-Caveat Lector-
MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Michael Moore and CNN's Slanted
Debate--7/25/2007-- Media Research Center
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Subject: MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Michael Moore and CNN's Slanted
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***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
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