Monday, September 30, 2024

The Cat is Out of the Media Bag

If there is any headline more indicative of the moral bankruptcy of the mainstream media, it is this one from AP: 

Charasimatic and Shrewd: A look at one time Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.

If that headline doesn’t make you want to puke your guts out, you are not human. One might argue that there is nothing wrong with that line. Hitler was in fact very charismatic and very shrewd. Why should anyone be offended by it? He wasn’t being called a saint. 

Do I really need to answer that question?

Well, AP did not write that headline about Hitler, they wrote a similar one about Hassan Nasrallah, a mass murderer of comparable despicability if not magnitude. Not that he wouldn’t have mimicked Hitler’s numbers if he had the opportunity.

After being criticized for that headline, the AP changed it. But the cat has already been let out of the bag Which is why the editors of AP and similar mainstream news media outlets have long ago lost their journalistic integrity. And yet they actually believe they have the highest standards of integrity. Just ask them. Despite a headline like that that makes the truth quite evident. Besides - changing the headline did not change its message carried over into the AP article as noted here:

While the headline was eventually changed after widespread criticism, the article still portrayed Nasrallah as an “astute strategist” and “idolized” leader, rather than focusing on his role as a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost.

The Washington Post took it a step further, portraying Nasrallah as a “father figure” and a “moral compass.”

When the mainstream media is further to the left than the president whose party is pretty far to the left already, that says a lot about their moral compass. That they can say about a modern day Hitler that he was shrewd and charismatic… idolized by his people makes him sound like a hero whose only goal was to help his people. Well, the same thing about Hitler. He worked mightily for his people too. His people being the Aryan race. he worked tirelessly to rid his country of inferior peoples - the vermin who had taken advantage of the superior race of Aryans for far too long. It was time to get rid of this race of sub human dregs of society - the Jewish vermin - so that his people could thrive.

I would argue that Hitler was far more charismatic and shrewder than Nasrallah – and more  admired by Germans of his day than Nasrallah was by the Lebanese of our day.

Thankfully every now and then one can find a journalist in the mainstream media that has his head screwed on straight - as I did this morning. I was pleasantly surprised by Tony Dokoupil one of the 3 anchors on CBS’s morning news show. After former Al Jazeera Mid East correspondent Imtiaz Tyab (who now works for CBS in that capacity) described the catastrophe brought upon the Lebanese people by Israeli bombing, Dukoupil said something like: How long did Hezbollah think they could keep firing rockets into Israel before Israel did something about it. 

What a refreshing comment from what I usually hear. Which is sympathy for the suffering civilians with little mention of  why they are and who is really responsible. 

That segment was  followed by an interview of former National Security Advisor, retired General H.R. McMaster who articulated a masterful defense of Israel. Supporting them in full without the slightest reservation. When asked if he was worried about the widening of the war into Iran and possible US participation, he argued that the US already is in a war with Iran. American war ships and troops were already there ready to act in Israel’s defense should they be needed. And last April the US - along with some Arab allies - helped Israel knock out the over 300 rockets fired at Israel by Iran.

For this, President Biden deserves our utmost gratitude, despite his fear of a widening war, the need for  diplomacy, and his view about the ultimate need for a 2 state solution to end the conflict. When push comes to shove, The US will - not only be there, they already are!

I just hope that Harris will follow suit if she wins the election. But my confidence level in that is not very high right now.