That's what made this victory doubly impressive - it means millions of Americans are simply rejecting the mainstream media's narrative of events outright.
Talking of media coverage... we were in SF in March 2003 the day after the war with Iraq broke out, and according to some American TV channels it seemed that the war was going to be over in a matter of days. Only when we checked the BBC News online and happened to watch a French TV channel in a French cafe we learnt that the situation was rather different.
Exactly. CNN gets its script directly from the White House in many cases. Not as much nowadays, but they're still far from anything resembling "objective."
What drives me crazy is their equating "balance" with "fairness." If they have a Republican spokesperson on to claim that 2 + 2 = 5, and then duly have a Democrat on to say that, no, 2 + 2 actually equals 4, they can say "okay, we've done our job - we've presented both sides of the controversy." The idea that there is such a thing as objective fact, that two plus two really DOES equal four and not five, is beyond them.
But as someone once said, you can't make someone understand something when their paycheck depends on them NOT understanding it.
In 2004, there were similar electoral shenanigans in Florida and Ohio (massive voter suppression, "fixed" voting machines, etc.) - all of the polls had challenger John Kerry doing much better than the "official" results ended up. But that's neither here nor there, since Kerry decided to be a big fat wimp and concede the election within hours, even despite the evidence that something was fishy. (And again, thanks to the Republicans' stranglehold on the mass media, none of this got reported properly.)
It's only been in the past couple of years, with the news from Iraq getting worse and worse (even despite the mainstream media's attempts to minimize it a la the official government line), and the multiple Republican scandals bursting out, that the media has stopped giving Bush and the Republicans a 100% pass. Even now, their anti-Democratic bias is deeply ingrained: for instance, CNN showed (defeated Republican incumbent Senator) George Allen's concession speech in its entirety, then cut away from (victor and incoming Senator) Charles Webb's speech after only a few minutes.
That's what made this victory doubly impressive - it means millions of Americans are simply rejecting the mainstream media's narrative of events outright.
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Talking of media coverage... we were in SF in March 2003 the day after the war with Iraq broke out, and according to some American TV channels it seemed that the war was going to be over in a matter of days.
Only when we checked the BBC News online and happened to watch a French TV channel in a French cafe we learnt that the situation was rather different.
Reply
What drives me crazy is their equating "balance" with "fairness." If they have a Republican spokesperson on to claim that 2 + 2 = 5, and then duly have a Democrat on to say that, no, 2 + 2 actually equals 4, they can say "okay, we've done our job - we've presented both sides of the controversy." The idea that there is such a thing as objective fact, that two plus two really DOES equal four and not five, is beyond them.
But as someone once said, you can't make someone understand something when their paycheck depends on them NOT understanding it.
Reply
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