Soap Box

When your make a remark on social media about the slanted coverage of the news - at least on my sites - people tend to agree and have no trouble pointing out instances when they feel that some stories are over covered while others are barely mentioned, some covered with much less clarity and detail, others reported in explicit extensive fashion and still others they feel important, relegated to boilerplate status or not mentioned at all, at least by what has become known as the mainstream outlets.

I have people who frequent my Twitter account who constantly tell me that Fox News Channel lies, but when I press them for specifics, all they can usually come up with has something to do with palm trees in some locale they don't belong in.

I have no doubt that in the hyper competitive 24/7 world that news reporting has become, in the fever pitch to be the first to break a story, all news outlets occasionally jump the gun and use a little too much conjecture and not enough facts, but what I'm referring to is the day in, day out reporting of political and social news that has the potential to make a politician or weighty social issue look better or worse than the story really merits, depending on the persuasion of the reporter and or news outlet reporting.

To deny it happens, on a grand scale, is like closing your eyes and sticking your head deep in the sand.

I was on tour in Germany during the Abu Graib prison debacle and the only two English-speaking stations I could get were the BBC and CNN International.

As we all know Abu Graib was an idiotic hazing of Iraqi prisoners by a handful of American troops.

They didn't kill anybody, they didn't injure anybody, and although what they did was humiliating and degrading to the prisoners and the story should definitely have been covered, the BBC and CNNI devoted their entire broadcast day to it, as if it was a mass murder or the bombing of a city somewhere.

There was no reason for doing this except to give the United States military a black eye. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of honorable young men and women they were painting with the same brush they were using to smudge the guilty.

There were no statements vindicating the innocent, no qualifying and no explaining that the incident was an anomaly and the perpetrators would be dealt with in the severe terms of military justice.

It seemed to me they just tried to lump the entire military together as cruel, out of control dunces to whom inhumane acts were commonplace.

John F. Kennedy was the first president I can personally remember who was handled with kid gloves by the media. His disastrous handling of the Bay of Pigs, early involvement in Vietnam and a multitude of indiscretions were all soft-pedaled and many not reported at all.

Such was Camelot.

Enter Richard Nixon whose relations with the press was somewhat less cordial and when he started to fall the media put their collective foot on his head and pushed. We all know what happened.

I guess the media has always had their darlings but none so coddled, fondled and swooned over as Barack Hussein Obama.

He can do no wrong in the eyes of most media and they are in his corner no matter what he does, ramifications be damned, they can always find an excuse for him, always blame circumstances or previous administrations for his failures and unfailingly bring his causes to the public as noble and good for the country, whether they are or not.

I am very careful about the conclusions I draw from the news and realizing that it's largely agenda driven I am constantly reading between the lines to glean the facts from the fluff.

It's irksome, it's a shame, but as Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is" today.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​