Jewish World Review July 17, 2006 / 21 Tamuz 5766
Bill O'Reilly
The Great American Media War
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | So here's the question of the hour: Who is really looking out for you, the very secret Bush administration or the anti-Bush media? Let's examine both positions.
The president says he is fighting an effective war against
worldwide terror and points to the roundup and destruction of many top al
Qaeda people as well as the fact that the homeland has not been attacked
since 9/11. Bush asserts that his aggressive and clandestine policies have
put the terrorists on the defensive and that the war in Iraq has kept them
bottled up where the American military can kill them.
The anti-Bush press, led by The New York Times, believes the
Bush administration violates human rights, is overly secretive and is
dismantling civil liberties. The Times and other committed left-wing
journalists justify exposing national security programs because the Bush
administration, they say, cannot be trusted.
For the everyday American, the debate is filled with fog. Is the
Bush administration really compromising the nation's integrity in the terror
war? Does the anti-Bush media really want the USA to lose the war in Iraq?
The answers to both those questions are complicated.
Recently, the deans of four leading journalism schools and the
director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center wrote a piece for the magazine
"Editor and Publisher" that stated: "In the aftermath of 9/11, a new climate
of caution was a sensible response to a sophisticated terrorist foe. But
Bush's reaction — declaring a 'war on terror' — and claiming the
Constitution grants almost limitless powers to the president in a time of
war — is excessive."
The men who wrote this piece are all committed liberals. These
guys love The New York Times. One of them, Harvard's Alex Jones, used to
work there. Thus their analysis of the war on terror is viewed through an
ideological prism, the same problem that exists at the Times itself, where
publisher Arthur Sulzberger is liberal in the extreme and generally hires
people who agree with him.
| FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER | |
| Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. | |
So what we have here, to quote the film "Cool Hand Luke," is "failure to communicate," at least honestly. Liberal people do not generally approve of armed conflict and certainly do not like coerced interrogation, wiretaps, internment camps, and just about every other anti-terror measure the Bush administration has come up with. So with all due respect to the journalism heads, what does the left propose be done to diminish the threat of terror? I haven't heard one concrete suggestion. I have heard all kinds of theoretical gibberish that must send Osama into gales of laughter.
The problem for the regular folks is that the Bush
administration is secretive. The president does
believe he has the authority to institute anti-terror strategy without
strict oversight. Mr. Bush well understands that any and all secret programs
will be publicly outed by people who don't like him. And there are a few of
those.
In the end it comes down to this: I believe there will be more
blood in American streets if the government eases up on aggressively
pursuing the terror killers. But the anti-Bush media doesn't believe that,
and some are putting forth that the president's policies are the primary
threat to this country, not the killers themselves.
I think that's downright dangerous. I'll also tell you a secret:
Fighting a two-front war on terror, with the second front being the media
controversy here at home, has weakened the USA substantially.
On that point, there's nothing left to say.
Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bill O'Reilly is host of the
Fox News show, "The O'Reilly Factor," and author
of, most recently, "Who's Looking Out for You?" Comments by clicking here.
