And a special brownie point goes to the New York Times for this truly bizarre sentence in their story:
Though polls on surveillance are mixed, Republicans say the public generally backs the idea of eavesdropping on people suspected of being in contact with terror suspects.There are so many things wrong with that sentence.
Hey, here's an idea. Rather than trying extra hard to slip unsubstantiated Republican talking points into "news" stories, how about just sticking to the actual facts?
The New York Times had a choice. It chose to undercut the facts. But even in doing so, it had a second choice: It could undercut the facts - i.e., undercut what the polls actually say (and most of them skew against Bush, thank you) - but even in undercutting those facts, the Times had to choose between undercutting them to Bush's advantage or disadvantage. Here were their choices:
1. They could write the sentence the way they did:
Though polls on surveillance are mixed, Republicans say the public generally backs the idea of eavesdropping on people suspected of being in contact with terror suspects.2. Or they could have just as easily written the sentence this way:
Though polls on surveillance are mixed, Democrats and many Republicans say the public generally opposes the idea of eavesdropping on people suspected of being in contact with terror suspects.The New York Times decided, naturally, to swing right. It's what the mainstream media does nowadays automatically, like flinching to protect your hand from a flame. But in this case, the flame is conservative angst.
And let's not even get into the NYT's "un-biased" description of Bush's program as "eavesdropping on people suspected of being in contract with terror suspects." The Times will say they were simply paraphrasing what the Republicans were claiming, but that's NOT the way Republicans paint the program. It's the way SOME Republicans paint it - lots of other conservative leaders are outraged about what Bush has done and have voiced that outrage. And in any case, how about putting both sides' spin in the paragraph or none at all?
Finally, nice of the Times to mention that many Democrats aren't backing Feingold on calling the program illegal, but NOT mentioning that most legal scholars say the program is in fact illegal. No, no mention of that. Better to make Feingold sound like just another kooky Democrat with his head up his ass.
It's not that the New York Times and the traditional media are evil. It's that they're sloppy. As a defense mechanism against relentless charges of liberal bias and un-Americanism for simply trying to tell the truth far too many in the mainstream media have developed an ingrained and subconscious protection mechanism that tilts them right without their even realizing it.
Except that in this case, like so many the liberal blogs have documented over the years, a good editor should have realized it.
You don't present one side of a story without presenting the other, especially when you already have the facts. When you have the facts, present the facts. When you weaken the facts by presenting spin in a supposed effort to be "fair," you undercut the veracity of your story, your own credibility, and ultimately our democracy.
