-Caveat Lector- MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Michael Moore and CNN's Slanted Debate--7/25/2007-- Media Research Center ----- Original Message ----- From: Media Research Center To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 08:44 Subject: MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Michael Moore and CNN's Slanted Debate
top -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special*** 8:45am EDT, Wednesday July 25, 2007 Today, no regular CyberAlert. Instead, two Creators syndicate columns by MRC President L. Brent Bozell: "Michael Moore vs. CNN" and "CNN's Slanted Slice of America." As always, for the latest evidence of liberal bias, check in with the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias: http://newsbusters.org Plus TimesWatch, the MRC's daily look at the New York Times: http://www.timeswatch.org Now, the two most recent Bozell columns, from oldest to newest: # Bozell's July 17 column, "Michael Moore vs. CNN" Let's be blunt: Michael Moore is one ungrateful leftist hack. CNN had showered him with three hours and ten minutes of face time (repeats included) on "Larry King Live" and "The Situation Room," helping him sell his latest socialist film "Sicko." That kind of attention would make a conservative drool. But when CNN aired a "fact check" piece on his documentary, adding a fraction of balance, he declared jihad, promising in a letter to be CNN's "worst nightmare." CNN medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta put together a fairly mild report taking issue with some of Moore's cinematic claims. For example, Moore gauzily promoted the health-care promise of communist Cuba. In the film's most publicized stunt, he traveled with Americans suffering from 9/11-related symptoms and had them treated in Cuban hospitals. Gupta pointed out that while Moore highlights that the United Nations World Health Organization cites the United States as 37th in the world for health care, the same study ranks Cuba as 39th. This is the kind of fact checking that drives Moore into a frenzy. He cannot tolerate someone insisting that the infallible Michael Moore would ever mangle a fact. In a response on his Web site, Moore didn't say Gupta was wrong. Instead, he declared, "CNN should have its reporter see his eye doctor," since that list with Cuba two slots down is clearly on screen, even in the trailer. Technically, he's correct. A sharp-eyed viewer can see Cuba. But that's not the point, and Moore knows it. Moore's voice-over was focusing the viewer on how the United States ranks just above poor Slovenia at #38. Then he walked away from the facts, making the outrageous claim that communist Cuba's dismal ranking is all America's fault: "The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system." The chutzpah level is so high he should seek medical attention. Most of Moore's attack on Gupta doesn't claim Gupta has mangled the facts, but instead argues that Gupta's facts are not important. Moore isn't saying Gupta is "untrue" -- he's "true, but." Gupta noted America ranked number one in patient satisfaction. Moore admits: "True, but" when the WHO took patient satisfaction into account in its comprehensive review of the world's health systems, we still came in at #37. Gupta reported that Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures. Moore doesn't say that's untrue, but "This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures." In his boastful letter to CNN, Moore demanded the network cry uncle and admit that everything Moore says is to be accepted without qualification: "What I want to do is help you come clean. Admit you were wrong. What is the shame in that? We all make mistakes. I know it's hard to admit it when you've screwed up, but it's also liberating and cathartic. It not only makes you a better person, it helps prevent you from screwing up again." This is incredibly rich coming from Moore, whose M.O. is not to deal in facts as much as in cheap stunts and socialist innuendoes. This is a man who ended "Fahrenheit 911" with the less-than-factual claim that the "war effort" was "always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation." Footnote, please, Mr. Moore? Can anyone forget his gauzy video of Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the invasion, with pastoral pictures of children with kites? In fact, on one point in Gupta's report, CNN did retract a claim and apologize. Gupta said Moore's film claimed Cubans pay $25 per person a year for health care, when Moore said $251. But CNN's response also pointed out that Moore is playing apples and oranges with the numbers, plucking the Cuba number from a BBC report and then selecting his American cost-per-person number from our Department of Health and Human Services. The HHS number for 2006 is not a fact, but a projection, CNN pointed out: "Actual numbers for the years 2006 and 2007 are not yet available, which is why CNN could not use them." Even people who don't believe that CNN is always Exhibit A for fairness and accuracy can easily find CNN to be a superior fact- finder to Michael Moore. So why does Moore, sloppily disorganized and so often factually untruthful, register such credibility with the press? Because his work provokes all the "right" people and shoots at all the "right" targets. If they really cared about the facts and people who handle them, they'd take away Moore's six-foot-high soap box. Gupta's report was a small step in the right direction. END Reprint of first of two columns # Bozell's July 24 column, "CNN's Slanted