How The Left Intimidates The Media
By Cliff Kincaid
March 19, 2007
Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently paid $20,000 by Virginia Tech to tell the students that there aren't two sides to the global warming debate and that the problem with the media today is that we don't have a fairness doctrine. Those positions, which sound contradictory, betray the modern liberal agenda. They want to bring back the fairness doctrine not to ensure true fairness and balance in journalism but to intimidate and censor those expressing a view contrary to their own.
"The decline in the American journalism began in 1988 when Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine," Kennedy said, according to the student paper, the Collegiate Times. The paper said Kennedy had complained about the American people being exposed to "right-winged news." Here, he said, man-made global warming is referred to by the media as a "theory" when he claimed it is established fact. In foreign countries, he suggested, there is only one point of view--the truth, as he sees it. One can only conclude that Kennedy wants the Fairness Doctrine back to prevent right-wingers on talk radio and in cable news from voicing any doubts about the theory.
With these comments, Kennedy exposed the real agenda of the radical left. They don't want the media to present both sides. They want the media to report their point of view, and only their point of view. Despite his complaints, it is a fact that Kennedy's viewpoint is so widely accepted by the media that even the "conservative" Fox News Channel hired him as a special correspondent to do a November 2005 special program on global warming. It was completely one-sided in favor of the Kennedy position and conservatives, including those from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, led the criticism. Kennedy said that he personally convinced Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to air the program and that they had been friends for years. Eventually, Fox aired another program expressing some doubts about the man-made global warming theory.
Blasting Roger Ailes
If you recently heard the news that the Democratic Party had pulled out of a planned political debate sponsored by Fox News because Fox News is too "conservative," then you have some inkling about the game that is being played by the political left in this country. Their complaints have nothing to do with what actually gets on the air. It is all about intimidating journalists and news organizations into treating the left and the Democrats more sympathetically. In the case of the debate, the stated reason for pulling out was a joke made by Fox News chairman Ailes that was said to have compared Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden. In fact, Ailes' joke was at the expense of President Bush.
The Ailes joke was, "...it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy.'" It was delivered while Ailes was accepting a First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. Obviously, it was intended to make fun of Bush for confusing Obama with Osama. Only a dishonest interpretation of the joke would conclude it was a sinister attempt to compare the Illinois Senator to the al-Qaeda terrorist leader. But this was the trigger that prompted the Democrats to pull out of the Fox-sponsored debate. Clearly, the pull-out was a political stunt designed to send the message to Fox that it had better produce "fairer" coverage of their party and candidates. Their definition of "fair" means one-sided in their favor. It will be hard for Fox News to accommodate the left without losing its conservative viewers. But the channel is already feeling tremendous pressure from the left.
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