Protecting Barack Obama is not the only reason for the mainstream media to omit elements of a story, but protecting the President’s progressive agenda is usually involved.
Take for example this week’s release of a new batch of “climategate” emails. This batch is from around the same time as the first set, leaked two years ago, and they feature the same cast of scientists such as Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, and Keith Briffa, who starred in the first set. Scientists admit in these emails that the evidence behind man made global warming is paper thin, and the apocalyptic climate story is being pushed for political rather than environment reasons. There is even evidence of US and British government involvement in covering up evidence disproving the global warming story.
One would expect news such as this to become banner headlines across the country’s biggest papers. Those expectations would not be met. The NY Times small story in its environmental column. While someone seriously covering the story would post some of the controversial exchanges, the Times paraphrased some of them and concluded by explaining it was much ado about nothing:
Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, said he found such exchanges unremarkable. He noted that difficulties in modeling were widely acknowledged and disclosed in the literature. Indeed, such problems are often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.
Of the new release of e-mails, Dr. Schmidt said, “It smacks of desperation.”
Dr. Mann said he hoped the fresh release, apparently first posted to a computer server in Russia, would provide new clues for the British police as they seek to catch the hacker or hackers.
“Who are the criminals?” he asked. “Who is funding this effort, not just to steal these materials but to promote them?”
Time Magazine reported on the scandal by ignoring the bulk of the emails and calling it a “weak sequel.” Interestingly it seems as if Health and Science reporter Bryan Walsh didn’t read any of the emails himself, but simply reported what others said before concluding that thy contained nothing new. Just like the NY Times, by omitting a broad selection of the emails, Time Magazine skewed the story.
The media gave us another example of bias by omission with the manner in which it reported the terrorist arrested by the NYPD this past Sunday.
According to the description by NYPD Commissioner 27-year-old Jose Pimentel, a loner who lives with his mother in Washington Heights was charged with making pipe bombs after a year-long investigation. The reason for Jose’s little project was that he converted to a radical form of Islam and was very upset the US killed his heroes Usama bin Laden and most especially his spiritual mentor Anwar al-Awlaki. Pimentel even learned how to make pipe bombs via Awlaki’s online magazine which included an article, “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”
While Pimentel’s religion was the motivating factor behind his bomb making, it went against the progressive narrative which says there is no relationship between radical Islam and terrorism. Therefore when Reuters and the Associated Press first reported the story, Pimentel’s radical faith was left out of the story he was described as an al Qaeda sympathizer (the fact that he was a Muslim convert was added the next day)
The NY Daily News managed to tell the story of Pimentel’s arrest without using the words Muslim or Islam.
Time Magazine skirts around the issue describing the terrorist as a 27-year-old al-Qaida sympathizer” who was motivated by terrorist propaganda and resentment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq,” and “A U.S. citizen originally from the Dominican Republic” never mentioning his conversion. The closest they got was mentioning that Pimentel was also known as Muhammad Yusuf.
There is the old saying that you should never totally believe what you read in the news media, that is only half true; what you don’t read is just as important. In the case of the new Climategate emails, the mainstream media’s reluctance to print a broad sampling of the conversations to allow the readers to judge their worth is an indication that their preference is to perpetuate what is increasingly becoming apparent as a hoax upon the public. Their coverage of a recent terrorist arrest indicates their refusal to be honest with their readers about the relationship between radical Islam and terrorism.
The silence of the media is just another way they present their bias. Perhaps mainstream media editors are simply worried that if they allow their audience to see the full truth, their progressive handlers will eat them alive … with some fava beans and a nice chianti.