Normally, I wouldn't bother to report the obvious over and over
again. However, not only I have remarked on the increased display
of bias of late, both on the part of the major print as well as
broadcast/cable outlets.
Aside from Bush bashing, which has become an epidemic, there is a clear
anti-war, anti-military bias that even takes words of serving generals
and twists them.
For example the major media outlets reported that General Pace, the
U.S. Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made comments that you
couldn't tie explosively formed projectiles directly to the Iranian
government. The media of course jumped all over that, since it
contradicts the statements by the government and President Bush.
The General is an honest man and what he was saying was pretty clear --
there is no direct tie...we don't have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for
instance, on radio network telling his agents to build and deliver the
weapons to their Iraqi insurgent supporters, or instructing Muqtada
al-Sadr to take these weapons and have "fun with them".
In all intelligence matters, you take what you get and you
interpret. And yes, if the National Security Council asks, "Could
it be true that the Iranian government is supplying weapons to Iraq",
the intelligence community has to say, "well, it is quite possible, in
fact highly probable. Do we have 100% evidence? No."
The problem we are facing in this country is doubts. Our overly
liberalized media and now a fully engaged liberal Congress have decided
they have doubts. Hell, they had doubts all along, we are not
evil people nor do we like being at war or having to police the rest of
the world because no one else has the intestinal fortitude to do so.
So taking doubts and adding in the insurgency in Iraq, we have doubts
it is all worth it. The sectarian violence that is occurring in Iraq, a
nation we are hoping to sponsor into a fully fledged democracy, and
thus it is natural to hope for a better set of conditions. And
the American people tire of conflict quickly, as well as forget the
pain in our own country far too quickly.
The result is that the media can flaunt their hyper liberal viewpoint
at will and their ratings won't suffer. What many don't realize
is that the American people have long ago switched off. Many of
the liberal media are preaching to the converted.
In other words, I believe that fewer Americans are going to the talking
heads or reading the editorials. A quick street poll near my
little burg shows Sports has a bigger reading public than the editorial
page. And while the cable stations are a glee with the upwardly
pointing graphics of their ratings...fewer people are watching.
It starts at election time. People switch off then and it takes
about six to eight months for the viewing audience to return. And
no, the TV statisticians don't report this, it is not in their self
interest to go there. A deadly secret for TV and indeed online
advertising is that while millions are out there, they are largely
tuning out. A click on a news story is the only way to notice,
and those numbers are rarely published by online pundits.
I can see it at MILNET. Our site is visited by huge numbers of
conservative minded visitors. Our little survey shows a lot about
our visitors. It indicates that in over three years of the survey
being in existence, and with millions of hits per month, only 300
people or so have taken the time to go through and take our simple
survey. The survey only takes about five minutes to go through.
Let's estimate 100,000 opportunities to take the survey (the pages
viewed that have the survey question somewhere on the page and ignoring
the search engine "touches") every month, for 36 months. That's
3.6 million opportunities, and only 300+ actual survey takers.
My math says that is 8.3 x 10-5 response
ratio. If this holds true for other online polls, it means the
polls are worth shit. I am sure Fox News or MSNBC have better response
rates.
But how many of the American people actually look at Fox News online or
MSNBC? A little transparency might help us answer that
question.
First of all we can eliminate a large number of Americans...they don't
even have computers!
Now television...that is a different picture all together. Few
homes are minus a TV. The question is, how many viewers switch
off? If the current rating system sees only the channel selection
going into a TV show, and doesn't watch if the channel changes in the
middle, how can we capture the switch off. Or if the cable box is
on and the TV isn't? Worse, how about if the family is in the
dining room eating while the TV is on in another room not being
watched? How about the Nielsen system...how many people are
REALLY watching the TV? So how many television viewers are really
sitting watching the news show? We will never know. Therefore I
can say with impunity, it is few. Prove me wrong and I will
apologize.
Just like intelligence, the polls and the rating systems have major
flaws. There is no 100%. Bill O'Reilly has an "informed
opinion", nothing more. Mathhews is combatative but not 100%. He
might be SURE, but not 100% correct. That is the problem, you
see. Opinions versus facts. There are few facts that can be
verified in the Middle East, believe me.
It's all supposition of some sort and this is where the media gets into
trouble. They want you to believe their version of the facts, and
I want you to believe mine. I have my biases, they have
theirs. Even common sense sucks. It is based upon personal
experience, our parent's lessons, and the school system (oh
god!). So what do you rely on, your heart? Not a bad start,
but then again, the heart is fickle too.
