Basically the Media wants you to accept the bizarre as reality and it wants you to believe in the unbelievable. And while the media telling us that Iraq is getting yellowcake from Niger so it can douse our country with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes is a recent and good example, it is far from the first or even the best example.
I present to you one of the worst examples of the 'liberal' media and what it wants for this country.
The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. It was the longest and most expensive criminal trial of its time, and is believed to have contributed to the satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s and 90s.
Some of the accusations were described as "bizarre", overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse moral panic. It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels. When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis, the McMartins' lawyer, one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several investigations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris from before the school was built, but no evidence of any rooms was found.
And the media's role in all of it?
Wayne Satz, at the time a reporter for the Los Angeles ABC affiliate television station KABC, reported on the case and the children's allegations. He presented an unchallenged view of the children's and parents' claims. Satz later entered into a romantic relationship with Kee MacFarlane, the social worker at the Children's Institute International, who was interviewing the children. Another instance of media conflict of interest occurred when David Rosenzweig, the editor at the Los Angeles Times overseeing the coverage, became engaged to marry Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.
The media coverage of the trial was very negative, and skewed towards an uncritical acceptance of the prosecution's viewpoint. A writer for the Los Angeles Times wrote a series of articles discussing the flawed and skewed coverage presented by his own paper on the trial. It was only after the trial that coverage of the flaws in the evidence and events presented by witnesses and the prosecution were discussed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trialJudith Miller, the media telling us that Iraq is going to kill us all, the media telling us that the stocks are jumping because they say the war will be quick, the media congratulating Bush for a victory he declared years ago even though we're still fighting in Iraq today, the Valerie Plame scandal? It was the McMartin persecution all over again.
Our country needs to learn it's mistakes and realize...
A: The media is not that liberal
And B: Our country needs to work to stop abuses like the McMartin Trial and the Iraq War from ever happening again