Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "abc"
What the Fox Said: Debunking the Liberal Media Myth
One great truism is if we repeat a lie enough or if enough people repeat the lie and believe it, then the lie becomes the truth, fiction becomes fact. That's why many people still believe that the corporate-owned media is liberal. We know that Fox News is conservative and that the ratings for that news channel are higher than those for the liberal-leaning MSNBC. Most of us also know that talk radio is dominated by conservatives, but many people believe that the rest of the news media, including CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and most newspapers, is liberal.
They are, of course, wrong. In big cities where there are two newspapers (and there are probably fewer of those now than there were in the 20th Century), one is often more conservative than the other. When I lived in the Chicago area during the sixties, for instance, the Chicago Tribune was the conservative paper, and the Sun Times was more liberal. And then there are the tabloids, which I suspect more people read than read the New York Times or any other large metropolitan newspaper. As I revealed in my memoir, the National Enquirer targets liberal politicians and protects conservatives. That's why we didn't hear about Barbara Walters' affair with black Republican Senator Ed Brooke until the lady told all in her memoir, and that's why we didn't hear about Dixiecrat turned Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's black daughter until the Senator had died at the ripe old age of one hundred, and then the daughter told her story. And recently, a retired Republican Senator revealed that thirty years ago he fathered a child with the daughter of another Republican Senator. Even Kennedy in-law and moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was protected by the tabloid when he ran for governor of California in 2003. Several women sold their stories of Arnold's groping and other sexual misbehavior to the Enquirer, but instead of publishing them, the publishers made a deal with Arnold to write (or have ghostwritten) a column for one of their fitness publications. I doubt that such a deal would have been made with a Democrat.
I first questioned the liberal media myth during the 2000 election. When George Bush's drunk driving arrest was revealed in a so-called October surprise, I wondered how a man who was the governor of a large state and the son of a former President and Vice President could hide such an arrest. When a drunken Joan Kennedy fell in the street in Boston years after she divorced Ted, I heard about it in L.A. In fact, any time a Kennedy or Kennedy in-law was arrested for drinking, taking drugs, or raping someone it made the news. Even the murder trial of Ethel's nephew, who has just been released from jail, became a spectacle because he was called a "Kennedy cousin." Yet the governor of Texas, the son of a one-term President and two-term Vice President, and brother of the governor of Florida, could hide his past drunk driving arrest during most of a hotly contested Presidential campaign. When I found out several years after she had become the First Lady that Laura Bush had accidentally killed a young classmate in a car accident when she was a teenager, I almost lost my mind. Why didn't everyone know about that accident? Can you imagine what would have happened if Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Teresa Kerry, or Michelle Obama had accidentally killed a young man in a car accident? I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign didn't use my idea of showing the two drunk drivers, Bush and Cheney, with Laura in a car, under the slogan: "Do you really want these three at the wheel?" We did go over a cliff in 2008, didn't we?
But what really made me question the liberal media myth was what happened on the day of the 2000 election. Some clever conservatives suggested that the liberal media tried to steal the election for Gore because he was given Florida first. But how did briefly having Florida help Gore's cause? The real story, of course, is that when the media called Florida for Bush, they also declared him the winner of the election before changing their minds again. By declaring Bush the winner, the media gave him the moral high ground, so he could pretend that he had actually won the election and that the Florida votes had already been counted. Imagine if the media had said: "Florida and therefore this race is too close to call; there will need to be a recount." While the votes were being counted and recounted, it would become clear that, thanks to western states like California, Gore won the popular vote. Who do you think would have prevailed under those circumstances? Some liberals blamed the five conservative Supreme Court justices for making Bush the winner of an election he lost, but I blamed the conservative media.
