Foxnews/Bush National Guard question

[kharmajunkie]

I typically watch Fox and MSNBC for a good balance of news coverage. Although I don't agree with the Fox agenda, my complaints with them are pretty much the same as my issues with CNN; too biased and sensationalized. Since Bush was on with Russert the other day though, everyone at Fox has been lying/spinning on GW's lead and no one has called them on it except Chris Matthews. I'm refering to when they were talking about Bush's Guard time; Russert asked something about where and when he served but kept hammering at him since GW was being evasive. Bush then started getting defensive about the Guard and how people shouldn't insult National Guard duty. No one insulted Guard duty,it was a cheap ploy he pulled out of the air, Russert just questioned whether he completed his duty. Ever since though, at least twice a day, one of the talking heads on Fox starts up with defending the Guard when no one even belittled National Guard service in the first place. I hope other people have noticed this because it's the height of lying and manipulation because it is so subtle. I lost a lot of respect for Bush on Sunday, our President should not use the debate tactics of a twelve-year old that just got caught smoking.

[joegvb]

Screw you for losing respect in our great presedent. If you wanna believe the lies of hard ball Chris Mathews and so on do so just one thing I DONT WANNA SEE IT HEAR IT OR READ ABOUT AGIAN. But really Bush has set out all documents on his whole Nat. Guard duty and he served his time. He got an h. discharge and they dont give those to people who drop and dont serve there enlisted time. SHUT UP and give Bush the respect he needs.

[RebelWithanAK]

I suggest reading print material for news sources - preferably print material of other countries. For here, however:

Disney owns
ABC (moderately conservative)

Dow Jones owns
Wall Street Journal (moderately conservative)
[partially] CNBC

Gannett Co, Inc owns
USA Today (conservative)

General Electric owns
NBC (very conservative)
[partially] CNBC
[partially] MSNBC

New York Times, Co owns
New York Times (moderately conservative)
Boston Globe (moderately liberal)

News Corporation owns
Fox (very conservative)
New York Post (very conservative)

Time Warner owns
Time (moderately conservative)
CNN (moderately conservative)
NY1 (centrist)

Viacom owns
CBS (very conservative)

Washington Post, Co owns
Washington Post (moderately liberal)
Newsweek (moderately conservative)

That makes four dedicated news companies - Dow Jones, Gannett, New York Times, Washington Post - none of which owns a major broadcasting station. The rest - Disney, Time Warner, Newscorp, Viacom - are 'media entertainment' companies, specializing in sports or movies (ESPN, MTV, Bravo, HBO, Disney, Discover, etc etc etc) and the last - GE - is a freakin' juggernaut.

[Deckard59]

Wow, what a truly intellectual reply. SHUT UP SHUT UP… wha wha cry cry boo who. I don’t know when I lost respect for Bush Jr., maybe it was around the moment I heard his name the first time, I never did like nepotism. If you’re going to give an opinion about something “Joegvb”, try stringing a couple of sentences together that doesn’t just flame someone who gave their opinion.

[kharmajunkie]

Joe, Chris Matthews wasn't lying; he was pointing out that GW was trying to avoid a question by making up a stance for the other side. No one said anything negative about the National Guard, they questioned whether Bush showed up. And as for that by the way, I think it's being blown out of proportion too. Avoiding the questions creates unnecessary problems for Bush. Look at it this way; you go stay with a relative and attend school for a semester in a large, urban school. Lets say you don't make it everyday because of various family obligations. You don't make a lot of friends, no enemies either. That is pretty much what happened to Bush during a three or four month period he worked on a political campaign in Alabama where he had a legitimate transfer to another guard unit. I may not agree with GW's politics but I don't like to see things like this muddy up the real issues and on this; both sides are wrong.

[m5lange1]

Joegvb
I took your post with humor... I assumed you were kidding. If you were being serious when you typed
"I DONT WANNA SEE IT HEAR IT OR READ ABOUT AGIAN"
I suggest that you stop reading or listening in a free society.
The trouble is that here in a free country people actually have the freedom to disagree with you.
Presenting yourself in such a way does no favors for anyone you support.

[castille]

Hey I own a news media corporation too! According to your defition, rebelwithAK, whoever owns shares in a corporation must therefor own the news corporation?

WOW! I've owned shares in all my national news corporations at time point in time. One of my friends, a stock trader, owns CNN, NBC, ABC, and Fox.

