"Not only do they (mainstream media journalists) create an alternative world every day, they live in it."  -  Rush Limbaugh

Tuesday, September 27, 2005 -- KPTV, broadcast Channel 12, has been around for as long as there has been television in Oregon, and Pete Ferryman isn't exactly a newcomer to the broadcast news scene, yet that station and that broadcaster this morning violated promises they made when they were given their place on the air.

They promised to do their best to report the truth.  To do a clean job of describing what is going on in their Oregon world and beyond during their newscasts.

This morning, Ferryman interviewed Lynn Bradach, a woman from Oregon who joined Cindy Sheehan's tiny tour group of sponsored (by MoveOn.Org's founder George Soros) anti-war protesters, and who was just arrested for stupid behavior near the White House.  During the interview, Ferryman, ostensibly presenting a FOX-level fair and balanced report, said words to this effect -- "Millions of people support your point of view, but millions do not."

An equal number of Americans support or reject Bradach's (Sheehan's) positions?  Millions of people in America believe we should, as these protesters demand, just pick up and leave Iraq?  Millions believe that, as these protesters claim, this is a war for oil, and George W. Bush is a lying, butchering imperialist?  

If we go to Montana and ask the people there if they support George W. Bush's war on terror, including his actions in Iraq, it is Ferryman's contention that half will fall on one side and half on the other?  If we go to Texas we will find the same story?  And, the same will happen in Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Idaho and the Dakotas?  Utah will come up half believing Bush is an imperialist (Sheehan's actual words) and half believing Bush is a patriot fighting the right fight in the right place?  The people of Wyoming  will come down equally on opposite sides of the line?  

I don't think so.  I saw the red/blue county map from the last presidential election.  Taken as a geopolitical graphic, in general the minute you leave the city limits you have left Anti-Bush country.

Ferryman's process, here,  is one common to liberal "journalists."  Oregon is overrun with liberal "journalists."  Where this technique is concerned, what they do is create an equal sign between two sides of an argument in which the actual balance is lopsided, and not in their favor  In this case the message is that anti-war numbers equal pro-war numbers.  Polls are taken in places and in ways which generate results they wish (for example, in any of the blue urban districts in that map, above), and these are used as evidence which backs up the press take on the subject.  Rallies are held and speeches given to crowds specifically selected for their radical leftist views and noisy qualities. The media that created the illusion in the first place covers all subsequent activities, providing ongoing support for their fantasy while untold millions in flyover country stare at their screens or read the local headlines and can't come up with a single neighbor, friend or relative who holds those views.

 It's all part of a process I have watched for decades.

The question is, will it work, again?  Is Mr. Ferryman an effective flack for the American Left, or just a sad echo of a Seventies trumpet?  Will the people of America once more buy the lie and condemn their own nation for defending freedom at home and abroad, or have they matured to the point that they do not automatically believe what they see and hear from this nation's established media?

Mr. Ferryman gave major morning news time to a group that was created in Texas by a California public relations firm, lifted to national status by a biased national press and given a free ride to Washington, D.C. on a bus hired by George Soros.  Mr Ferryman gave zero morning news time to easily obtainable counter-reaction by known conservative sources, or soldiers who are today fighting in the conflict that the Left wants America to lose.

This is about the dead children of these women, is it not, Mr. Ferryman?    Should you ask other relatives of these dead soldiers what they think about all this?  Cindy Sheehan's immediate family members for example?  Or do you already know what they think about the soldier's sacrifice and Sheehan's response?  I know the answer to that one, myself, Pete, and can understand why you would prefer that those American voices go unheard.  

And, the soldiers who served with her son and Bradach's son? Are their views and opinions a national secret?  Should you find out what they think about what they are doing and what Sheehan's group is doing?

Do you understand, Mr. Ferryman, that what you did was to provide a one-sided public platform for an anti-war group?  Do you understand that your attempt to represent an opposition viewpoint with one question during this segment was nothing more than a sycophantic softball which allowed the subject to freely deny without challenge the damage they are doing?  Are you totally unaware, Mr. Ferryman, that reports like those you generated this morning are regularly used for propaganda purposes on Islamic terrorist information networks?

Are you really as naive as you seem, Mr. Ferryman?  You don't do this sort of propaganda on purpose, do you?  If you do, what has caused you to hate your own country to this extent?  

(LL)

© 2005 Oregon Magazine