Almost exactly thirteen years after the 2000 vote count fiasco, an ABC special on the ten worst political scandals of the 21st Century once again confirmed what I learned at the beginning of this century--the media is conservative. I pointed out in my last post that eight of the ten political scandals listed were sexual in nature, but it's interesting to note that six of the ten featured Democrats, and one of the four Republican scandals (one of the two nonsexual ones) listed the victim, Valerie Plame, instead of the perpetrators, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney, of the scandal. So only three Republicans were listed. The top three scandalous politicians, according to Disney's ABC, were John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidental nominee who talked about the two Americas before the 2008 recession and who told us in 2008 that we couldn't trust the insurance companies, Eliot Spitzer, the so-called sheriff of Wall Street and former governor of New York, and Anthony Weiner, the loudmouth former New York Representative, who fiercely battled the Republicans during the healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010. Hmmm. The latter two tried unsuccessfully to reenter New York City politics a week or two before the special, but Edwards has been quietly going about his business in North Carolina since his 2012 trial. He hasn't even been on television. His former mistress may have, however, inadvertently put him on the corporate media's radar by issuing an apology for her 2012 tell-too-much book; the apology included a statement that she hadn't let "John" read the book. Maybe the corporations and insurance companies thought Baby Mama Hunter was preparing the way for Mr. Two Americas to reenter politics.
As I reviewed all of the Republican scandals that were omitted from that top ten list, not just Foley, Ensign, and Vitter, but Katrina and the Iraq War, I included the most recent scandal--the shutdown of the government by Republicans for no particular reason. Then I thought I knew why ABC chose to present their special at this time. The Republicans are looking bad; their poll numbers are down, so Mickey Mouse has to save the day by making people believe that the Democrats are really the corrupt ones.
As Al Sharpton, one of the few true liberals in the mostly conservative media might say, "Nice try, ABC, but we got you." Wake up, everybody! There is more than one fox in the media.
They are, of course, wrong. In big cities where there are two newspapers (and there are probably fewer of those now than there were in the 20th Century), one is often more conservative than the other. When I lived in the Chicago area during the sixties, for instance, the Chicago Tribune was the conservative paper, and the Sun Times was more liberal. And then there are the tabloids, which I suspect more people read than read the New York Times or any other large metropolitan newspaper. As I revealed in my memoir, the National Enquirer targets liberal politicians and protects conservatives. That's why we didn't hear about Barbara Walters' affair with black Republican Senator Ed Brooke until the lady told all in her memoir, and that's why we didn't hear about Dixiecrat turned Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's black daughter until the Senator had died at the ripe old age of one hundred, and then the daughter told her story. And recently, a retired Republican Senator revealed that thirty years ago he fathered a child with the daughter of another Republican Senator. Even Kennedy in-law and moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was protected by the tabloid when he ran for governor of California in 2003. Several women sold their stories of Arnold's groping and other sexual misbehavior to the Enquirer, but instead of publishing them, the publishers made a deal with Arnold to write (or have ghostwritten) a column for one of their fitness publications. I doubt that such a deal would have been made with a Democrat.
I first questioned the liberal media myth during the 2000 election. When George Bush's drunk driving arrest was revealed in a so-called October surprise, I wondered how a man who was the governor of a large state and the son of a former President and Vice President could hide such an arrest. When a drunken Joan Kennedy fell in the street in Boston years after she divorced Ted, I heard about it in L.A. In fact, any time a Kennedy or Kennedy in-law was arrested for drinking, taking drugs, or raping someone it made the news. Even the murder trial of Ethel's nephew, who has just been released from jail, became a spectacle because he was called a "Kennedy cousin." Yet the governor of Texas, the son of a one-term President and two-term Vice President, and brother of the governor of Florida, could hide his past drunk driving arrest during most of a hotly contested Presidential campaign. When I found out several years after she had become the First Lady that Laura Bush had accidentally killed a young classmate in a car accident when she was a teenager, I almost lost my mind. Why didn't everyone know about that accident? Can you imagine what would have happened if Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Teresa Kerry, or Michelle Obama had accidentally killed a young man in a car accident? I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign didn't use my idea of showing the two drunk drivers, Bush and Cheney, with Laura in a car, under the slogan: "Do you really want these three at the wheel?" We did go over a cliff in 2008, didn't we?
