EPD Activity Report July 30, 2012

The so-called prestige media have built this arrogant sense of professionalism around themselves. They are not just fair and objective, they’re also accurate . The great amateurish unwashed shouldn’t sit at keyboards in their pajamas and attempt the marvelous feats that only they perform.

But when these reporters see an opportunity to discredit conservatives, all that goes out the window.

Shortly after the Batman premiere began at midnight in Aurora, Colo., (Mountain time), police say Jim Holmes opened fire in a crowded theater, killing 12 and wounding many more. Six hours later, early in the second hour of “Good Morning America” in New York, ABC host George Stephanopoulos announced that investigative reporter Brian Ross had “found something that might be significant.”

Ross declared that a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colo., had joined the tea party, but “we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes.” How on earth could a professional journalist drop that bombshell on national television and in the next breath admit it was pure speculation? Or as the actual Jim Holmes of the tea party replied, “What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?”

One can understand why George Stephanopoulos didn’t blink, since this is the way the Clinton “war room” operated, where political operatives would announce their character assassination of conservatives was proceeding nicely. But this is supposed to be a news studio, not a war room.

Here’s another reason why the old media need to stop lecturing the new media to mind their own business. After unloading that smear on Jim Holmes of the tea party, neither Stephanopoulos nor Ross ever made an apology on the air of ABC News. They put out a short apology online but let the smear stand on air. The smeared Holmes also told the Daily Caller he received no attempt to contact him or apologize.

Just like NBC, which edited footage on George Zimmerman to make him appear racist, they issued a brief apology statement online, but no on-air apology was seen by their viewers.

This is a cynically insincere slap in the face to the public. Real journalists should make corrections and apologize when necessary, but the only time TV news people tend to apologize is when lawyers are trying to stave off lawsuits and force them to read a statement.

These are the same journalists that love to pretend that they’re America’s most sensitive people that they know the plight of the downtrodden, and that’s what makes them special.

Walter Cronkite told Time magazine in 2003 that journalists “come up through the ranks, through the police-reporting side, and they see the problems of their fellow man … their domestic quarrels, their living conditions. The meaner side of life is made visible to most young reporters. I think it affects their sentimental feeling toward their fellow man and that is interpreted by some less-sensitive people as being liberal.”

But liberal journalists often specialize in dishing out “the meaner side of life” when the opportunity arrives to politicize the crime beat. When a crazed gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Ariz., in 2011, MSNBC’s Luke Russert and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman quickly suspected without any troublesome need for facts — and there was zero evidence — that the tea party was involved.

When Joseph Stack plowed his airplane into a Texas office building in 2010, there was The New York Times looking for the “first Tea Party terrorist.” The liberal media haven’t found the first one, but that won’t stop them from wild speculation.

When Census worker Bill Sparkman was found hanged in Kentucky with the word “FED” carved into his chest in 2009, that was too juicy a possibility for reporters to resist. Newsweek’s Eve Conant asked “was Sparkman killed in some frenzy of antigovernment rage? Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have warned of a dramatic spike in antigovernment militia activity.”

Conant added, “Then there is the conservative blogosphere, which has been questioning the census since Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed that she would not complete her census form.” A few weeks later, when investigators concluded Sparkman committed suicide and manipulated the scene for life-insurance purposes, Conant calmly reported that conclusion and mentioned in passing that the discovery of the body “prompted a national discussion on controversies surrounding the census.” Just like ABC’s on-air product, there were no apologies for Newsweek’s fever-brained speculation about “anti-government rage.”

It’s this complete lack of regret that underlines why a vast majority of Americans would tell Gallup pollsters they have no confidence in the “news” media, either broadcast or print. Their political shamelessness has left their credibility in tatters.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Excerpt from National Review:

The Boyle ceremony got underway with images of a bucolic Britain being swept away by a cigar-chomping elite that builds satanic mills filled with oppressed workers as steeplejacks hang from the towering chimneys. Later, 600 doctors and patients recruited from National Health Service hospitals were featured in a bizarre tribute to socialized medicine, with children bouncing up and down on 320 hospital beds arrayed in front of a giant Franken-baby wrapped in bandages. Villains from British children’s literature, ranging from Cruella de Vil to Lord Voldemort, sweep in on the children, in an apparent reference to conservative forces seeking to reform the tottering NHS. The 15-minute sequence ended with a series of red lights triumphantly spelling out “NHS.”
Left-wingers were thrilled. “Brilliant that we got a socialist to do the opening ceremony,” tweeted Alastair Campbell, former communications chief for the Labour party. Boyle denied he was promoting a political agenda. “The sensibility of the show is very personal,” he told reporters. “We had no agenda other than . . . values that we feel are true.” At a news conference beforehand, he explained that one of the reasons he “put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important NHS is to everybody in the country. One of the core values of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care.”

Can anyone seriously believe that? Sunday’s British papers report that a study by the research firm Lloyd’s TSB Premier Banking found that nearly two-thirds of Britons earning more than $78,700 a year have taken out private health insurance because they don’t trust the NHS. A survey by the British health-care organization Bupa found that two-thirds of its customers cited the risk of infection from superbugs as a top reason for buying private insurance. Shaun Matisonn, the chief executive of PruHealth, says that “patients today are sophisticated consumers of health care. They research the treatments they want, but cannot always get them through the NHS.”

Horror stories about the NHS abound. A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as “a lottery.” A new study this year by GP magazine supports that conclusion. Through Freedom of Information Act records, it found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care.

Rick Dewsbury of the Daily Mail was aghast at the worship of the NHS during Friday’s Olympic ceremony. The columnist noted the sheer hypocrisy of the spectacle, as “the majority of the athletes taking part in the Games will have access to the most expensive cutting-edge private treatment available in the world for even the slightest graze on their bodies.”

Dewsbury recounted the 2009 case of Kane Gorny, a 22-year-old NHS patient. Gorny was admitted to the hospital for a hip replacement. A series of hospital employees refused his request for a glass of water and failed to give him diabetes medication. He went so far as to call the emergency operator for help. When the police arrived, nurses assured them that Gorny was confused and needed no outside help. A day later, he was dead of dehydration. The official inquest into his death was published this month. It found that neglect by hospital staff — “a cascade of individual failures” — contributed to his death. Here’s hoping that not everyone is “treated the same” in Britain’s NHS hospitals.

In Britain, we have seen what could be our future, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Link to full article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312573/britain-s-nhs-no-fun-and-games-john-fund