America Bashing: The Media's Favorite Hobby
Jim Kouri, CPP
December 07, 2005
Look at the headlines of most US newspapers or the lead stories in broadcast or cable news, and you'll most likely see at least one story telling the world that the United States is corrupt and evil.
Whether it's the war on terrorism, the Iraq counterinsurgency, the US criminal justice system or various institutions and organizations the left dislikes, you can bet the farm you'll see news stories, editorials, opinion pieces, and news analysis articles beating the bash America drum.
And, unfortunately, when reading the newspaper of record, the New York Times, or the venerable Washington Post it's sometimes difficult to distinguish editorial from news story. Sometimes news reporters are cunning in how they are able to blur the lines between opinion and news so that most Americans are unaware they're being spoon-fed a hidden agenda.
Take a story by the supposedly reliable Associated Press that was picked up by newspapers and TV news organizations throughout world. AP reported on the executions Friday of an Australian heroin trafficker in Singapore, and a murderer in the United States -- the 1,000th since capital punishment was resumed in 1977 -- and told readers and viewers that the two incidents revived international debate about the death penalty.
Although the story gave the usual talking points of both sides of the capital punishment debate, what appeared striking was the fact that this widely published story likened the Singapore execution of a drug trafficker to that of a vicious, brutal murderer.
Even the vast majority of death penalty advocates in the United States would never support capital punishment for drug traffickers. While a good case can be made that drug traffickers do contribute to the deaths of the hopelessly addicted, most clear thinking capital punishment advocates would not consider it a crime heinous enough for a death sentence.
America executes murderers. And not just murderers, but the most brutal and vicious murderers in the nation. If after 28 years we've hit a milestone of only 1000 executions, that shows the US justice system utilizes the death penalty sparingly.
The purpose of this news story was not to inform, but to convict. To convict the United States of being a backward, savage country akin to Singapore where caning is common, and death sentences are handed out for crimes in which no one dies. (Caning is the equivalent of flogging only instead of a whip a bamboo cane is used.) The two executions have as much to do with one another as the sentencing of a drunk driver and a rapist.
The United States has witnessed a dramatic decrease in violent crime over the years. Midnight basketball or other feel-good programs did not achieve that. Tough law enforcement did. Meanwhile, the European countries -- France, United Kingdom, Germany especially -- so beloved of the US liberal media, are experiencing annual increases in their crime rates. Britain recently saw a female cop, an unarmed rookie, gunned down while answering a store alarm. The killing intensified the debate regarding the arming of British patrol officers. Yet, the British are not debating the issue of just punishment for the killing a police officer; they aren't debating capital punishment. Not yet, anyway.
America is the most generous, the most compassionate nation on the planet. Americans, for the most part, are a caring people. But when it comes to heinous acts of murder, Americans concern themselves with the victims not with the murderers who've taken away from the victims everything they have and everything they will ever have. Only liberals -- including the majority of the ladies and gentlemen of the press -- are concerned with the treatment of murderers and thugs. And so, while they celebrate the routine killing of unborn babies, they oppose the execution of the most violent and brutal among us.
Whether it's the war on terrorism, the Iraq counterinsurgency, the US criminal justice system or various institutions and organizations the left dislikes, you can bet the farm you'll see news stories, editorials, opinion pieces, and news analysis articles beating the bash America drum.
And, unfortunately, when reading the newspaper of record, the New York Times, or the venerable Washington Post it's sometimes difficult to distinguish editorial from news story. Sometimes news reporters are cunning in how they are able to blur the lines between opinion and news so that most Americans are unaware they're being spoon-fed a hidden agenda.
Take a story by the supposedly reliable Associated Press that was picked up by newspapers and TV news organizations throughout world. AP reported on the executions Friday of an Australian heroin trafficker in Singapore, and a murderer in the United States -- the 1,000th since capital punishment was resumed in 1977 -- and told readers and viewers that the two incidents revived international debate about the death penalty.
Although the story gave the usual talking points of both sides of the capital punishment debate, what appeared striking was the fact that this widely published story likened the Singapore execution of a drug trafficker to that of a vicious, brutal murderer.
Even the vast majority of death penalty advocates in the United States would never support capital punishment for drug traffickers. While a good case can be made that drug traffickers do contribute to the deaths of the hopelessly addicted, most clear thinking capital punishment advocates would not consider it a crime heinous enough for a death sentence.
America executes murderers. And not just murderers, but the most brutal and vicious murderers in the nation. If after 28 years we've hit a milestone of only 1000 executions, that shows the US justice system utilizes the death penalty sparingly.
The purpose of this news story was not to inform, but to convict. To convict the United States of being a backward, savage country akin to Singapore where caning is common, and death sentences are handed out for crimes in which no one dies. (Caning is the equivalent of flogging only instead of a whip a bamboo cane is used.) The two executions have as much to do with one another as the sentencing of a drunk driver and a rapist.
The United States has witnessed a dramatic decrease in violent crime over the years. Midnight basketball or other feel-good programs did not achieve that. Tough law enforcement did. Meanwhile, the European countries -- France, United Kingdom, Germany especially -- so beloved of the US liberal media, are experiencing annual increases in their crime rates. Britain recently saw a female cop, an unarmed rookie, gunned down while answering a store alarm. The killing intensified the debate regarding the arming of British patrol officers. Yet, the British are not debating the issue of just punishment for the killing a police officer; they aren't debating capital punishment. Not yet, anyway.
America is the most generous, the most compassionate nation on the planet. Americans, for the most part, are a caring people. But when it comes to heinous acts of murder, Americans concern themselves with the victims not with the murderers who've taken away from the victims everything they have and everything they will ever have. Only liberals -- including the majority of the ladies and gentlemen of the press -- are concerned with the treatment of murderers and thugs. And so, while they celebrate the routine killing of unborn babies, they oppose the execution of the most violent and brutal among us.
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