Monday, February 27, 2012

Barry Rubin: Combating Media Manipulation: Just Say ‘No’



By Barry Rubin 
I don’t understand — and I haven’t seen anyone even try to explain it — why the Republican presidential candidates keep subjecting themselves to politically partisan, hostile journalists being in control of their debates. These journalists have been highly partisan previously, seem to shield President Obama from criticism, and go on the offensive to try, for example, to turn the whole debate into the pretense that these candidates want to make birth control pills illegal.

Why didn’t these candidates just get together, especially now that there are only four left, to choose their own panel, say with each of them picking one questioner? Whenever Newt Gingrich challenged the premises — and honesty — of the questioners, he was met with wild applause, because both the mass media’s bias and the need to challenge it openly couldn’t be more obvious.

But, you might ask, does it make sense to go to war with the mass media? Of course not, unless it is already at war with you. Nothing like this has been seen in America for a century or even two. The main newspapers and television networks are determined to reelect Obama, to promote the currently dominant leftist (not liberal) ideas without limit, and to smear or slander critics.


Why is this so effective?
Continue reading Combating Media Manipulation: Just Say ‘No’

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reportsand now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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