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Monday, May 24, 2010

Just as you would expect

This morning I did an unscientific experiment to test my views on the mainstream media. All last weekend, I repeatedly saw stories about the slow or non-existent federal response to the gulf oil spill. These culminated when Sarah Palin criticized the Obama administration for its pathetic response to the spill on Sunday. I decided to see what CBS News covered in it main morning radio news show on Monday morning. Sure enough, there was no mention of the criticism, but the announcer told us how the feds were aptly enough fed up with the slow actions of BP. Secretary Salazar is making another trip to the gulf to see for himself what is going on. Then we heard about action. Both Jefferson Parrish and the State of Louisiana are taking over portions of the cleanup in an effort to try to keep the oil from fouling fishing beds. No action by the feds, of course.

So what did I learn from my experiment? CBS covered the story without mentioning criticism of Obama for the federal inaction, but even CBS could not come up with any story showing the feds actually doing rather than talking. Indeed, the oil leak shows that the Obamacrats really believe that talking is better than doing. Only the state and local governments actually tried to help. They were not spinning; they were doing. Congratulations to Governor Jindal of Louisiana and to the local government in Jefferson Parrish for doing what the voters elected them to do.

As for CBS, all I can say is this: why not try non-biased reporting? Fifty years ago when CBS was the gold standard of news, you were non-biased. Who knows, if you try just telling people the news rather than slanting it to fit your biases, you might actually get an audience again.

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