Website owner: James Miller
The Chicken Little Media
The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 108 - 110
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The Chicken Little Media
VIRTUALLY EVERY NEWS PROGRAM seemed to feature the recent demonstration about "battered women" held on the Washington mall and sponsored by the radical feminists of the National Organization for Women. The propaganda put out by this group of activists was reported as "news," without a skeptical word being spoken, much less someone with different views being allowed to criticize some of the sweeping claims and wild rhetoric.
It is not that anyone is in favor of battering women. But there are still some people left who are in favor of the truth.
In a country of a quarter of a billion people, there are indeed examples of battered wives. There are also battered husbands, battered bachelors and battered women living in lesbian relationships. Justice Department data show more than a million cases of aggravated assault on men annually and less than half that number of aggravated assaults on women.
Shrill activists in the feminist movement love to quote statistics that lump together everything from spats to homicide. For example, some statistics count a husband's stomping out of the room as "emotional abuse." One poll showed that about a third of all husbands do that at some point during the year—as compared to 2 percent who actually physically assault their wives. How many wives stomp out of the room is apparently not known.
Husbands who merely grab their wives during an argument—perhaps to keep her from stomping out of the room—are counted in some statistics on physical assault. However, statistics which deal with genuine violence usually turn up numbers less than one-tenth of the numbers that are being thrown around in the media by activists with axes to grind.
The more militant feminists don't even bother to twist facts. They just make them up. A few years ago, it was widely reported that great numbers of wives were battered on Super Bowl Sunday, when the men were supposedly feeling especially macho.
The media ate it up. Only after a few brave souls dared to ask for the source of this information about Super Bowl Sunday did the story start to unravel and it became apparent that this whole thing was made up.
It is not enough for us to discover belatedly that we have been lied to. It is far more important that we remember who the liars are and not be so gullible next time.
We also need to realize that the media love stories that undermine the family, traditional values and everything else that stands in the way of the liberal agenda.
On March 27, 1991, for example, Dan Rather said on the CBS Evening News that a "startling number of American children are in danger of starving" because "one out of eight American children is going hungry tonight."
Where did he get those numbers? From a group of activists. And where did the activists get the numbers? From a survey they conducted that asked this question:
"Thinking about the past 12 months, did you ever rely on a limited number of foods to feed your children because you were running out of money to buy food for a meal?"
The question was not abut whether the child went hungry, much less faced "starvation." It was about whether the variety—not amount—of food was less than it would have been if more money had been available. In other words, did you ever get burgers and fries when you would have preferred to serve a real meal?
The question was not about whether this happened every night, or even regularly, but whether it happened at all, at any time during the previous year. Because one out of eight parents said that it did, this became transformed into one out of eight American children being "hungry"—and "tonight," with "starvation" looming in the background.
Actual examinations of flesh-and-blood human beings by the Centers for Disease Control turned up no indication of malnutrition among Americans at any income level. Low-income women were in fact more likely to be obese.
Although the media love to wrap themselves in the mantle of "concern," with the aura of morality radiating in the background, the philosopher Pascal said that the first moral duty is to think clearly. Our media would be doing well to think at all, instead of echoing whatever the politically correct activists feed them.
Most of what the activists feed them is the real junk food. Our whole society could become malnourished from an inadequate supply of the truth.
Networks that pay anchormen millions of dollars can surely afford to hire a few statisticians to check the flow of fraudulent numbers coming in to them. Or is moral posturing considered a substitute for clear thinking?
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11 June 2024
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