Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002

What to do with the elitist media? They're completely out of hand, caught in the deadly grip of their Marxist obsessions, their barely concealed antagonism toward religion, their scorn for George Bush, Republicans and political conservatives, and their determination to promote homosexuality and abortion as practices akin to unholy writ.

To put it simply, they are out of control.

The other night I was listening to the extraordinary Fr. Benedict Groeschel, the Bronx apostle to the poor, as he lambasted the media for the outright dishonesty of much of their reporting. He cited one of the networks – he didn't say which one – as having reported that the Holy Father was greeted in Mexico City by a couple hundred thousand people.

This stretches far beyond dishonest reporting – it is an expression of incredible bigotry. The crowd of a couple hundred thousand numbered 12 million! It was the largest gathering of human beings in world history to greet one man, far exceeding that which greeted the pope in Manila – at 5 million then the largest such crowd ever.

Now I'll admit, estimating crowd numbers can be difficult. (Somebody once asked me how many people I thought were attending a political speech. I looked around and then told him "a lot.") But it's just not possible to mistake a mass of 12 million people for a couple hundred thousand.

I saw the same thing watching the televised ceremonies of the pope's visit to World Youth Day in Toronto last month. Once again, the broadcast media played the numbers game when reporting on the crowd attending the papal mass. The official crowd estimates ran as high 1 million. The broadcast media's estimate? That's right – a couple hundred thousand.

Throughout the pope's visit to North and Central America – a visit of a shepherd to his flock and not that of a commander in chief present to bark orders to his subordinates – the media would not leave the so-called sex scandal in the Church alone.

Why, they asked over and over again, did the pope not spend his time discussing the matter? Why did he not stop over in America, as if he were a political candidate on the campaign trail trying to sell his programs. Was he afraid to stop over in the U.S. because of the scandal – as if this man who had faced down Hitler's and Stalin's goons and tore down the Iron Curtain would tremble in the face of any scandal.

Then there was the matter of the canonization of Juan Diego, who some in the media suggested was a myth – that the man never existed despite clear evidence that he did indeed exist and did indeed do what he is remembered as having done.

Some reporters relied on the claim of a priest that the "myth" of Juan Diego had been created in the 17th century to comfort Indians, whose economic and social position during the 16th century was much inferior to that of white Mexicans (primarily of Spanish descent). That despite the fact that there are contemporary 16th century accounts of the life of Juan Diego, who died in 1548 and whose life has been exhaustively chronicled.

I cite these recent cases of reportorial dishonesty as examples of a media bias that is, as I noted earlier, out of control. Bernard Goldberg with his book "Bias," Ann Coulter with her book "Slander," and William McGowan with "Coloring the News" have already made a prima facie case proving that the media have a leftist agenda far beyond the mere reporting of the news.

But despite these indictments, the media elite shamelessly continue to promote their agenda, hardly concealing their determination to propagandize instead of reporting.

Day after day, the New York Times, which under the editorship of Howell Raines has become the unofficial mouthpiece of the National Socialist Democrat movement, has used its pages to launch barely concealed attacks on George Bush and his administration.

NewsMax.com has chronicled one of the Times' latest ploys – sending reporters out to find people who agree with the paper's slant and then presenting the results as popular opinion polls.

In the past few weeks, the Times has front-paged two such rigged polls – one purporting to show that the public is opposed to arming pilots in the cockpits, and one last Saturday that was intended to convince readers that people living in a hotbed of conservative Republicanism were opposed to President Bush's determination to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. Out of 24 alleged Bush supporters, the Times could find only one who agreed with the president on Iraq.

Yeah, sure.

Then there is this week's Time magazine cover story, "They Had a Plan," which labors mightily to prove that the Clinton administration had a full-fledged anti-terrorism plan to "roll back al Qaeda" that was passed on to the Bush administration, which then fiddle-faddled around with it for months.

The implication is clear: Maybe if Bush had listened to those hard-nosed anti-al-Qaeda warriors in the Clinton administration, 9-11 might never have happened.

The magazine conveniently ignores Clinton's complete failure to deal with such outrages as the atrocity in Somalia dramatized in the book and movie "Blackhawk Down." The former president's reaction to the killing of 18 Americans, the wounding of 80 others and the shameful incident of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets in an act calculated to humiliate his comrades and his country, was to cut and run.

Clinton did nothing when the World Trade Center was bombed the first time, and did nothing when the USS Cole was attacked and Americans killed and wounded. Time and again, when the chips were down, Clinton threw in his cards and walked away.

As David Howowitz recalls in his book "How to Beat the Democrats," it was a message "read loud and clear by Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda killers and the brutal dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein."

Said bin Laden in an interview with an ABC news reporter: "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia. We are ready for all occasions. We rely on Allah."

Time relied on Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger for backup for its absurd conclusion that the Bush administration failed to take advantage of the alleged detailed plan to deal with al-Qaeda promptly – a plan the White House denies ever existed.

Here, according to Horowitz, is what Mr. Berger described as the administration's attitude toward these acts of war against the U.S. It was "a little bit like a Whack-a-Mole game at the circus. They bop up and you whack 'em down, and if they bop up again, you bop 'em back down again."

The problem is that Mr. Berger and his cronies in the Clinton White House were never able to bring themselves to bop 'em down.

On Sept. 11, 2001, they "bopped up" and Mr. Bush wasted no time in whacking 'em down – something the Clinton administration was never able to screw up enough courage to do.

Those are facts – and facts are something the New York Times and Time magazine and all the rest of the corrupt elitist media find most inconvenient and simple to ignore or distort.

What to do with the elitist media? Shun them. Don't read the New York Times or any of the other Marxist rags. Don't buy Time magazine. And when they bop up, whack 'em down.

Faugh 'a Ballagh

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute.

He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
Media Bias
War on Terrorism

Get the books mentioned in this article at great NewsMax prices:
"Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News"

"Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism"

"How to Beat the Democrats""

"Slander"