Slice of America" Every four years, journalists present themselves as objective questioners in presidential debates only to be roundly, and correctly, denounced by conservatives for being anything but. When, oh when, we ask, will America be able to enjoy a candidate forum free from liberal reporters inserting their slanted worldviews into the discussion? When, oh when, we ask ourselves, will they get out of the way? It looks like we should be very careful what we ask for. On Monday night, CNN did this -- or at least said it was doing this. The network teamed up with the video site YouTube to host a debate of the Democratic contenders and pretenders in South Carolina. This time the primary questioners were amateur video-makers who submitted their questions to YouTube, competing for CNN air time like a political version of "American Idol." CNN puffed itself up as "groundbreaking" for this effort, suggesting it was offering "real questions from real people." The questioners CNN presented may have given the debate a different flavor, but what the consumer was really left with was the aftertaste of too much soda bubbles and syrup. It was a dumbed-down debate, with center stage dedicated to bouts of silliness, shameless attention- seeking, and emotionally manipulative questions. Rather than an objective discussion about gay "rights" there was the question from two lesbians wondering why they couldn't get married. Rather than a factual question about Iraq there was the angry plea from the grieving father of a fallen soldier that we withdraw before he lost another son. This kind of "moderation" might be enjoyable to watch as an alternative to the norm -- like watching the heart- wrenching or embarrassing tryouts of "Idol" wannabes -- but it wasn't exactly the high-faluting rebirth of Athens. These interviewers wanted to be taken seriously, but many were just buffoons who made fools of the network that likes to bill itself as "the most trusted name in news." CNN selected hammy Tennessee hillbillies looking like "Hee Haw" rejects and a cartoon snowman speaking in a falsetto voice about global warming as presidential candidate questioners, along with several lame musical interludes where the inquirers displayed their questions on crudely written cue cards. Is this really the state of affairs in our democratic experiment, circa 2007? If so, God help us all. There was a more serious concern for the public watching this CNN spectacle. Every time "objective" networks claim to seek the voice of the American people, they seem to think that 75 or 80 percent of Americans are squarely on the political left of the spectrum, people who think Dennis Kucinich-think is in the mainstream. Questions from the left dominated the CNN proceedings, lamenting the Democrats' slowness on Iraq withdrawal, honoring "gay marriage," and scrapping everything George W. Bush ever proposed. Some questions consisted of tired, and thoroughly false liberal attack lines that would warm a Democrat's heart, as in asking how race and class skewed the response to Hurricane Katrina, with the insulting assumption that President Bush said "Oh, it's just black people. Take your time responding." Predictably, this insulting question drew an equally truth-challenged response from Sen. Chris Dodd: "The American president had almost no response whatsoever to the people of that city, New Orleans." Where were the CNN fact checkers? Bush signed a $51 billion aid package within ten days. Some might say we shouldn't be shocked by these loaded inquiries because it was, after all, a debate among and for partisan Democrats. But if so, CNN shouldn't pretend this to be the collective voice of America. It simply can't have it both ways. But CNN never admitted that slant. CNN might claim that there's a left-wing tilt in the number of submissions that they received because of the partisan interest. But that's no excuse for CNN to skew the proceedings so dramatically and leave the impression that "the people" out there think Ted Kennedy's way too conservative. CNN tipped viewers off to its ideological direction when it continuously praised all the "passionate" and "thoughtful" submissions in preview segments leading up to the debate. When CNN aired environmental questions, they came from parents holding children panicking about the global-warming menace. When it aired health-care questions, the questioners wanted to know why government subsidies are so inadequate. When it aired "faith" questions, they were from people scandalized by too much old-time religion in our politics. The Republicans will also subject themselves to the CNN-YouTube bubble machine on a Monday night in September. They will be foolish to expect a similar treatment. It's rare for the liberal TV news networks to conduct a town-hall presidential debate that even splits the questions down the middle ideologically. Charlie Gibson did it in the second Bush-Kerry debate in 2004. Now that debate, with its simple one-for-you and one-for- you, seemed strangely groundbreaking. END of Reprint of second of two columns For the latest Bozell column and the archive of his columns: http://www.mrc.org/archive/newscol/welcome.asp -Brent Baker -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check Out the MRC's Blog The MRC's blog site, NewsBusters, "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias," provides examples of bias 24/7. With your participation NewsBusters will continue to be THE blog site for tracking and correcting liberal media bias. 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