Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Ref the Norman bombing

I was looking over some sites this morning, and found several people wondering why the national news has paid so little attention to the FREDS blowup in Norman. I mean, really, somebody blows himself up outside a game? Within a hundred yards of thousands of people? What's not to get excited about? Unless you don't want to report on it for some reason. Gee, why could that be?

On one side you have those like the O.U. campus paper, the Oklahoma Daily, who said: "For example, unsubstantiated claims that Hinrichs had been frequenting the Norman mosque have managed to seep onto television news broadcasts even though everyone we have contacted at the mosque says Hinrichs was never seen there.

So who is lying? Inherently, people should perceive the unfounded news broadcasts as the liars, but that doesn’t always happen."

Sounds nice, but it's too much like the crap during the last few years: "If you don't hear it from an OFFICIAL news agency, it's not true. Or not worth hearing about. So there." We've gotten so used to the situation of 'news' agencies either not reporting what they don't want people to hear or slanting what they do report to give the impression they want you to have, that that ideal doesn't hold water any more. It hasn't for a long time, but the last while has shot more holes in it than a patterning target shows. People get pretty tired of having to consider what bias to tune out in a report, or having to dig into other sources to fill in what wasn't reported, often for some PC reason, and it makes them more likely to listen to, or believe, rumors and secondhand reports.

It's nice- and easy- to blame the FBI for not talking more, but that doesn't keep news agencies from digging up information on their own. If they want to. And that's were more of the mistrust comes in.

We've lived through the mess since 9/11, including the mass of PC-induced reporting('Massive hate crimes against Muslims!' etc) that weren't true. We've seen 'news' agencies breathlessly reporting a CAIR news release as confirmed fact, apparently without bothering to check the facts or not reporting the true information, and so forth. And the condemnation of anyone who reports on said true information as hatemongers, racists(is Islam a race?) and so on. So when the major media doesn't report on something, one of the first thoughts that occurs is 'what are they trying to avoid talking about?'. So people listen to secondhand reports and whatever to try and filter out the facts. The major media doesn't like it, and it's their own damn fault. Think back to the Swift Vets; instead of reporting a serious story from a "let's get the facts" position, they were repeatedly trashed by the MM because of what the story was. It wasn't what many MM people wanted you to hear, so it had to be trashed; after all, you obviously can't sift out facts on your own, so you have to get what the MM has decided you should hear. And, of course, the Dan Rather 'story'(literally) on Bushs' ANG time was the crowning achievement of this mess. Take a 'story' they'd investigated for years, finding nothing, then take documents that their own examiners warned them against and make it a Big Story because the documents said what they wanted to hear, what they wanted you to believe. And when the entire thing blows up in their faces, they and their sycophants whine about how talking about the fake documents takes attention away from the 'real story'. Which didn't even exist. And every time something like this happens, people see less reason to trust what the MM reports.

So, more than before, people are more willing to listen to whatever they can get because they feel they can't trust the MM reporting. Or, as in this case, the lack thereof. Powerline and Michelle have provided information and links to both information and to wonderings about why this hasn't been reported as it should. And Classical Values has this, which has some pretty good questions.

Which we haven't heard answers to as yet. And I wouldn't hold my breath.

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