Local Editors Differ On Media Reality

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A couple of weeks ago, the editor of the Janesville Gazette, Scott Angus, took the right-wing spinner Bill O'Reilly to task over an a article O'Reilly wrote about on things he learned in 2008, including media bias. The Gazette editor strongly opposed O'Reilly's view that candidates in the 2008 presidential campaign received differential treatment from the press. Originally, I had no intentions to write about the editor's view of O'Reilly, after all like everyone else, it's his opinion. But the newspaper has been stretching out this non-story repeatedly through their anonymous "Sound Off" column in what appears to be an off-balance defense of their own publication.

Taking verbal shots at somebody like Fox News Bill O’Reilly is like aiming a shotgun at a barn, you usually can’t miss. As much as O’Reilly is a journalistic phony, he can rant on about five hundred different subjects in any given year, to which two or three he can make sense on. As a citizen blogging about the media and it's effects on politics and public opinion, I’ve been carrying on about our local media bias for several years now. Finally, media bias is something O'Reilly happens to agree with me on. But so does Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Jon Stewart, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky and all the folks at Fair Media, Free Press and Media Matters, just to name a few. They all have spoken out against the literally corrupted traditional media in America and are far more credible on media bias than Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly Excerpt:
So, the lesson here is clear: No longer can the American media be relied upon to bring us fact-based information. The news media has entered the ideology business, much like talk radio. This will greatly harm the nation, as unbiased information is critical for an informed citizenry. The collapse of journalistic standards was a huge but largely untold story in 2008.

After blow-harding his way with his own brand of phony journalism, and making a very good buck at it, Billo has finally come around to this truth: You're never too old to learn. That O'Reilly happened to use Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as his examples of media bias is fine with me if that's what it takes to raise his level of media bias awareness - good for him. We can now say that O'Reilly's years of previous ignorance on media bias can be written off as harmless "youthful conservative indiscretions."

But, the Gazette editor seemed to have taken O'Reilly's remarks personally, as if O'Reilly was directly criticizing the Gazette. No such luck. Angus defended his newspaper for one reason, because he thought it was necessary.

The Gazette by far is one of the most politically biased, news distorting local issue omitters I have ever read for a daily publication of such modest size. In those regards, they are a wild success. Evidence of this is written about and exposed in dozens of examples throughout my blog. Going after a distant fellow like O’Reilly allows the Gazette to address criticisms of media bias on their own terms without answering any of those observations. As long as it works for them - that's what counts.

Now some folks, in a high-pitched snot-faced sort of way, have said to me, "nobody is twisting your arm to read the Gazette, if you don't like it, don't buy it, change the channel." To those folks I've said "sorry, but I can't expose the underlying agendas, deceptions and distortions of others by ignoring them." Besides, adopting the "ignore and they will go away" defense philosophy is the hallmark of either a sanctimonious fool or a coward. If anything, I will opine my opposition of what I believe is wrong as often as necessary, and hope never to shirk this all important duty of American citizenry, whether they ignore me or not.

Just this past Sunday (January 25), the editor(s) of the Gazette’s sister publication, the Janesville Messenger, expressed what they believed in and wrote one of their typically bloated editorials filled with anti-American rhetoric and unhinged demagoguery. But they also said this…….

Janesville Messenger Editorial Excerpt:
But rapturous Obamaphiles might want to reflect more thoughtfully on the media love affair with BHO. Passions wane over time, after all.

Media love affair? When will the media's love for Obama begin to wane? And so it is, one Bliss newspaper editor credits a media controlled public for Obama's popularity, basically O'Reilly's position. While the other one said the bias is the reality, and the media innocently reports it ........so the question is - whose bias is the reality?