[PatC]

This thing is on the verge of blowing up into another monicagate. I would not be surprised if democrats moved to begin an impeachment process, just as the Republicans did with clinton. Why has this just come up now and not in the 2000 election, I bet it has nothing to do with Kerry's military record. Im sure the press has knew about it all along, they just decides to act on that info now that the election season has begun. Im sure republicans did the same with clinton.

[sarhoq]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (castille,)
Hey I own a news media corporation too! According to your defition, rebelwithAK, whoever owns shares in a corporation must therefor own the news corporation?

WOW! I've owned shares in all my national news corporations at time point in time. One of my friends, a stock trader, owns CNN, NBC, ABC, and Fox.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to get across, but I'd like you to know that the monopolization of the media is actually becoming a large problem. The fact that you own shares in news corporations is nothing, but the fact that 6 major media departments own over 75% of the media is actually something you should care about. The freedom of speech is impended by the need of major corporations to appease their sponsors, i.e., the President. So, if a guy comes on tv and interviews the President, it might come to guess that the entire thing is staged, to bring out some questions for the President, and that no matter what happens, there will never actually be intense criticism of the man.

After all, when everyone's working for big business, the little man stops mattering, and when the little man is no longer important, we are all brought and introduced to the age of corporate control.

And you spelled therefore wrong.

[RebelWithanAK]

Joegvb, I warned you once. I'm warning you a second time. Soon, it's gonna be bye bye, Joe!

Karmajunkie - It's not that Bush can't name buddies of his in the national guard, it's that his would-be commanding officers in Alabama never saw him. You're twisting the story a tad.

castille - You don't own a corporation unless you have over 50% of its stocks in your posession. Now, when I say those corporations own those media outlets, I mean those media outlets are subsidiaries wholly owned by that corporation. You may invest, but you don't have a damned say in what type of content they put out with what little money you put in, and even if you did, that doesn't help the primary point of the post: It is the standard of journalistic integrity that is at stake.

[Just The Facts]

Media manipulates the facts to draw attention, as the Judicial system allows crime to stay in business. Something happens, but it is dull and yet all the media has.. wow do teh big words come out.. No different than a politician.. look at the whole picture, we are all played for fools everyday, we are all baby sat by the politicians, why? because we are idiots? No, because keeping us at bay in fear keep us out of control so we think we need the government as much as we do.. all the real facts are twisted.. like crimes with guns to fight gun control.. Like WMD, like SARS, and how the politicians make changes ONLY during election years..
ABC fights corruption, they take a stand.. why? because they don't have military contracts by their bosses.. So they don't have to suck up to pressures of lost millions or billions..
Politicians look for weaknesses in something when Lobbyists come up short financially, but come up with Strebths when they deliver the big bucks.. Later we find we were had.. like 10 years later, and we see it as spilt milk by then.. or wait until there's an election and the non presidential candidate uses and twists the frauds of yesterday.. which brings me to the politicians today.. Kerry could be worse than BUSH, and we all know BUSH has to go.. so really.. aren't we all just plain idiots..?

[Catch 22]

rebelwithanak- you ever read "Media Monopoly" or "manufacturing consent" very good books on the topic of media bias and consolodation.

[Mathieu]

Here is an interresting gathering of article about Bush national guard question:Bush's National Guard Service: News and comments

[kharmajunkie]

Rebel, I'm not twisting anything; you're misquoting me. I'm sticking up for GW as far as his service in the guard. You should read what I wrote again because you're doing the same thing that Bush did to Russert which was to stick up for the National Guard and make it sound
as if Kerry or the Dems were smearing the Guard in some way. No one smeared the Guard, Bush was just trying to divert attention away from himself; which is stupid because he didn't do anything wrong. Read my post next time you want to debate. I'm not some sellout Dem or Repub so don't treat me like one. Read, post and debate like a man; not some junior high kid.

[RebelWithanAK]

Catch-22: I own a copy of Manufacturing Consent, but what I used for that post is just a simple web search.

kharmajunkie: You gave your interpretation of the events, namely, "Lets say you don't make it everyday because of various family obligations. You don't make a lot of friends, no enemies either. That is pretty much what happened to Bush during a three or four month period he worked on a political campaign in Alabama where he had a legitimate transfer to another guard unit." You imply that he did, in fact, serve his required duty on station but was simply unavailable most of the time.