But what really made me question the liberal media myth was what happened on the day of the 2000 election. Some clever conservatives suggested that the liberal media tried to steal the election for Gore because he was given Florida first. But how did briefly having Florida help Gore's cause? The real story, of course, is that when the media called Florida for Bush, they also declared him the winner of the election before changing their minds again. By declaring Bush the winner, the media gave him the moral high ground, so he could pretend that he had actually won the election and that the Florida votes had already been counted. Imagine if the media had said: "Florida and therefore this race is too close to call; there will need to be a recount." While the votes were being counted and recounted, it would become clear that, thanks to western states like California, Gore won the popular vote. Who do you think would have prevailed under those circumstances? Some liberals blamed the five conservative Supreme Court justices for making Bush the winner of an election he lost, but I blamed the conservative media.
Almost exactly thirteen years after the 2000 vote count fiasco, an ABC special on the ten worst political scandals of the 21st Century once again confirmed what I learned at the beginning of this century--the media is conservative. I pointed out in my last post that eight of the ten political scandals listed were sexual in nature, but it's interesting to note that six of the ten featured Democrats, and one of the four Republican scandals (one of the two nonsexual ones) listed the victim, Valerie Plame, instead of the perpetrators, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney, of the scandal. So only three Republicans were listed. The top three scandalous politicians, according to Disney's ABC, were John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidental nominee who talked about the two Americas before the 2008 recession and who told us in 2008 that we couldn't trust the insurance companies, Eliot Spitzer, the so-called sheriff of Wall Street and former governor of New York, and Anthony Weiner, the loudmouth former New York Representative, who fiercely battled the Republicans during the healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010. Hmmm. The latter two tried unsuccessfully to reenter New York City politics a week or two before the special, but Edwards has been quietly going about his business in North Carolina since his 2012 trial. He hasn't even been on television. His former mistress may have, however, inadvertently put him on the corporate media's radar by issuing an apology for her 2012 tell-too-much book; the apology included a statement that she hadn't let "John" read the book. Maybe the corporations and insurance companies thought Baby Mama Hunter was preparing the way for Mr. Two Americas to reenter politics.
As I reviewed all of the Republican scandals that were omitted from that top ten list, not just Foley, Ensign, and Vitter, but Katrina and the Iraq War, I included the most recent scandal--the shutdown of the government by Republicans for no particular reason. Then I thought I knew why ABC chose to present their special at this time. The Republicans are looking bad; their poll numbers are down, so Mickey Mouse has to save the day by making people believe that the Democrats are really the corrupt ones.
As Al Sharpton, one of the few true liberals in the mostly conservative media might say, "Nice try, ABC, but we got you." Wake up, everybody! There is more than one fox in the media.
OJ 20 Years Later: Demonizing the Black Man
HE'S BACK! As I pointed out in my memoir, I first became aware of media bias during the interminable 1995 OJ trial. During that summer, I watched the trial live and then watched the media's summary and analysis of what happened that day. I was stunned by how biased their presentations were. The prosecutors' lawyering was called "strategies" while the defense's was called "tricks." The half hour news summaries would often present only information that made OJ look guilty, ignoring any exculpatory evidence. I suggested that some of the people who were so angered by the jury's perfectly reasonable verdict, given the number of questions the "dream team" of defense lawyers raised about the prosecutor's hill (hardly a mountain) of circumstantial evidence, were influenced by the biased media coverage. In fact, I suspect that some people who did not follow the trial as carefully as I did still believe that OJ had bloody clothes in his washer (he didn't), that there was a credible eye witness who saw him and his Bronco near the scene of the crime (that witness was a pathological liar), and that there were buckets of blood (instead of drops) found on OJ's property and in his car. I also suspect that some of the jurors were underwhelmed by the evidence the prosecutors presented because they had heard about the "mountain" of evidence before the trial began.
Although he's been in jail for years for having recovered or "stolen" his own memorabilia from a shady acquaintance, OJ is once again in the news. ABC and A&E are showing tapes from his 1997 civil trial deposition. Even before I learned that these supposedly exclusive, never-before-seen tapes had been shown on NBC in 1999, 2004, and 2014, I knew what these biased media folks were trying to do. They were offering a counter-narrative to the BlackLivesMatter narrative of unarmed black men (and boys) being killed by police. They were reminding us that twenty years ago on an early fall day in L.A., a black man who killed two beautiful young white people with a knife was set free by a cop-hating, mostly black jury. The "20-20" producers and correspondents didn't even try to hide their agenda. They made a direct connection between the jury who set OJ free and the blacks who are suspicious of cops today. They even showed a brief scene of people rioting, probably in Baltimore or Ferguson.
