JANET HESSERT, OF NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, SAYS IT BETTER THAN WE EVER
COULD.  (AND, HECK, BEING IN CALIFORNIA, SHE HAD TO PROBABLY WRITE IT IN THE DARK):

Dear Mr. Blitzer:

In the hopes that you (or a responsible member of your staff) are actually reading these emails and giving serious thought
to this issue, I will answer you in some detail.

You ask "Are we (in the media) biased (toward the right wing)?"
The answer is, sadly, an overwhelming "Yes!" I submit the following in evidence:

For over eight years, the media has pounced on every single hint of a potential scandal about President Clinton,
his wife, his daughter, Vice President Gore, his wife, his children, their extended families, their current staff members,
their former staff members, even their pets.

Most of these "scandals" were simply a charge made by one or more Republicans, based on one or more facts taken completely out of context, which could, under certain circumstances, indicate criminal activity.

However, the media NEVER took the simple step of determining whether those charges were valid. The media abandoned
its duty to investigate stories before airing them, and instead endlessly repeated these unsupported allegations until those allegations became the truth in the minds of most viewers. When evidence later surfaced that these allegations were untrue,
the media compounded its crime by refusing to admit its mistakes with equal vigor -- instead repeating the same irresponsible behavior as soon as the next Republican smear campaign was launched.

For example -- the RNC claimed that, in 1996, Gore made fundraising phone calls from his office that were a violation
of the 1883 Pendleton Act. The Pendleton Act is designed to keep Federal employees from asking their subordinates for campaign contributions on Federal property. (It doesn't even mention phone calls, because there were no telephones in the
White House in 1883.) Gore did not call any other Government employees from his office and ask for donations, nor did he call anyone who was also on Government property and ask for donations. He very clearly did not violate the 1883 Pendleton Act, as alleged.

Gore was also accused of taking part in an illegal fundraising scam in the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple.  Gore, his staff, and the evidence all confirmed that Gore had no knowledge of John Huang and Maria Hsia's illegal activities. Witness -- including Don Knabe, a Republican Los Angeles county supervisor -- confirmed no fundraising occurred while Gore was present.

Gore was deposed, but he was never charged with any crime.

Yet the media reported these accusation as if they were true -- and reported them endlessly, linking them to other
"Clinton Administration scandals" that were just as baseless. After the initial feeding frenzy ended, the media continually
referred to Gore as someone "tainted by fundraising scandals", until a huge number of Americans believed that Gore
had violated the campaign finance laws somehow and gotten away with it.

And the Republicans, who started the smear campaign in the first place, milked that media bred misconception for all it was worth. George W. Bush's main appeal to many voters was that he was going to "restore honor and dignity to the White House". In the First Presidential Debate, George W. Bush used these false scandals to further damage Gore's reputation:

'I think the thing that discouraged me about the vice president was uttering those famous words, "No controlling legal authority." I felt like there needed to be a better sense of responsibility of what was going on in the White House. I believe that -- I believe they've moved that sign, "The buck stops here" from the Oval Office desk to "The buck stops here" on the Lincoln bedroom. It's not good for the country and it's not right. We need to have a new look about how we conduct ourselves in office.
There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, I don't want you to let me down again. And we can do better than the past administration has done. It's time for a fresh start. It's time for a new look. It's time for a fresh start after a season of cynicism. And so I don't know the man well, but I've been disappointed about how he and his
administration have conducted the fundraising affairs. You know, going to a Buddhist temple and then claiming it wasn't a fundraiser isn't my view of responsibility.'  http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2000a.html

The Moderator, Jim Lehrer, let this remark pass without pointing out the facts.

The GOP played the media like a violin during the campaign, manufacturing a series of "Gore Lies" that the media rabidly parroted, and joyfully played shrink, wondering why Gore "needed" to lie like a rug. There was only one slight problem with the "Gore Lies" and the media's coverage of them -- all of the "Gore Lies" were later proven to be misquotes by the media, not lies by Gore. (Except one. Gore did not visit Texas with FEMA director James Witt on the day he said he did. He actually
went with the assistant director of FEMA that day. And most people would not characterize that as a "lie", but as a "mistake".)

