Tag Archives: Media Bias

News

RNC threatens to cancel 2016 primary debates on pro-Democrat CNN

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The Hill (left-leaning) reports.

Excerpt:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) voted unanimously Friday to pull the group’s partnership with NBC and CNN for the 2016 GOP presidential primary debates unless the networks kill their planned films on Hillary Clinton.

“We don’t have time for the media’s games,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said before the vote at the RNC summer meeting in Boston. “We’re done putting up with this nonsense. There are plenty of other news outlets.”

According to the resolution, called “In support of media objectivity and accountability” and obtained by The Hill, the RNC called the planned films “political favoritism” and accused NBC and CNN of airing “programming that amounts to little more than extended commercials promoting former Secretary Clinton.”

CNN announced last month it had planned a feature-length film on the life of the former secretary of State and possible Democratic presidential contender. NBC will air a four-hour mini-series starring Diane Lane as Clinton.

Earlier this month, Priebus sent letters to CNN President Jeff Zucker and NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt warning he’d pull GOP debates from the networks over the films, which he called “a thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election.”

The chairman argued that moving ahead with the movie projects was evidence that neither network could be trusted to be fair arbiters in a presidential debate.

[…]The RNC is looking to exert more influence over the debate process. In 2011 and 2012, the GOP candidates endured more than 20 debates, which some have said resulted in the party emerging from the primaries weakened by infighting and embarrassing nationally televised incidents.

This week, the Washington Examiner reported that the RNC is considering some high-profile conservative media personalities, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, as potential debate moderators.

“I actually think that’s a very good idea,” Priebus said.

The Washington Examiner reports Mark Levin is also being considered, and I think he’d be a much better choice than Limbaugh or Hannity.

Excerpt:

The move comes as several conservatives are pressuring the party to have Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin ask the debate questions. “It makes a lot of sense. We’d get a huge viewership, they’d make a lot of news and maybe have some fun too,” said one of the advocates of the radio trio hosting debates.

The idea took on life when RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer was asked about debate hosting during a Sirius XM radio interview last week. “Mark Levin should ask the questions,” Spicer said, according to Breitbart news. That way, he said, grassroots conservatives would have a debate questioner who thinks like them.

Party boss Reince Priebus earlier this month also told conservative radio’s fast-rising star Andrea Tantaros that he would be open to a talk radio debate including her, Hannity and Levin. “I actually think that’s a very good idea,” Priebus said on the Andrea Tantaros Show. “I mean, there’s a lot of good people out there that can actually understand the base of the Republican Party, the primary voters.”

Potential candidates, however, might have a problem with the developing plan. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, for example, is a target of Levin, who this week told Fox that he will urge voters to reject the moderate Republican. “I will do everything I can, in my little way, to make sure he is not the nominee,” Levin told Neil Cavuto.

I agree with Levin on Christie. Christie helped Obama get elected in 2012.

What do you think? Would you rather have Mark Levin than Candy Crowley as a debate moderator? I think that CNN is basically an extension of the Democrat Party, and the academic studies on media bias bear that out. The GOP should stay as far away from CNN as possible during the 2016 election.

News

Reza Aslan’s new book on the historical Jesus gets celebrated by left-wing media

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Fox News reports. (H/T Melissa P.M.)

Excerpt

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon’s list.

Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim.

His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus — yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio.

Aslan is not a trained historian. Like tens of thousands of us he has been formally educated in theology and New Testament Greek.

He is a bright man with every right to hold his own opinion about Jesus—and to proselytize his opinion.

As a sincere man, Aslan’s Muslim beliefs affect his entire life, including his conclusions about Jesus. But this is not being disclosed. “Zealot” is being presented as objective and scholarly history, not as it actually is—an educated Muslim’s opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East.

“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”

These claims are not new or unique. They are hundreds of years old among Muslims. Sadly, readers who have listened to interviews on NPR, “The Daily Show,” Huffington Post or MSNBC may pick up the book expecting an unbiased and historic report on Jesus and first century Jewish culture. (I will let my Jewish friends address Aslan’s statement on MSNBC that, “there were certainly a lot of Jewish terrorists in first century Palestine.”)

I took a look at the  author’s CV and I don’t see a single degree in ancient history on it. He is a professor of creative writing, though. Studying “religion” is not the same thing as studying ancient history, by the way.

Here is his faculty page at UC Riverside:

Professor Aslan joins UCR from the Center of Public Diplomacy at University of Southern California. He has Degrees in Religions from Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, No god but God: The origins, Evolution, and the future of Islam which has been translated into half a dozen languages, short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction.

He has a PhD in sociology of religions. SOCIOLOGY. Not history.

A search of publications on Google Scholar turns up no academic articles on the historical Jesus.

Here are his recent non-academic publications from his web site – see if you see any in academic history journals:

The Devastating Consequences of the anti-Morsi Revolution
Vocative, July 2, 2013

Bahrain’s Fake Sectarian War
Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2013

Missing Mahmoud
Foreign Policy, June 12, 2013

The impact of the Arab Spring on the Palestinian Authority’s foreign policy.
Council on Foreign Relations, April 24, 2013

Israel risks its place in America’s affections by its tone-deaf policy
The National, February 4, 2013

Divided by the Same Father
Tony Blair Faith Foundation, November 30, 2012

Rejected by Religions, but Not by Believers
New York Times, October 4, 2012

Political Islam in the Middle East
Council on Foreign Relations, December 7, 2012

Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party?
Foreign Policy, February 29, 2012

Fire This Time
Los Angeles Review of Books, September 11, 2011

Ibn Battuta: World Wanderer
Time Magazine, July 21, 2011

Backward Glances: Islamic Erotica, Then and Now
Playboy Magazine, January 2011

Now, I do think it’s possible for someone without formal training to write a book on the historical Jesus. But I would regard such books with skepticism. Especially when he dates the Gospel of Mark to later than 70 A.D. – definitely not a mainstream view. The atheist scholar James Crossley dates Mark to the late 30s to early 40s, for example. But a plausible case can be made (by an actual historian) that the Gospel of Mark is dated sometime in the mid-50s.

