Life Of Jason

I was disappointed today to see a column by Sarah Overstreet where she criticized Bill O’Reilly based on incomplete information from the far-left group Media Matters. I have enjoyed reading Overstreet’s columns and she seemed to be someone who always did her research to make sure the facts she presented were done in the correct light. I can only assume she did not have the chance to hear O’Reilly’s entire segments and that’s why she did her column based on reports by other news outlets about O’Reilly said on his September 19th broadcast.

If you did not hear it, O’Reilly was having a discussion regarding the false impression many white Americans have concerning black Americans. O’Reilly had a very legitimate point that there is a large segment of the white population in America that thinks “black culture” is what you see in rap videos and on television. In this segment, O’Reilly decided to talk about a lunch he had with the Rev. Al Sharpton as a Harlem restaurant and how that restaurant was no different than any other restaurant including those white-owned or have a majority of white customers. It wasn’t anything like you see on television or in music videos. There were not people running around using profanity and acting like buffoons like you would think happens in black-owned places if you believe the stereotypes perpetuated in the entertainment world. It was important for O’Reilly to make these points because there are many people…including right here in the Ozarks…who have that false impression of blacks. If someone like O’Reilly…whom many of those with racist leaning views listen to and believe…comes out and says there is no difference it might make them think about the issue.

Instead of celebrating that, we have Media Matters who hates anyone who is a conservative. It is a far-left wing activist group and if you go to their website you’ll even see their only concern is attacking conservatives.

This is from Media Matters’ “About Us” section:

“Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

Progressive is just another way of saying liberal. The powers that be with Media Matters know if they say they’re liberal then what they right will not be viewed as impartial by many people. They’re not impartial, they’re not a credible source of completely truthful information and if you look closely at them you’ll see they’re not really trying hard to give off that impression. Still, you have some people who take what they say as true and believe that Media Matters prints the entire truth. Enough that, unfortunately, they will unfairly write a newspaper column that joins the criticism against a conservative person.

Then you get media outlets like CNN and others that carry this story as if it’s true. Some folks claim that there is no liberal bias in the media but watching this story get run on certain outlets as if O’Reilly was making racist statements tends to give credence to the belief there is a liberal bias at least in the reporters and editors who decide what stories make the air. If you look at the segment in it’s entirety you can see the context of what O’Reilly was saying and it would not be a story framed in the manner we are seeing it done. If you do not have liberal tendencies to your personal beliefs, you would not blindly believe what you get from Media Matters is impartial and fair. It’s hard to say that a news source which reports this story as fact does not have a liberal bias to it’s work.

It’s then that people with conservative views get mislead because they believe what they see in the news. These people have problems with racism…as they should…and they come out being critical of the person who made the supposedly racist comments without taking the time to see if what was said was truly in the context in which it’s being painted by the “news” outlet. We see the end result of that today in Overstreet’s column.

Now, I know there are far-right groups that do the same thing. This isn’t a partisan blast pretending that this only happens on one side of the political spectrum. This is coming up today because this is the latest example of it happening in the media and a glaring example of how an activist group can twist situations to create a false truth that is then widely reported as legitimate news. What should have been a story about O’Reilly taking on racism in white America and telling them their impressions were wrong gets turned into a story where O’Reilly is a racist.

I even question why this is a news story. When Randi Rhodes of the liberal talk network Air America aired a bit implying shooting the President we didn’t see coverage to this level in mainstream media. Sure, the Rushes and Hannities blew it up out of proportion but you didn’t see top stories on CNN covering it. If that wasn’t news, then this O’Reilly situation isn’t news either. (By the way, to Air America’s credit, they admitted the bit was in bad taste and apologized for the incident as did Randi Rhodes.)

Could O’Reilly have said things in a different way? Perhaps. Does that mean he was making racist statements? No. We have enough of a racially charged atmosphere in the US without false accusations being brought up just to smear political opponents in unfair ways. Let’s focus on real issues of racism and try to educate to eliminate false stereotypes of all kinds.