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August 20, 2005

NFTGJ: The Media, Sheehan and Playing Favorites

 

 

The media appointing the Cindy Sheehan’s of the world to represent a point of view held by the minority of a group’s members is nothing new. One of the glaring examples we all see in MSM every day but may not fully be aware of is that of NOW (the National Organization for Women). NOW, you know, is that group the media always go to whenever there is an issue like abortion, sexual harassment or others affecting women in our culture (I say “in our culture” because clearly the media haven’t spent much time on the plight of women in pre-liberation Afghanistan). The problem is that NOW represents a smaller number of women (500,000) compared with another national women’s group which (heaven help us) happens to be conservative whose members number just as many or even a hundred thousand more. In fact, it describes itself rightly as “The Nation’s Largest Public Policy Women’s Group”. How many? Close to 600,000. You read that right. The women’s group that has for some time been larger than NOW is Concerned Women for America (CWA). So why do you think the group founded in 1978 that among other things is one of the few conservative public policy groups that enjoys UN recognition as one of its accredited NGO’s and has more members than NOW has not received any inkling of recognition of expert status by the mainstream media that is so lavishly bestowed on the bitter man-haters at NOW? Unfortunately (though this is no new revelation) most media outlets are far from fair and balanced.

 

But Cindy Sheehan and NOW are actually the two prominent exceptions that prove the rule. The mainstream media practice in those two cases of favoring smaller interest groups and ignoring the larger ones also helps to dispel the excuses surrounding the media’s choice to do the opposite by ignoring conservative black and other ethnic leaders and organizations as well as conservative teachers unions simply because they are not the largest groups representing their niche. Because clearly when a group falls in line with the biases held by MSM (as in the case of NOW), size doesn’t matter one bit - they are rewarded with airtime regardless of their present status as the leading organizations in the given policy area.

 

All of this simply shows us that the media have been shamelessly (and arguably for decades now) engaged in picking and choosing the spokespeople it wants to represent a particular group or idea – and that almost unfailingly, these have been choices that gave voice to the left while silencing opposition from the right.

 

So I think I know what that “Universal spark” to which Sheehan refers really is. It is the shameless fawning of a clearly biased herd of advocacy journalists. The “spark” emanates from the rusty old fire hazard known as that antiquated leftwing media spin machine that today is seen for what it is. It’s no wonder readers and viewers everywhere and in record numbers are pulling the plug.

 

Posted by Martin at August 20, 2005 01:14 PM

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