Most people generally know nowadays how biased and one-sided the mainstream media is, but I don’t think it is as widely realized just how unscrupulous, knavish, deceitful, and perfidious mainstream media journalists are. Of course, the recent Dave Weigel fiasco at the Washington Post shows that most mainstream media journalists simply have no interest in truthful or accurate reporting, but are only intent upon propagandizing for their Leftist (and pro-Sharia) ideology.
And they need to be exposed as such, so that people can begin to realize that they’re being lied to, and seek out the truth. To that end I recently wrote this:
William Jennings Bryan said it in 1896 in a vastly different context, but every word applies to conservatives today:
We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defence of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!
We beg no more. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them. We are not the aggressors. We are not haters. We are not racists. We are not bigots. We are not neofascists. Those who claim otherwise are knowingly or unknowingly abetting a monstrous evil. We withdraw our sanction from them. We must no longer treat journalists as if they were objective reporters when they are ideologues and propagandists. We must constantly call them out on their game. And refuse to play it ourselves.
And so, in service of treating them as ideologues and propagandists when that is what they are, I resolved to expose the dishonesty and manipulativeness of mainstream media reporters whenever possible. And that dishonesty and manipulativeness is all-pervasive. Recently I spent a couple of hours talking with a reporter for a major magazine about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero; even though he acknowledged being a Leftist, this reporter told me more than once that he opposed the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero. But reporters often express sympathy with their marks in order to get them talking; the same reporter was later seen at a hearing on the mosque in the company of Zead Ramadan of Hamas-linked CAIR — witnesses said that clearly they were together, were friendly, and saw eye-to-eye on the salient issues. Of course, it is possible that he was doing with Zead Ramadan what he was doing with me — appearing sympathetic to get us to talk. His piece hasn’t appeared yet, so it remains to be seen how sharp his hatchet will be, and how brazenly he lied to me when we met, but I have no high hopes for any kind of fairness.
In the meantime, there is Kiera Feldman, with whom I wasted an hour or so yesterday. When Feldman emailed me, she identified herself in this way: “I’m a public radio reporter researching a possible story about the Ground Zero mosque controversy. I’ve reported for the BBC, WNYC, and elsewhere. I’m thinking about doing a profile of Pamela Geller, and I’d like to talk briefly with you about your partnership, SIOA/FDI, and plans for the 9/11 and 9/12 rallies. Could we chat by phone for fifteen minutes or so?”
When we spoke on the phone, I asked her for whom she was writing her piece, and she said she was a freelancer and was not working on a specific assignment from anyone. She then proceeded to ask me a long series of when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife questions about Pamela Geller, the Ground Zero mega-mosque, SIOA, and more. Her questions were so clearly designed to trap me into saying something that could be used to discredit the resistance to the mega-mosque and the spread of Sharia in the West in general that I began to appeal to her as a human being, detailing the human rights abuses that are intrinsic to Sharia and asking her if she really wanted to be in a position personally of running interference for those who would deny the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, equality of rights for women, and more. Her ideological straitjacket did not loosen, however, and in due course the interview ended, and that was that.
A few hours later, however, I got an email from Kiera Feldman: “Thanks for taking the time to speak with me tonight. I checked in with my BBC editor, who wants me to focus the story more generally on 9/11 rally attendees instead of Ms. Geller specifically. I’ll send you a link if I end up using any tape from your interview.”
“My BBC editor”?
I thought she was a freelancer working without a specific assignment! Turns out the inexpertly-laid journalistic traps Feldman was setting out were all in service of al-BBC.
Would I have answered anything differently had I known that Feldman was working on the piece for the BBC rather than simply working freelance? No, I wouldn’t have. But why the deception?
Apparently “war is deceit” not just for Islamic jihadists, but for unscrupulous pseudo-journalistic ideologues in pursuit of a smear. Exhibit A: the lying Kiera Feldman.