What they didn't show, as I pointed out in tweets to lawyer/correspondent Dan Abrams and "20-20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas (I finally figured out what to do with my previously useless Twitter account), is why the L.A., mostly black jurors might have been suspicious of cops and more willing to believe the dream team's arguments that evidence was mishandled and even planted. They didn't show the video of L.A. cops beating the crap out of Rodney King a few years before OJ took his Bronco ride. And they didn't discuss the L.A. police corruption scandal (the Rampart scandal) that broke a few years after OJ was set free. Maybe some of those black jurors had family members or friends who had been framed by corrupt L.A. cops.
Dan Abrams shamelessly repeated that mountain of evidence lie (although he didn't use that phrase) on "20-20" without giving credit to the dream team, especially MVP Barry Scheck, who now directs the Innocence Project, which has used DNA to free wrongly convicted people of all races. Mr. Scheck tore apart the prosecutors' blood evidence. He was brilliant and ruthless. In fact, other than Johnny Corcoran's closing rhyme, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," the most memorable line from the trial was Scheck's, "Where is it, Mr. Fung?" I felt sorry for the hapless Mr. Fung.
Worse than demonizing the OJ jury and failing to give his lawyers' credit, Vargas and Abrams failed to distinguish between OJ and the unarmed black men who have been killed by police. Even now when he is in jail, like so many other black men, and serving a lengthy sentence for a "crime" that would have led to (at most) a sentence of probation or community service for a white man, OJ is not like other black men. He still has more money and fame than they do. In fact, OJ has more in common with Italian, former child and television actor Robert Blake, another celebrity found not guilty of killing his wife, than with most black men. Can you imagine a middle-class black man being allowed to turn himself in when he was suspected of killing two white people with a knife? Can you imagine what would have happened to that black man if he had not turned himself in and was found driving the freeway in a white Bronco with his best friend at the wheel and a gun to his head? Would the police have slowly escorted that black man and his friend to his home, allowing him to use the bathroom and see his mama before politely taking him to jail? Of course not. Almost any other black man would have been lucky if the police only shot out the tires of that Bronco. More likely, he and his friend would have been on their way to a different home, their last resting place.
Here's my counter to ABC's counter-narrative. More black people have been falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned for killing or raping whites than have been set free when they were guilty. More guilty whites have been set free or not even tried for killing or raping blacks than vice versa. If a civilian of any race kills a cop and there are witnesses to that murder, the civilian will go to jail if he or she is not killed by other cops. Cops who kill unarmed civilians are often not even indicted. While some have been quick to blame those who protested police violence against unarmed civilians for the murders of three cops in two separate incidents, there seems to be no interest in connecting Donald Trump's comments about Mexican rapists or the portrayal of television's favorite father and doctor (Bill Cosby) as a rapist to the murder of nine black people in South Carolina by a white domestic terrorist who claimed that blacks raped their (whites) women. And I didn't hear anyone connecting the murder of three young Muslims by a white atheist in North Carolina to the angry outcry that accompanied Obama's rather mild statement that Christians had also behaved badly. Just before those three innocent Muslims were killed, even some so-called liberals were suggesting that Muslims were more savage (I guess they forgot about the KKK) than Christians.
Racism is America's original sin; the country began with slavery and the massacre of Native Americans. And the racism continues today with the unprecedented disrespect and hatred shown toward our half-black President and the ugly attacks on Mexican Americans and Muslims by some of the Republican candidates. Sometimes the media is helpful in pointing out the racism and demonizing the racists, but too often media outlets like ABC add to the racism.
The resurrection of OJ on "20-20" was a racist attack on blacks. And they should be demonized for engaging in such blatant racism.
