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The War on Journalism

Posted on November 6th, 2009 by Staks

All the big news stations have been talking about the White House’s war on Fox News, but that is only one battle. Obviously Fox News is a Republican tool used to spread propaganda in the name of news, but few realize that CNN is also a Republican tool used to spread propaganda in the name of news.

Yesterday, CNN spent a lot of time covering the teabagger rally in DC (before the Texas shooting took over the news), however CNN spent zero time covering the three rallies in favor of the Public Option which were held right outside there NY, Atlanta, and LA studios. Maybe if we had brought a balloon with no little boys inside, we could have gotten some coverage.

The rallies outside of the various CNN headquarter were organized by The Young Turks radio/YouTube show. There message was simple, CNN should actually report the news. The news in particular that we want reported is that a majority of Americans want the Public Option. Time and time again, Republicans will go on CNN and say that most Americans don’t want the Public Option and CNN never calls them out on it. The fact is that poll after poll has shown that most Americans do favor the Public Option. Here are some of those polls:

61% (CNN/ORC 10/18/09)
77% (SurveyUSA 8/20/09)
65% (NY Times/CBS News 9/25/09)
55% (Washington Post/ABC News 9/12/09)
61% (Quinnipiac 10/08/09)
55% (Time 7/29/09)
72% (NY Times/CBS News 6/20/09)
56% (Washington Post/ABC News 10/20/09)
59% (Kaiser Family Foundation 8/20/2009)

Despite the facts, CNN still does not bring these numbers to the public’s attention and has contributed to misleading the public into thinking that most Americans are against the Public Option. The fact that CNN spent more time covering the Townhall Protests and the Teabagger rallies then they did covering the Gay Rights March and the Public Option Rallies yesterday right outside their door shows that they are biased in the same way that Fox News is biased. The only difference is that CNN isn’t as obvious about it.

People can argue for or against the Public Option, but that is not really what this blog post is about. It really doesn’t matter what the issue is, the fact is that CNN can no longer be trusted to investigate or report the news.

At the teabagger rally yesterday, Republican Congressman John Boehner told the crowd that he was going to read from the US Constitution and then he mistakenly read from the Declaration of Independence. How embarrassing for a US Congressman to not know the difference between these two great American documents. I will bet that CNN doesn’t mention it at all. However, if a Democratic Congress person were to have made the same mistake it would surely be a major scandal.

At least three Republican Congress people have made statements on the floor of the House saying that the Democratic Health Care Bill would kill people (without any facts). No one questioned it and it was not a scandal at all. But when Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson stated on the floor of the House that the Republican Health Care plan was to not get sick and if you do get sick to die quickly, all hell broke loose and CNN repeatedly tried to pressure him to apologize. Grayson for the record did have actual facts and evidence to support his opinion.

I no longer trust CNN to deliver the news. These days, I watch the Daily Show and The Colbert Report for a lot of my news. I also watch internet shows like The Young Turks and others. Even NPR is starting to loose their credibility. We really need more news outlets that will ask the tough questions and not just swallow talking points. Walter Cronkite is surely turning over in his grave.

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