Topic category:  Policy/Think Tanks

Is it too much for Americans to expect the truth to be reported by the liberal media at all, much less undistorted?

Tragically, it often is.

For example, check the liberal media for coverage of the United States Justice Department giving a pass to Black Panther voter intimidation.

In case you can't find any, here's Michelle Malkin's "Who let the New Black Panther Party thugs off?, June 30, 2009:

"Last week, I reported on the Obama administration’s stonewalling of House efforts to investigate its decision to drop default judgments against New Black Panther Party thugs who menaced Philly voters on election day with nightsticks and racist epithets. Yesterday, I included the episode in my review of White House thuggery over the last six months.

"Now, there’s new information about Department of (In)justice meddling with the New Black Panther Party voter bullying case. Jerry Seper at the Washington Times reports on the identity of the DOJ lawyer who intervened....

"No one should be surprised at such maneuvers under crime-coddling AG Eric Holder.

"It’s more of the same old Culture of Corruption in the age of Obama."

It's also Political Correctness trumping truth and it must be stopped!

Remember the Duke lacrosse "no rape" case?

It's an excellent example of political correctness trumping truth for an agonizing long time for the real victims of bogus charges.

Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson, in Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, in a chapter titled "Politics Trumps Law," explained:

"Notwithstanding all the moral support that [then Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B.] Nifong was getting from [still Duke University president Richard] Brodhead, Duke's faculty, Durham's black leaders and the media, he faced a bleak prospect at the end of March [2006].

"He needed to bring criminal charges before the May 2 primary to have much chance of keeping his job. And that would not be easy to do. The extremely powerful evidence of innocence could not be concealed from the public and the court forever."

But Nifong had a personal agenda that fit the political correctness agenda nicely, the truth would not dissuade him and Nifong had political correctness allies, "media" and "faculty."

Taylor & Johnson:

"From [the time the absence of DNA evidence was publicly reported] forward, most Dukies were convinced that the rape charge was a fraud and Nifong a scoundrel.

"Not so the media or the faculty. 'The DNA kind of ruptured their story line,' Chandler recalled. But their reaction was reminiscent of a Winston Churchill aphorism: 'Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.' Still in a paroxysm of delight over [a sensationalized] 'kill and skin' e-mail, most in the media were not about to let proof of innocence spoil their fun."

"Politically correct sensationalism" (the title of chapter 9) was driven by a so-called "larger truth," not the facts or the law or the actual truth.

Taylor & Johnson:

"The bias driving media coverage of the Duke case has many roots. 'When this case first made national news,' Sharon Swanson of The News & Observer reflected later, 'I was viewing the scenario through the prism of white liberal guilt, I felt somehow responsible that young black women were still being exploited by affluent young white men in the South. I stereotyped the entire Duke lacrosse team.'

"Also at work was the attitude underlying a hoary slogan long embraced by reporters as the essence of their trade: "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.'...Should every child born into an affluent family be afflicted for that alone? A stunning array of journalists and academics--many quite comfortable in their own right--exuded exactly that attitude in their gleeful sneering at the 'privileged' Duke lacrosse players."

True.

Another root was the Far Left political agenda. Taylor and Johnson acknowledged that "among the most frightening aspects of the case is that even after much of the [prosecutorial] misconduct became publicly known in the spring and summer of 2006, Duke faculty activists, media organizations led by The New York Times, the NAACP, and others continued for many months to look the other way or even facilitate his efforts."

How radical was The New York Times?

Taylor & Johnson:

"The editors of the Times...were finally forced by events to pivot suddenly away from the steadfast pro-Nifong bias of the coverage that they had been happily running under Duff Wilson's byline. They had a long piece in the works as of the morning of December 22, seeking to recover from the embarrassing, near-total failure of the Times to cover the bombshell testimony of Brian Meehan on December 15 about his agreement with Nifong to hide exculpatory evidence."

"The unfailingly politically correct Times editorial page remained silent,...while the nation's four other largest newspapers--USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the ,i>Washington Post--carried editorials or op-eds within six days of Nifong's dismissal of the rape charge demanding that the other charges be dropped, too."

Liberal Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times had warned in June of 2006: "This has not been the finest hour of either the news media or academia: too many rushed to make the Duke case part of the 300-year-old narrative of white men brutalizing black women. That narrative is real, but any incident needs to be examined on its own merits rather than simply glimpsed through the prisms of race and class."

Mr. Kristof's much needed warning was ignored by political correctness zealots in the Duke case. Despite the fact that the truth ultimately prevailed in the Duke case, political correctness zealots generally remained uncontrite and The New York Times refused to allow New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom to pursue an expose of the connections between then presidential candidate Obama and his presidential campaign and ACORN and do not report what does not fit their agenda.

It was more important to the political correctness agenda for Obama to win than for the truth to be told.

Ms. Malkin, "Isn’t it time to hold the NYTimes accountable…," April 12, 2007:

"…for victimizing and demonzing the Duke lacrosse players? How about a front-page apology?

"Andrea Peyser at the NYPost excoriates 'all the lies fit to print.'

Worst of all, this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our 'newspaper of record,' The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of 'all the lies fit to print,' the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser’s story about the night she was 'attacked.'

'While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury,' quoth the Times. And, 'The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.'

Will the Times make reparations now?"

The New York Times not only has not made reparations, but it helped candidate Obama win the 2008 presidential election by skewing coverage and killing an Obama/ACORN expose last October.

Unsurprisingly, The New York Times has continued to chose what to report according to the political correctness agenda.

For example:

Ms. Malkin, "The Duke rape case the MSM won’t cover," June 29, 2009 11:38 AM

"It’s truly monstrous and evil.

"But you won’t see wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC or in the New York Times.

"The alleged rapist is a prominent gay health researcher at Duke University.

"The victim is his own adopted, five-year-old son, whom he offered up on the Internet to other molesters.

"Thomas Lifson and Mike Adams do the job the selective media won’t do."

Evil also explains some of the selective reporting, both reporting scurrilous charges as credible and not reporting very inconvenient (to the politically correct) truth (especially about President Obama and ACORN).

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.