SWGA Politics

An Unbiased Press

The primary reason our founders felt it so important for us to have freedom of the press is simple.  It’s imperative that our press be free to criticize the government’s action without fear of reprisal.  Not that reprisal isn’t still a fear, but government sanctioned reprisal isn’t.  This is as it should be, more or less (there shouldn’t be any reprisals, sanctioned or otherwise, but some folks are just jerks). 

In return, people expect an unbiased press to give them the facts and allow us to be an informed populace. That just ain’t what’s happening though.

Of course, SWGA Politics makes no pretension to be unbiased. However, print media like Newsweek and The New York Times do make such claims. However, they’re not entirely truthful with you. Take for example, this piece from Newsweek.  It present a case for why socialist nations in Western Europe are ultimately going to pass the United States by…supposedly.

The mainstream media is claiming to be unbiased, and yet time and time again they are presenting a case for more governmental control and less freedom, whether they realize it or not.

For example, in order to maintain the programs similar to Holland or France would require a taxation rate well over 50%, as well as direct fee taxes like a value added tax (VAT).  This decreased one’s freedom to spend their income as they see fit.  It may seem simple when compared to the “greater good”, but it’s not.

Robert Heinlein once said that he wasn’t sure that a free market was truly superior to economic systems in a cold facts comparison, but he was convinced they were better simply because they’re free.  I tend to agree with him more than anyone else.  The folks at Newsweek apparently don’t.

When talking about French President Nicholas Sarkozy, they describe his backing way from free market values as:

But the experience and responsibility of office have led him to appreciate the wisdom of the old European tortoise.

(Yes, they use the tortoise and the hare story throughout the piece. Consider yourself warned.)

Here the lack of bias is obvious, describing a move away from campaign positions as “wisdom” tends to indicate that the writer agrees with the move.  Had Sarkozy campaigned as a socialist leaning politician and had moved away from such practices, then perhaps the term would be quite a bit different? 

It’s also important to note that it was Newsweek who ran the now infamous piece “We’re All Socialists Now”, where they pretend that socialism is somehow different than what has been proposed.  In fairness, they do point out that President Bush was steering the helm during the initial bailout and rightly call out Republicans who supported the Presidency until Jan. 20, and were vocal opponents there after.

Here’s the thing though.  Publications like Newsweek and The New York Times try to present socialism as something noble, and on paper it is, and push for the United States to adopt similar practices without admitting it’s socialism.  Why?  Because Americans don’t want socialism.

Because people in the good old U.S. of A. don’t want socialism, they try and pretend that it’s really something else.  If not that, then that socialism has been given a bad rap by people like SWGA Politics (not specifically us…yet, but conservative and libertarian media sources).  They want to spin the nomenclature so they can convince people that we won’t have socialism, but something American-ish.

Unfortunately, only one side of the story has been presented, one that seems to show that a move toward Socialism is the secret to getting out of our current economic crisis. Reason’sMichael Moynihan give an excellent analysis of the Dutch system in response to a New York Times piece similar in nature to the Newsweek article linked above.  It clearly shows how only half the story, the half that supports socialist intervention, is presented in an effort to move the nations economy farther to the left.

Once upon a time, the media was very “Jack Webb”…it was “Just the fact ma’am.”  For some journalists, this is still the case.  Unfortunately, they are becoming dinosaurs, those who prize their journalistic standards above political ideology.  I wish there were more like them.