We are left with reason. Reason is subject to bias -- our
emotional state may easily effect how our reasoning works at a given
moment in time.
Reasoning does, however, allow us to look at the source of the
information, look for multiple sources, and gauge known biases in the
interpretation. If you read that Congress is making a big
mistake, and it is written by yours truly, you should dig a little
deeper. And I will be very happy if you do! You should know
that I believe our U.S. Senate are probably adequate lawyers, excellent
politicians, but not qualified to make most judgments on world affairs,
especially technical matters. The law school environment they were
brought up in is words based in a technical fashion, but does little to
teach them to assess the world of sciences, military, weapons systems,
nor tactics and strategy. War? It is antithesis of the
lawyer mindset.
On the other hand, the U.S. Senate is hell on wheels when it comes to
finances, criminal behavior, and civil rights. These are the milk
of the legal profession and therefore that is where most of our U.S.
Senators have gotten their experience. Few have served as program
managers in the Aerospace industry, most (I assume, I don't know this
for a fact), have ever fired a hunting rifle or god forbid what Diane
Feinstein calls an assault weapon. I doubt more than I can count
on one hand have ever killed anyone.
My point here is that our "experts" in the U.S. Senate who write our
laws, are not experts in the things that matter in world affairs and
many of the things we care about at home. And don't get me
started on the House!
They base their decisions just like the Media does. They are
people trained in one area who are attempting to judge people, not the
issues in another area. Is the expert lying, not confident,
or very correct in his or her statements. Do the facts written
down for me match my gut feeling as to the presenter? It's all
management really, and the Congress and the Media have a VERY poor
record.
So why do we even listen to themn (Congress or the Media)? I
propose that the American people don't. They still get most of
their information from friends and neighbors. Now the problem is
that some friends and neighbors DO watch and read. And they tend
to be vocal enough to convince people around them.
I did a quick survey of the people in my sphere of influence. If
I don't tell them about the headlines, many of them haven't a
clue. Several very nice and fun people to be with do not know who
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is. They know who Osama bin Laden is, but
Muqtada al-Sadr? Not a clue. I am sure they find me not so
fun on occassion.
What this means, and I suspect it carries across all of America, is
that we have world apathy. We don't know and don't care.
Only when 3,000+ are killed by murderous Arab nutballs. Then we
take a year or two and worry about Osama bin Laden and his nutcase
Islamic Jihadists. Then two or three years later, we are back to
apathy. And we have BIG opinions supported by what our friends
told us, not through any sort of practical search. If someone
questions the basis for our strong beliefs, few can argue intelligently
about them. It is not lack of intelligence, but lack of caring or
effort. And if many homes don't have computers, and of those
which do have computers the only person who can search the Internet
with any skill is not of a voting age, what does this tell us about our
use of resources right at our fingertips!
Anyone reading this opinion is probably easily excluded. My
audience is typically not your average American. On the other
hand, how many people who read this piece have actually voted in our
MILNET survey? Each month the opinion pieces readership exceed
the survey respondents for over three years.
My sons all are computer and Internet whizes. They are geeks. One
is a geek in the Army. One is a college student working at Fed-ex
and is a major geek. The third is geeking his way through
pre-college exercises that focus on such things as World of Warcraft
and teenage angst. We are a typically dysfunctional, lower class,
single parent family. I bet we are also more informed and capable
of making rationale decisions and probing deeper towards the truth than
most families. We are thus, rare.
That is the big problem. Our media serves a different sort...not
the rationale, probing minds, but those occasional visitors who take it
all in without question. Up with drones, down with
thinkers! Our media at work. And do those who switch off do so
because they find it all so disruptive to their daily lives, or they
have a major case of "I don't know who to believe anymore!"?
Either way, it all spells doom for the media. Here's a
prediction. The Internet is replacing news sources throughout the
world. The Internet, a technical jungle and full of fakery and
deception, requires probing, analytical and yes even technical mindsets
to separate near truths from mostly fiction. And those skills
mean (I am limiting myself to the users of the Internet who aren't
looking at pornography or playing online games) will probably be better
at analyzing world events and even those closer to home. And they
will be far less interested in watching CNN or picking up the New York
Times.
So I ask you. What is the fastest growing communications medium
in the world? And where is Al Qaeda putting lots of their new
cash for propaganda? Yep. The Internet. Where major
media outlets can't hope to compete unless they lose their bias.
Prove me wrong! Remember, you have to 100% correct!
