by Michael A. Hoffman II. Copyright©1997. All Rights Reserved
The Spokane, Washington-based Spokesman-Review newspaper is supposed to represent all the people of the inland Northwest and to fairly report on the events in our area without favor or prejudice.
The extent to which this establishment newspaper has violated journalistic ethics, can be determined through analysis of its reporting of several local news stories.
In reporting the arrest and prosecution of three Idaho men for allegedly committing bombings and bank robberies, the paper's staff writer, Bill Morlin, has engaged in the practice of "trial by media." Long before the jury will ever hear the matter, "Prosecutor" Morlin will have made a case for the defendants' guilt. Partly because of Morlin's writings, defense attorneys requested a change of venue for the trial, which was refused by the presiding Federal judge.
After Richard Jewell was made a victim of "trial by media" in connection with the Atlanta, Georgia, Olympic bombings, one would think that local journalists and their editors would exhibit more concern for the rights of the accused. But Mr. Morlin apparently hasn't learned very much from the pillorying of Richard Jewell. Morlin proceeded, without any disclaimer, to publish one-sided reports tilted toward the notion that the "Idaho 3" bore culpability for the Olympic Park bombing. Contradictions between eye witnesses were glossed over and circumstantial evidence was presented as damning.
When a wife of the accused sought to clear her husband of these Atlanta charges she had to go to the Spokesman-Review--not a duly constituted judge or court of law--to try and have the men cleared. This is prima facie evidence of trial-by-media and of the fearsome power of the corporate media to single-handedly poison juries. It is in fact a subtle form of jury-tampering.
Morlin's reports on militias and the limited government movement cite the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a source for supposedly "truthful information" and "objective background" on these subjects. In actuality, the ADL is an unregistered agent of the Israeli government. The ADL hired a San Francisco police officer to obtain files on anti-Zionist political activists in the San Francisco area. The ADL was subsequently sued in civil court and ordered to pay $200,000 in connection with this underhanded spying. Jewish Professor Noam Chomsky of M.I.T. has described the ADL as a Stalinist organization that will use any means, however deceitful, to defame dissidents.
Censorship is also a policy of the Spokesman-Review, just like any Bolshevik or fascist newspaper. When County Commissioner Ron Rankin wrote a letter to the editor criticizing one of the paper's editorial board members, his letter was initially suppressed, based on the paper's policy of refusing to publish "unsubstantiated personal attacks." Yet when the Survival and Preparedness Expo debuted in Spokane at the city convention center, an editorial writer for the Spokesman-Review attacked the organizers personally as "gangsters," while offering no substantiation whatsoever for this ridiculous charge.
The double-standard is patent. Criticism of these prima donna media supremacists is muted or censored altogether in their own publications. These ideologues can only maintain credibility by suppressing and distorting the political dissidents they seek to defame and dehumanize.
Mr. Morlin's article on the Survival and Preparedness Expo was nothing short of hysterical editorializing, exhibiting his own irrational fears and prejudices. Morlin's intention was clear: to dissuade as much of the public as possible from attending the Expo. But that is not the job of a journalist. An honest journalist must place a tight reign on his own biases and strive to report all the facts of the news and then let the public make up its own mind. Choleric outbursts are supposed to be confined to the opinion page.
So unhinged has Morlin become, that he actually featured a call for a boycott of the Expo in his news headline. This is not reporting the news, it is using one's position of trust as a journalist to advance one's own, liberal-corporate prejudice.
The media employees who covered the Survival and Preparedness Expo were arrogant and intrusive, even sneaking microphones into private conversations between parents and young children, without permission. None of the substance of the speeches by the various Expo lecturers were reported. To report these speeches accurately would humanize the people the media want to caricature as sub-human. Most of the speeches were erudite, articulate and non-conformist, therefore they were of no interest to the boorish, sound-bite, herd-mentality media.
These reporters, and their producers and editors both print and electronic, with very few exceptions, are seeking to encourage hatred and revulsion for anyone who defies the New World Order that is being imposed on us by Federal gun barrels and media mendacity.
In Sandpoint, Kevin Keating has been covering the controversy over the building department for the Spokesman-Review and reflecting the same dull conformity with the requirements of political correctness as Morlin.
An analysis of Keating's reports shows that when the issue is one of taxpayers versus the bureaucrats, Mr. Keating's dispatches are often slanted toward the bureaucrats. For example, the building department controversy exhibits a very interesting irony which Mr. Keating has either missed or suppressed. For years we've been hearing from the pro-bureaucrat conformists that there ought to be "respect for government officials" and that the movement to curb big government should stop its lawsuits and liens against government officials and let elected government function without gridlock and harassment. This was advocated when the entrenched bureaucrats were in office.
However, as soon as two Constitutional patriots were elected to office, suddenly the "pro-government" advocates become sagebrush rebels and file lawsuit after lawsuit against the local government. Mr. Keating doesn't report this irony, because to report it would be to expose the hypocrisy of the pro-bureaucrat faction in Bonner County; a faction which includes, it would appear, Kevin Keating.
Probably the most egregious evidence of Keating's partisanship was revealed in his coverage of a march by several dozen taxpayers through the streets of Sandpoint, in support of closing the building department. This kind of populist demonstration is something the New World Order fears greatly. They wish to promote the notion that "the people" and the "popular will" are all on the side of their New World Order agenda. Only a handful of "secretive loners" and "cranks" are presumed to oppose them.
Lo and behold, the Sandpoint marchers, instead of being duly situated in front of the boob tube hypnotized by some sports extravaganza, were out expressing their support for two embattled Constitutionalists.
Spontaneity and solidarity like that cannot be reported fairly. What if such a movement should grow? A way to smear the event had to be found, and to do so the Spokesman-Review turned to the despicable tactic of guilt-by-association.
Standing amid the marchers that day, was a Christian minister who has become the scapegoat for everything the politically correct commissars want to extirpate in Panhandle Idaho. Pastor Dave Barley was at the march. Here was Keating's opportunity to grasp at his only chance to defame the marchers. Keating actually printed in the Spokesman-Review that also present at the march was the "anti-semitic" Dave Barley.
Folks, do you see the noxious technique of guilt-by-association rearing its ugly head here? What Keating and the Spokesman-Review are implying is that an entire march is nullified because one, lone critic of Zionism dared to participate!
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that if there is a march in Bonner County on behalf of the building department, and if an anti-Christian activist participates in it, Kevin Keating will not in a million years publish that fact. Anti-Christian activism is a sanctioned part of the New World Order. Anti-Christians are applauded, while anti-Zionism is regarded as a thought crime deserving media stigma.
We have the most partisan, bigoted news media in the history of our nation. Jeff Chester of the Center for Media Education points out that, "Politicians are terrorized by the media moguls and won't take them on..."
This is due to the fact that more and more TV and radio stations and metropolitan newspapers are owned by fewer and fewer corporations. Our news is homogenized by reporters who graduate from journalism schools inculcating the same unifrom, politically correct bias. The Northwest badly needs an alternative to this monopoly.
Distributed by The Campaign for Radical Truth in History
http://www.hoffman-info.com
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