The real story here though is media bias. Why is the liberal media so interested in promoting a book about the historical Jesus which questions the orthodox view of Jesus, whereas they were not doing anything to promote Darwin’s Doubt, which questioned the orthodox view of Darwinism? I think there is a double standard here. Meyer did his PhD work on these issues and has the relevant academic publications in science journals. (Here is one that was published in a peer-reviewed journal) And Meyer has actually debated his thesis with his opponents.

My previous post on media bias explains a bit more about what the left-wing media is really like.

UPDATE: Mathetes posted a link to this article on First Things.

Excerpt:

Aslan does have four degrees… a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false.  Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.

What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”

Well that settles it. His PhD has nothing to do with the historical Jesus. He’s unqualified.

News

The real story in the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman trial is media bias

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Here’s an excellent article by John Nolte on Breitbart that documents the mainstream media’s efforts to make a crisis out of an open-and-shut case of self-defense.

Here are a few of the distortions from the mainstream media: (links removed)

March 21, 2012 – CNN Falsely Accuses Zimmerman of Saying “#censoredByWK#”

Knowing full well the phony racial storm brewing around the Zimmerman case was about to have gasoline thrown on it the next day, CNN went to extraordinary lengths to claim Zimmerman had uttered the racial slur “#censoredByWK#” when he had not.

This has to be watched to be believed.

CNN wouldn’t officially retract their defamation until April 5th, long after it was too late.

March 27, 2012 – NBC News Edits 911 Audio to Make Zimmerman Look Racist

On the storied Today Show, NBC News told America Zimmerman said this on the 911 call:

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

When the truth is that the unedited audio actually went like this:

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

DISPATCHER: Okay. And this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?

ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

After the fraudulent editing was discovered by the New Media (first by Breitbart News), former NBC News president Steve Capus would claim that the edit was “a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call.”

Eventually, several NBC producers would be fired (without being named), and Zimmerman would file a lawsuit against NBC; it remains unresolved.

March 28, 2012 – ABC News Falsely Claims Zimmerman Wasn’t Injured Night of Shooting

The day after NBC News released its falsified 911 bombshell, ABC News released a phony, hyped-up story of its own. Using grainy surveillance video of Zimmerman at the police station on the night of the shooting, ABC News claimed, “A police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman.”

Obviously, if true, this would go a long way towards proving Zimmerman was not in fear of his life the night of the shooting and had lied about being beaten up.

The only problem is that the ABC News story was not true — not even close. The network didn’t bother to enhance the video before breaking the news. Had they, Zimmerman’sbloody head would have been quite apparent.

It would take four days for ABC to retract its falsehood.

Now just compare the biased coverage of the Zimmerman case with the non-coverage of the Gosnell case, where a black abortionist was murdering unborn and born children left, right and center for years.

As John Lott argued, there should not even have been a trial:

The case was so weak that the local Sanford District Attorney refused to bring charges against Zimmerman. That is why, on the orders of the governor, an outside District Attorney, Angela Corey, had to be brought in to handle it.

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee was fired because he also refused to charge Zimmerman with a crime.

Even the lead detective on the case, Christopher Serino, told the jury he believed Zimmerman’s version of the events.

If the media was really concerned about violence against blacks, then they would be concerned about black-on-black violence.

Look at this article from the leftist UK  Guardian.

Excerpt:

Startling statistics reveal that between 1980-2008, African-Americans were six times more likely than whites to be victims of gun violence and seven times more likely to kill with guns than whites, according to the Justice Department. African-Americans represent a mere 13% of the US population yet more than 50% of federal prisoners are black. You can claim racial bias in the judicial system, but that doesn’t explain all of it.

Why aren’t so-called black leaders outraged and marching over the recent shooting rampage in Chicago. During the 4 July holiday weekend, including the Wednesday leading up to it, 62 people were wounded by gun violence in Chicago and 12 others killed. The holiday shooting spree raised Chicago’s homicide tally to 200 for the year. Last year about 500 people were killed, and most of those killing and being killed in Chicago are black. According to the Chicago Tribune, “blacks make up about 33% of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly 78% of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012”.

With the mainstream media’s national attention on the Zimmerman murder trail, I think it’s stunning that scant, if any, attention was given to the violence raging in Chicago or other cities across the country. As I’ve said many times during this case, Americans, especially black Americans, have come to accept blacks killing other blacks as normal.

Why does the mainstream media have nothing to say about that? Why does the black community have nothing to say about that? The real cause of violent crime is fatherlessness, but the left is in favor of promoting and subsidizing fatherlessness, so they’re not going to say a word against it. Single mothers are one of the left’s main constituencies come election time. It’s disgusting that they want to prop up single mothers who make poor choices with men. Not to mention protecting the failed public school system and attacking vouchers that would help black children out of poverty. And not to mention the epidemic of abortion in the black community. Children deserve better than abortion, public schools and fatherlessness. But to help children, we have to start being honest about the causes of their real problems.

By the way, I have to point out that I am not white. I have brown skin. I have darker skin that Barack Obama. But unlike the mainstream media, when I see evil, I call it evil, regardless of people’s skin color. The mainstream media is not interested in telling the truth. They are interested in creating divisions based on skin color. They are the real racists. They are the real destroyers.

This was nothing but a circus of media bias. See this related post for academic studies that document left-wing media bias.