Although he's been in jail for years for having recovered or "stolen" his own memorabilia from a shady acquaintance, OJ is once again in the news. ABC and A&E are showing tapes from his 1997 civil trial deposition. Even before I learned that these supposedly exclusive, never-before-seen tapes had been shown on NBC in 1999, 2004, and 2014, I knew what these biased media folks were trying to do. They were offering a counter-narrative to the BlackLivesMatter narrative of unarmed black men (and boys) being killed by police. They were reminding us that twenty years ago on an early fall day in L.A., a black man who killed two beautiful young white people with a knife was set free by a cop-hating, mostly black jury. The "20-20" producers and correspondents didn't even try to hide their agenda. They made a direct connection between the jury who set OJ free and the blacks who are suspicious of cops today. They even showed a brief scene of people rioting, probably in Baltimore or Ferguson.
What they didn't show, as I pointed out in tweets to lawyer/correspondent Dan Abrams and "20-20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas (I finally figured out what to do with my previously useless Twitter account), is why the L.A., mostly black jurors might have been suspicious of cops and more willing to believe the dream team's arguments that evidence was mishandled and even planted. They didn't show the video of L.A. cops beating the crap out of Rodney King a few years before OJ took his Bronco ride. And they didn't discuss the L.A. police corruption scandal (the Rampart scandal) that broke a few years after OJ was set free. Maybe some of those black jurors had family members or friends who had been framed by corrupt L.A. cops.
Dan Abrams shamelessly repeated that mountain of evidence lie (although he didn't use that phrase) on "20-20" without giving credit to the dream team, especially MVP Barry Scheck, who now directs the Innocence Project, which has used DNA to free wrongly convicted people of all races. Mr. Scheck tore apart the prosecutors' blood evidence. He was brilliant and ruthless. In fact, other than Johnny Corcoran's closing rhyme, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," the most memorable line from the trial was Scheck's, "Where is it, Mr. Fung?" I felt sorry for the hapless Mr. Fung.
Worse than demonizing the OJ jury and failing to give his lawyers' credit, Vargas and Abrams failed to distinguish between OJ and the unarmed black men who have been killed by police. Even now when he is in jail, like so many other black men, and serving a lengthy sentence for a "crime" that would have led to (at most) a sentence of probation or community service for a white man, OJ is not like other black men. He still has more money and fame than they do. In fact, OJ has more in common with Italian, former child and television actor Robert Blake, another celebrity found not guilty of killing his wife, than with most black men. Can you imagine a middle-class black man being allowed to turn himself in when he was suspected of killing two white people with a knife? Can you imagine what would have happened to that black man if he had not turned himself in and was found driving the freeway in a white Bronco with his best friend at the wheel and a gun to his head? Would the police have slowly escorted that black man and his friend to his home, allowing him to use the bathroom and see his mama before politely taking him to jail? Of course not. Almost any other black man would have been lucky if the police only shot out the tires of that Bronco. More likely, he and his friend would have been on their way to a different home, their last resting place.
Here's my counter to ABC's counter-narrative. More black people have been falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned for killing or raping whites than have been set free when they were guilty. More guilty whites have been set free or not even tried for killing or raping blacks than vice versa. If a civilian of any race kills a cop and there are witnesses to that murder, the civilian will go to jail if he or she is not killed by other cops. Cops who kill unarmed civilians are often not even indicted. While some have been quick to blame those who protested police violence against unarmed civilians for the murders of three cops in two separate incidents, there seems to be no interest in connecting Donald Trump's comments about Mexican rapists or the portrayal of television's favorite father and doctor (Bill Cosby) as a rapist to the murder of nine black people in South Carolina by a white domestic terrorist who claimed that blacks raped their (whites) women. And I didn't hear anyone connecting the murder of three young Muslims by a white atheist in North Carolina to the angry outcry that accompanied Obama's rather mild statement that Christians had also behaved badly. Just before those three innocent Muslims were killed, even some so-called liberals were suggesting that Muslims were more savage (I guess they forgot about the KKK) than Christians.
Racism is America's original sin; the country began with slavery and the massacre of Native Americans. And the racism continues today with the unprecedented disrespect and hatred shown toward our half-black President and the ugly attacks on Mexican Americans and Muslims by some of the Republican candidates. Sometimes the media is helpful in pointing out the racism and demonizing the racists, but too often media outlets like ABC add to the racism.
The resurrection of OJ on "20-20" was a racist attack on blacks. And they should be demonized for engaging in such blatant racism.
