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The Media Bias Debate at the University of Kentucky

By Jeff “Mario” Smith, Guerilla Reporter

November 16, In the Year of Our Lord 2006

The University of Kentucky Student Activities Board sponsored a debate between media critics Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media and Jeff Cohen of FAIR. The evening was billed as a discussion and debate on liberal and conservative biases in the media. As a one time victim of liberal media bias who believed the standard liberal lines when I was in my twenties, I was very interested in what these two media critics had to say. I also am quite familiar with the work of exposing the lies and deception emanating daily from the media by AIM for which Cliff Kincaid researches, writes, and speaks.

As these things go, both speakers made their main points and rebuttals and then it was time for questions. I was discouraged at the low number of students who turned out but was happy to see so many asking questions. We live in an entertainment-drunk society so I know why more students were not in attendance. There was probably some reality show or a game on television tonight. Can you say mixed up priorities? Kudos go to those who came.

Cohen is a lawyer who became a media critic while Kincaid is a veteran journalist, schooled in journalism, who has been a media critic for decades so the debate was tilted towards Kincaid before it even got off the ground. After hearing Cohen spout the liberal line of conservative bias in the media due to its corporate ownership and provide no real evidence to back it up, I knew this debate was going to be a slam dunk for Cliff Kincaid, and it was. It isn’t often that truth doesn’t win if given an even playing field with propaganda.

This is not to say that Cohen didn’t make some valid points for he did. I appreciated his stance against the present situation whereby a very few large corporations own most of the FCC broadcast licenses. I have never liked the power huge corporations attain over us witnessed in the political correctness they tend to shove down our throats. An example? How about Target not allowing Salvation Army bell ringers at their stores because it upset some atheists? How about many large corporations not allowing firearms in the vehicles of their employees in their parking lots? How about corporate sensitivity training for “homophobia”?

The power in the limited number of corporations who own most of the FCC licenses is not a good thing if diversity of thought is the desired modus operandi. This, of course, is also the problem with print media witnessed in how so many of them reprint what the NY Times and the Washington Post put out and using the AP, UPI, Reuters, and other newswire services. Of course, Cohen conveniently left out of his wealthy ownership discussion one billionaire George Soros, arguably the most dangerous man in America.

Cohen’s main point in his thesis is that the wealthy owners of the mainstream media are conservative and thus dictate to their organizations what is acceptable to report. This argument is, of course, bunk if one considers that the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Regardless of the positions of the owners politically, the liberal bias in the mainstream media is obvious to even the most casual of observers. The only people who think there is a conservative bias in the media are devoted partisan liberals. These are people who cannot stand to lose and will say anything. When I heard Cohen say that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly “make things up” I knew he was sailing in that boat.

Cohen even went so far as to say that Bush got “soft coverage” with comparison to Clinton which totally blew my mind. I guess he thought he could get away with that on a college campus in a room filled with mostly young naïve students possessing easily impressionable minds who have already been swallowing this propaganda daily for some time now. We all know better and history shows this is totally inaccurate.

Cohen, obviously vehemently against the Iraq War, stood on the thesis that the media got us into the Iraq War by soft pedaling in the lead up to the war and sucking up to the White House. While I find this belief unfathomable having witnessed the constant and unfriendly media storm against the Bush White House, (I am not a Bush supporter, I am anti-Kerry) it is also important to note that Cohen lost his job at MSNBC, by his own admission, in the lead up to the war. Was he too radical for even the leftist MSNBC?

Searching for the truth about the Vietnam War will bring one to the conclusion that the liberal media played a huge role in losing that war for us while our troops won it on the ground. This history is repeating itself with the Iraq War and Cohen appears to be merely a modern day Hanoi Jane or Walter Cronkite wannabe. While Cohen contributed the recent win for the liberal left on November 7^th to the Iraq War, it is this guerilla reporter’s position that the republicrats lost due their constant shift to the left leaving their true conservative base behind. November 7^th wasn’t a loss for conservatives, it was a loss for neocons, and rightly so. We already have a liberal party, we don’t need a second one.

One of Cohen’s favorite targets was Rupert Murdoch who owns a media empire to be sure. Totally slamming Cohen’s emotional ranting, Cliff Kincaid calmly told the truth about Murdoch’s empire holdings and many of the far left leaning media personalities who spout the liberal line on Murdoch owned stations and even pulled out the “donation card”. Kincaid noted that Murdoch donated money to Harold Ford, democrat candidate in Tennessee and his stations contributed to boosting Ford’s campaign with their reporting. Murdoch also gave money to Hillary Clinton and his liberal New York Post endorsed Clinton over the excellent conservative John Spencer. If this didn’t blow Cohen’s thesis totally out of the water, then nobody was paying attention.

A very important point brought out by Cliff Kincaid, when denouncing Cohen’s call for more tax supported media, was the fact that NPR and PBS are federally subsidized and tout the liberal line. When Air America tried to stand on their own two feet, they failed miserably and filed bankruptcy while Hannity, Limbaugh, and Savage are amazingly successful. This proves that if ideas are given the free marketplace in which to flourish, good ideas win over bad ideas, thus the failure of liberal Air America. It can be argued then, that PBS and NPR are only successful because they are given our fleeced tax dollars. I will add that conservative talk radio and conservative television personalities like Hannity and O’Reilly (actually a liberal to this guerilla reporter) have such large audiences because Americans are mostly God fearing conservatives as opposed to the godless liberals who have dominated the networks and print publications for decades.

While Cohen offered that Northern and Western Europeans are more sophisticated than Americans and linked this to their socialist supported media, Cliff Kincaid reminded the audience that real freedom of ideas will thrive in an unobstructed marketplace and gave many instances of liberal bias using quotes of the actual liberals spouting their biases. Jeff Cohen was out of his league in debating Cliff Kincaid about media bias and in the end the facts and superior ideas presented by Cliff Kincaid won out over the emotion and unsubstantiated claims of Cohen. It was interesting to note also that the first debater to interrupt and become visibly shaken in his shoes, using a lot of negative body language, was of course, the liberal, Jeff Cohen.

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