Conservative Media Bias Called a 'Matter of Life and Death -- GOPUSA

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Conservative Media Bias Called a 'Matter of Life and Death
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
May 25, 2005

Page 2 of 2

Alterman also expressed concern for the establishment press, which "must, on a daily basis, come face to face with an administration obsessed with secrecy and which belittles and browbeats reporters at every opportunity.

"Note how quickly [White House Press Secretary] Scott McClennan [sic] blamed Newsweek for the rioting in Afghanistan last week," he said.

"Despite the fact that his bosses presided over the invasion of Iraq and the well-documented abuses at Abu Ghraib and Bagram, the administration -- along with a whole host of ready-for-prime-time conservative talking heads -- pounced on one sentence in a short blurb, claiming that it caused irreparable harm to the 'image of America' in the Muslim world," Alterman added.

Reaction to Newsweek's retracted story also drew fire from Randi Rhodes, another Air America talk show host, who accused the White House of calling the magazine "an accessory to murder for printing a story of Koran abuse that the [International Red Cross Committee] has clearly documented for more than three years" in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rhodes claimed "corporate news has simply become propaganda for a Republican majority today, a Republican majority tomorrow, a Republican majority forever."

She had three recommendations for addressing media bias. The first was for Congress to adopt standards for labeling a broadcast as news instead of opinion or commentary.

"Second, I think we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, which served this country well from 1949 through 1987" by guaranteeing "competing viewpoints on issues of public importance."

Rhodes' final suggestion was "to protect our journalists," who "must be free to report and never be penalized with lost access to the people they cover or with retribution from partisan employers.

"If you fail to act," she told the liberal U.S. representatives in attendance, "I will be a member of a minority party for a very long time. That is, if the two-party system can survive this new propaganda machine called the news."

Conyers held a similar conservative bashing forum shortly after President Bush's re-election last November, in which an entirely liberal group of speakers advanced theories that Republicans had stolen the 2004 election.

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