Media Dishonesty

Randall Hoven posts a list of 101 media lies told to the American public. He begins his article with gratuitous examples of deceit or lies (or failure to properly investigate and reveal lies) in the MSM:

Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff in Viet Nam during that war? Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business? Do you know that multiple "veterans" of the Viet Nam and Iraq wars who told of atrocities there were never even in the military? Did you realize reputable news organizations such as the Boston Globe and Reuters cannot tell the difference between a real soldier and a toy doll, commercial pornography and soldiers committing rape, a burning tire dump and a bombed building, a fired and an unfired rifle round, or footage of the North Pole and a clip from the movie Titanic?

He then specifically addresses President Bush:

[T]he media have lied about his National Guard service, lied about his serving a plastic turkey to troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving and then made a big deal about that phony story, lied about his speeches, quoted him by removing the words he actually used, and admitted they would use a harsher standard with him than his opponent John Kerry. To this day, they criticize his administration's handling of the Katrina crisis, which was actually one of the most successful rescue and recovery efforts in history, but barely mention their own huge and egregious mistakes in reporting on that event.

Finally, he lists 101 of the biggest lies, including links to at least one of his sources for each example. Just a few examples from the last couple of years:

4. AFP/Yahoo News (2007). Fell for hoax/lie. Ran a picture with the caption "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." But the picture was of unfired cartridges, which could only have "hit her house" if they were thrown at it.

9. Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.

16. Jayson Blair, The New York Times (2003). Lying/fabricating. He fabricated parts or all of at least 36 stories. He, along with his bosses Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, resigned from the NYT.

19. The Boston Globe (2004). Fake photos, fake story. The Boston Globe published pictures alleging U.S. troops raped Iraqi women. The pictures turned out to be commercially available pornography.

24. Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.

63. Eason Jordan,CNN (2005). False accusations. He accused U.S. forces in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists. He apologized and resigned.

69. Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. "Jesse MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth's claims was true." [this was the one that started the Rush Kerfuffle]

The list goes on and on and on and on. And, Hoven also links to other lists he's made in the past. Several are stories I've blogged about here.

It's reasons like this that people should question literally everything said, done, shown, and presented by the traditional media outlets. Whether by intent or by incompetence, they simply can't be trusted.

There's my two cents.