I am getting so tired with this thread!!!! Everybody has an agenda or a chip on their shoulder. The "hawks" in particular. It's not helping. Let's talk about something we all like. Quevedo...or Mahou...or Almodovar?

jlramos,

Now there you go! You are right on the money and I was waiting for someone to call me out on it. I admit that I have made some outrageous remarks on this thread but I did so only after reading outrageous remarks by the anti-war crowd.

I've tried but just can't understand people who lean toward the left. I know that their thinking is as good as mine but I'll never understand them.

And to all posters who point out that the U.S. doesn't always do the right thing, you too are also right. We help people come to power that are absolutely miserable human beings, not to mention electing some presidents here who are horrible, oh, sorry. Still, we assume a leadership role in the world and take on responsibility for a lot of things. Particularly the democratization of the world. Will there ever be peace in this world if there are tyrants?

And by the way, just about any beer is good as long as you're not in England where they serve it warm and toast cold....Barbaric!

gazpacho,
So glad you admit you've made some outrageous comments on this board: "I would have voted for Adolf Hitler himself if he ran against Gore." !?! Quite offensive,really. I just hope we don't come to find out that you and not quite 50% of Americans actually did just that.

Hi Gazpacho,

Speaking of Dan Rather, there is a book out now by former CBS journalist, Bernard Goldberg, titled BIAS: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News. He agrees with you that Rather is a liberal. In a special NewsMax NewsMaker Forum , he cites that when It was obvious to me during the Clinton presidency that Rather was a liberal journalist.

Booklady,

Yes, I know that Dan Rather was covered in this book. I just really can't believe that anyone would consider Dan Rather an unbiased journalist.
Ayn Rand would love the discussion earlier that just because a camera can only point in one direction, and not give an entire picture of the world, that there will never be any truth in journalism. That's just the old Kantian philosophy that because no one can know everything than no one can know anything. What rubbish. In reality journalists don't exist to report truth or even search for the truth, they're there to "change the world."
It is for this reason, when the anti-war crowd decided to use the death of journalists as showing how evil war is, that I just couldn't feel too much sympathy for journalists. I do feel kind of sorry for David Bloom though.

I did my twenty years in the Air Force. At that time I was approaching forty. During my last few years in we started training with full chem gear and bullet proof vest and all the other equipment of war. The first day I tried on all the equipment I thought I was going to pass out. Your body does get use to it, but it is grueling. I don't think that the press realizes the stress and physical requirements required by modern day fighting men. I understand that David Bloom was also approaching 40 or a little over. I find it irresponsible for the networks to send people out in conditions that are obviously dangerous, just to get their headlines. This task should be delegated to the 20 to 30 crowd.

Aidance,

Well, that's not the statement I was referring to. It would have been interesting to see if Gore could come up with even more creative uses for a cigar than his boss did though.

Gazpacho wrote:
Can you name an unbiased journalist or editor? They all bring their life experiences to work with them (as we all do), and that affects their basic understanding of how the world works. How could that not inform the decisions they make?

Where did anyone say that? You seem to have an idea in your head of an ideal newscast that would include All Relevant Objective Truth, and anything short of that means "no truth in journalism." It's not an all-or-nothing deal. Journalism is carried out by flawed human beings with biases. Even the most "objective" journalists will tell you this is the case, and that a big part of the job is to be aware of one's own prejudices and reduce the degree to which they intrude into the work.

A report might be accurate as far as it goes, but how far it goes and whether a given story is covered at all is a judgement call. It has to be. There are only so many minutes in a newscast and so many pages in a periodical.

So it's best to view all accurate reporting as a tile in a mosaic: part of the truth, but never the whole truth.

El Viajero,

To quote you...
I'm only applying logic to your quote.

El viajero, I'd like to get some news that had any objective truth at all. And I certainly wouldn't listen to Dan Rather for it.

By the way, el viajero, what is a flawed human being? In what way are we flawed? A person with a bias is not a flawed human being, is he? Perhaps you have an idea of an ideal human being?

Wolf,

Now that was a good post! You are (and should be) very proud of your post-Vietnam accomplishments and are rightfully bitter about the anti-war protesters of yesteryear for your return experience.

Genocide is one of the few cases where war is a necessity. I agree with you 100% there. Certainly there is no "statute of limitations" on the crimes of genocidal activity, but as mentioned - there was successful "containment." There are other genocidal wars going on in the world...and a double-standard exists since the U.S. has paid little or no attention to them. If that were the U.S.'s true motive, since Iraq was contained, it would have gone elsewhere. As sad as it is and as much as I'd like to see such activity erased from the planet forever, I don't think war will always solve this problem. And again...was that really the U.S. motive here? And the perception was that it was not - which is what is unfortunate - but perhaps justified - considering the administrations inconsistencies leading up to this event.

While the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a different situation, the cycle of violence that continues there illustrates where I come from. I do not define the constant threat of retailiation as freedom or peace - and I do not want the U.S. to fall into the same cyclical trap that Israel is in. I certainly don't claim to have a solution for that part of the world (everyone has tried in vain at this point), but war does not send any message to a foe with conviction except "get ready to fight." If anything, it could have the unintended affect of strengthening U.S. foe's conviction against the U.S. It's quite likely they now feel the need to fight is that much more urgent to the success of their cause. The Arab world fears the U.S. as much as the U.S. fears the Arab world. And there seems to be a lack of dialogue and understanding between peoples and governments...we need bridges of communication to work out our differences.

U.N. involvement with rebuilding is a slippery one. I see your argument - that we sacrificed and took the action so we should benefit from the rebuild. That's a "fair" assessment at face value. But consider this: the efforts to stop terrorism will never succeed if European and Arab friends do not help. It's safe to say they currently feel alienated. So from that perspective, and considering the U.N. wrangling leading up to this point, the U.S. should include them as a "good faith" and healing jesture.

Peace!

Gazpacho,
What I want to see and hear in news reports are just the objective facts, and I would like to hear these facts from as many sources as possible. I then internalize the facts and form my own personal truth, which is biased by my own cosmology, which is my own independent, rational judgement.

It seems that journalists today provide the consumer with a pre-packaged viewpoint.I see this as a postmodern dilemma. Part of the view point is that of the news agency's own agenda, and part is the particular personna and political view point of the journalist. So then when the consumer gets the news story and internalizes it, it has evolved into something else, somewhat factual, somewhat other people's cosmologies.

It's almost as though these agencies are saying to the consumer, "if you get your news from XYZ news agency and from Mr. Smart journalist, you have Truth, with a capital T. You won't have to think, we will do that for you, accept our packaged newscast and you too can be like us"
Orwellian!

As el viajero pointed out, I believe, there is no such thing as Truth. The best you can reach is Popperian falsifiability. And to do that we need the verified facts, without the extra adjectives and adverbs. Plain descriptive research.

El Viajero,

You and I discussed the implications of CNN's Jordan's admission of keeping certain stories from surfacing. I just ran into an editorial by David Mills of Touchstone Magazine . You may find it interesting.