To Judge the News, Consider the Source — Especially the New York Times

Once upon a time, the New York Times was a credible source of information, and many educators demanded that their students use it for this purpose. I recall my senior year in a parochial high school being instructed how to fold the newspaper along the seams so as to read it without having to spread it out wide. That was a very long time ago. Now that once-esteemed broadsheet is agenda-driven, rather than journalistically driven, and one of the many sources to take with a large grain of salt.

Under the stewardship of Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, the Old Gray Lady is now known for printing all the news that fits his liberal Baby Boomer agenda, even in the most innocuous sections. The gardening column will somehow toss global warming into the article and let’s forget any objectivity in its science reporting. Needless to say, the Obama administration has this paper solidly in its pocket.

So I’ve learned to decipher Times articles for any legitimate documented facts instead of innuendo and this was particularly essential when the Times, for reasons know only to itself, decided to tarnish the Pope during this Easter season. The paper tried to imply that while the Pope was cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in Germany, he did not take steps to defrock a serial predator priest in Wisconsin.

Unfortunately for the Times and thanks to the World Wide Web, the Vatican was able to debunk the charges against the Pontiff pretty swiftly. The national religion correspondent who wrote the March 24th hit piece, Laurie Goodstein, and her editors omitted salient facts of the case, the most important being that the CDF was informed twenty years after the abuse took place. It then approved a local canonical trial, over which then-Cardinal Ratzinger had no jurisdiction over. In its anti-Catholic animus, the Times also failed to credit him for initiating the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse — largely homosexual — of minors.

But why did they decide to do this now? Why bring up issues that occurred when Pope Benedict XVI was still Cardinal Ratzinger? More than likely it’s because the Catholic Church is the enemy of the liberal elite. Aside from some über-liberal and misguided nuns who supported Obamacare, the Catholic bishops are in lockstep in opposing the abortion funding in the so-called “health care” reform senate bill. So why not go after the man at the top of this enemy institution?

However, the Times is hardly the only one guilty of extreme liberal bias in the print media. I had regarded Vanity Fair as a quality publication when it was edited by Tina Brown. I found the articles fair and balanced and I would renew my subscription faithfully. Ironically, I had never heard of Rush Limbaugh until Vanity Fair ran a fascinating article about the conservative radio personality in 1992.

But fealty went out the window once Ms. Brown’s successors, Graydon Carter — a former lowly “People” section writer for Time Magazine, co-founder of Spy Magazine with fellow Time scribe Kurt Andersen, and full-time sufferer from Bush Derangement Syndrome, took possession of the magazine. Mr. Carter’s chronic Bush-bashing editorials and the onslaught of slanted pieces contributed not only to my cancelled subscription but to others as well.

Circulation figures for many liberal news publications have plummeted and yet this hasn’t stopped the continual demonizing of the conservative majority in this country. It’s as if their editorial boards live in a womb nourished by a placenta of left-wing dogma, totally oblivious of reality. They still haven’t a clue of what the Tea Party movement means and continue to portray it in a negative light.

Reports that come from the Times, the Associated Press, Newsday, Newsweek, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post need to be read with a jaundiced eye. I certainly do not trust the photos distributed by Reuters covering the Middle East after it was exposed for fraud in 2006.

Thanks to several Internet news sources, Reuters was found guilty of the following:

1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs had been taken
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events
3. Photographers staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

I still find the Wall Street Journal reliable and the New York Daily News has a mix of ideological columnists, which is an encouraging change. The New York Post once had a solidly conservative op-ed page but the news reporting is too sensational to be taken seriously.

I rely on the pajamahadeen at Web sites such as lucianne.com and Andrew Breitbart’s Big sites to challenge the veracity of the lamestream media. Even my own submissions there are challenged and I welcome their opinions.

I surf back and forth between the major cable stations but I don’t watch the alphabet channels for anything but local news. Fox News can be just as biased on the conservative side but its straight news is, as advertised, generally fair and balanced. Although I’m not a fan of Bill O’Reilly or of his enormous ego, he does manage to have the key principals of major stories on his program to explain pertinent data. Occasionally, he even gives them time enough to speak.

One can also sometimes learn fascinating bits of history on Fox backed up by amazing footage and direct quotes by the subjects. In a recent broadcast detailing the origins of liberalism and eugenics, I was shocked to see and hear George Bernard Shaw uttering shocking ideas that many assume originated with Nazi Germany. In a 1910 lecture before a Eugenics Education Society he said:

We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living… A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.

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I hardly think this is a subject likely to be covered on ABC, CBS, or NBC. Nor can we expect them to be critical of the policies of the current administration, which they helped put into office.

We are living in a very difficult and complicated era with access to so much data that it’s crucial that we learn to uncover the skull of truth beneath the face of deceitful reporting. An educated electorate is the nation’s greatest hope.