The Annenberg 2000 Election Survey, released last month, found that "one of the most significant shifts in public opinion in the 2000 presidential campaign came in late September when perceptions of Democrat Al Gore's honesty dropped sharply".

Did the media even stop to consider the possible political motivations behind the GOP endlessly leaking reports that Clinton and Gore were under investigation for some new scandal -- no matter how many previous scandals had turned up nothing?
Or did the media agree that destroying the American people's trust in their President and Vice President was a worthy goal?

Personally, I would find it much easier to believe that the media is unbiased if it wasn't for all the obvious scandals
connected to George W. Bush that the media has refused to cover, except in the most superficial way.

The worst of these is the Florida 2000 election. To me, one of the most shocking thing about the Florida election is the media's complete disinterest in exploring the endless "irregularities" that all favored Bush but hurt Gore. In fact, there is not one of the countless "irregularities" that aided Gore.  That is just not statistically possible.

I will list just three "irregularities" which favor Bush -- "irregularities" that, if they had taken place in a state where one of
Gore's close relatives was Governor, and the Secretary of State was his state campaign co-chair, the media would still be reporting 24/7 about the obviously criminal nature of these "irregularities" and the campaign that benefitted from them:

A.) Most of Florida's counties did not check the overvotes to determine if there were any legal votes wrongly classified as overvotes -- something required by Florida law. Gore got 87% of these discarded overvotes. (According to the Washington Post, to this day, 1.58 million of Florida's votes have not been counted a second time.)

B.) The Republican elections supervisors in Seminole and Martin county were found in a court of law to have manufactured absentee ballots for Republican voters (potentially as many as 5,000). Although this is a felony in Florida, neither supervisor has been charged with a crime.

C.) The "bourgeois rioters" that beat up several people in the Miami Dade Courthouse in order to stop the recount there have all been identified by the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc. They are all GOP Congressional aides or former GOP Congressional aides who were flown down to Florida, fed and housed at the expense of the Bush/Cheney campaign. After the riot, both Bush and Cheney called this group to congratulate them on a job well done. During the inauguration, they held a reunion with Katherine Harris, where they all got commemorative t-shirts and paperweights filled with chad. None of these "bourgeois rioters" has ever been questioned by the police, let alone charged with a crime they
were videotaped committing. For the record, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, etc., those rioters are:

1. Tom Pyle, policy analyst, office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
2. Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director, House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice.
3. Rory Cooper, political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
4. Kevin Smith, former House Republican conference analyst and more recently of Voter.com.
5. Steven Brophy, former aide to Sen. Fred D.Thompson (R-Tenn.), now working at the consulting firm KPMG.
6. Matt Schlapp, former chief of staff for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), now on the Bush campaign staff in Austin.
7. Roger Morse, aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).
8. Duane Gibson, aide to Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee.
9. Chuck Royal, legislative assistant to Rep.Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
10. Layna McConkey, former legislative assistant to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), now at Steelman Health
Strategies.

I could literally go on for days with more examples of Bush scandals the media has ignored -- Bush's alcohol abuse,
his being AWOL during the Vietnam war, the bogus "energy crisis" in California that Bush ignores to the benefit of
his major donors, the Bush family ties to the Nazi party and the Unification Church, the thousands and thousands
of enraged Americans who protested Bush's inauguration and continue to protest his illegal administration daily but
are ignored by the media... which prefers instead to waste countless hours on stories like "Gore's gained weight" or
"Hillary Clinton got a hug from Strom Thurmond".

And somehow, given all this, you still have to ask "Are we (in the media) biased (toward the right wing)"?

The only answer is: "Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave".

Sincerely,
Janet Hessert
North Hollywood, CA
 

From:  http://www.buzzflash.com/BuzzScripts/Buzz.dll/sub3