I'm telling you that your account does not take into matters the fact that the commanding officers at the Alabama air base never saw him, and said as much. They wrote down that they could not evaluate him because he didn't do anything to evaluate. We have a full year with no recorded duty performed, and only six days of pay stubs - which don't indicate exactly what he did during that time.

Now, if you ask me what my interpretation of the time in question amounts to, I'll tell you: I think Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972. This would explain his failure to take a medical exam at the time (and thus be ineligible to perform his duty). I think that during the following year Bush was doing community service to work off that charge, and his connections as son of a congressman allowed that to be counted towards performing his duty as a national guardsman, thus explaining how he could be missing for a year and still get honorably discharged. I think this would explain why Bush expounds upon the fact that he's been drug-free since 1973 (and uses carefully worded language for everything before that), and why he as governor had his records messed with in 2000 in anticipation for his presidential campaign.

Wouldn't you believe that presumably possible? It certainly leaves fewer contradictions than your piece.

[kharmajunkie]

As you pointed out, I said "lets say". It's an example of what might have happened and it's plausible. Again, I'm saying Bush did nothing wrong in the Guard, my problem is the way it's being handled today. I was in the Army myself for a short stint, I had a few friends in Guard. One of them, who joined out of Illinois, had to go to Iowa for school for a semester. He was attached to a Guard unit there. But if you're only there for a few months then you're only going to report 3 or 4 times. You aren't going to get to know a lot of people in that amount of time. Now I wasn't there in Alabama but I would assume that GW was spending his time working on the campaign that he moved down there for; not hanging out with people from a Guard unit that he doesn't know. That was probably a better example than the one were I had someone moving; I've been a little medicated because of a sprained knee. Anyway, as I stated earlier, I'm not a Dem or a Repub; I may not agree with Bush's politics but it's unfair to attack him on this issue. He did his duty and even if he got a couple of favors as far as getting a temporary station assignment, that's not uncommon when it comes to education, volunteer work or a business/
employment interest; the military is a lot more flexible with personel
issues than they are given credit for.

[Edge]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (RebelWithanAK,)

ABC (moderately conservative)
USA Today (conservative)
NBC (very conservative)
New York Times (moderately conservative)
Boston Globe (moderately liberal)
Time (moderately conservative)
CNN (moderately conservative)
NY1 (centrist)
CBS (very conservative)<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Sorry for the heavily redacted quote. Reb, if you think that USA Today, NBC, NYT, CBS and ABC are anywhere on the conservative map, then your perspecitve appears to be very very far left. The NYT said the other day that they were going to start covering conservatives, as if they were another species or something.

The fact is that most all of those you quoted are liberal leaning new managers. FNS is if anything populist, not conservative, with the exception of it's general news manager, who among other leaders in the news management business, is at least honest about his own proclivities.

And no, I am not a Republican.

[kharmajunkie]

Fox news is sensationalist first, populist second and definitely Republican comes in there. O'Reilly and Colmes aren't Repubs but the
Fox commentators obviously lean that way; and Hannity is an apologist/cheerleader for the Republican party.

You can be AWOL/UA and still receive an Honorable Discharge.

Again, why did Bush dodge the question and respond with a straw man?

Why respond to a fake question (that you made up yourself) unless answering the one actually asked would be damaging to you?

[ArtyP]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Edge,)
</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (RebelWithanAK,)

ABC (moderately conservative)
USA Today (conservative)
NBC (very conservative)
New York Times (moderately conservative)
Boston Globe (moderately liberal)
Time (moderately conservative)
CNN (moderately conservative)
NY1 (centrist)
CBS (very conservative)<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Sorry for the heavily redacted quote. Reb, if you think that USA Today, NBC, NYT, CBS and ABC are anywhere on the conservative map, then your perspecitve appears to be very very far left. <hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Conservatives believe a media entity has a LIBERAL "bias" if it consistently leans far to the left of mainstream America. Whereas Liberals believe that a media entity has a CONSERVATIVE "bias" if it leans anywhere to the right of Pravda.

I always find Liberals get a little hot under the collar when you try to pin them down on what they think the mainstream media "leans to the right" of.

It has of course nothing to do with mainstream American values, and everything to do with abstract foreign notions. Admitting this fact would be to own up to the contempt that many US Liberals actually have for the bulk of the population in their own country.

(I actually wrote a long piece about this on my own blog just last week under the heading "BIG TRUTHS - THE UNPALATABLE REALITY ABOUT LIBERAL BIAS IN THE MEDIA")