John Stossel Gives Us a Glimpse of Narrative-Building

If you can make your way through the right-wing garbage in this clip of Stossel and O’Reilly talking about the Kor-ANN and other matters, you may also get a glimpse of how the right wing continues to built their incredible narrative.

John Stossel was tasked to do man-on-the street questions asking “Would you be OK if a Muslim were president?”.  At the end of the segment, after BO had got his story across the way he wanted to present it, Mr. Stossel let us behind the scenes in a way that completely pulled the rug from the entire segment.   Here is what  he said as the music had been qued to go to break…

Stossel:  (4min 25 sec into segment above) “I just wanted to add ….  I asked 25 people.  I thought most would have an objection [to a Muslim President] and your editor just split it 50/50.  But almost everyone said, ‘no, no problem’ without hesitation.”

O’Reilly:  “This is N.Y City. *slams pen into table* If you go down to Mobile, Alabama you’ll find a little bit of a different find.  Alright?”

Stossel:  “Probably”.

Awesome!  Do you get what just happened there and why it’s so important?  O’Reilly had a story to tell – he wanted to “analyze” this whole “Muslim controversy” as a “trumped up deal!” (emphasis Bill’s).  He sent out John to find out “what the folks think”.

Turns out the media’s reaction to Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson’s bigoted remarks wasn’t a “trumped up deal” at all – at least based on Stossel’s actual reporting.

But, since O’Reilly and his editor know that people in Mobile, AL feel as Carson do, they were obligated to skew the evidence.

In sum, it’s the story Bill, his editor and FOX want to tell that is more important that the news.

Liberals instinctively get that FOX is doing this.  It is the difference between news and politically-biased infotainment.

I can just hear conservatives and those that had really had it up to their necks with the political back-and-forth saying “yeah – but MSNBC does the same thing”.  The truth is they don’t – or if they do there is a misguided host or editor it isn’t the raison d’être of a real (or liberal) news organization.

If a liberal news organization got caught doing this  – it’s readers/listeners/viewers would demand accountability.

“Really?” you might ask.  Yup.

And yes, this is important to me right now as credibility is front and center locally thanks to our locals who might be kindly described as skeptics of big government and big unions.  What the left needs to get across is there is really a difference here.  Reality does have a liberal bias and there are important reasons why. There are also important reasons why we all (left, center and right) have an obligation to change our country’s and county’s  misleading conservative narratives.

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Thanks to Media Matters for heads-up.

Charles Blow on Ben Carson’s soft bigotry

BTW: Ben Carson’s soft bigotry:

  “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

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Purporting

The Humboldt Consequential – a new local anti-government fever-swamp, Rose Welch of Watch Paul,  Fred Mangels and John Chiv all jumped on what was clearly a fake email which “purportedly” came from my union – AFSCME.  From Rose’s blog (emphasis mine)…

“The latest post there includes what is (purportedly) a VERY NASTY letter from a AFSCME, threatening our Board of Supervisors.”

– Rose Welsh

Thank you LoCO for calling this out and good on LoCO for linking to their posts.

This blogosphere flare-up is important because it gets down to what I believe is the nub, or what could be the unit, of politics – credibility.  Credibility is critical to our opinions and our internal narratives.  We all understand this – to our core – even if we don’t consciously understand when our internal judgements are taking place or have taken place.

[Aside:  Could the unit be called the “cred” as in… John Fullerton has -4 creds with me while Verbena has earned 42.]

We want to know who to believe.  When confronted with real decisions – like Eureka was with Measure R last November – I believe it’s resounding failure with the voters who showed up was not due to it’s merits, but rather due to whom people trusted.

In the end the very small portion of the electorate decided to trust John Fullerton, Charlie Bean and the Chamber of Commerce. Or, was it that people fell victim to their distrust of the main proponents of Measure R.  People like my friends James Decker and Verbena – people fighting for the forgotten in our society.

So when moments like this come about, it’s important to take note.  This is not about truth, this is not about what is real.  What this is about is whom to believe.

If you have any question, please note THC’s response to LoCO’s article that at least allowed both Rose and John to step back from their anti-union fever a bit.

“AFSCME is straight-up lying to you. Do not believe them.”

(emphasis mine.  THC later referred to AFSCME as “AFSCMafia” – just so you know where they are coming from.) This is under THC’s header-motto “The truth is you should be mad”.  And by being a frequenter of their anti-governemnt blog I think what they want you to be mad about is … government … and it’s overspending and outlandish salaries.

Just had to take a break from my unintentional blogging hiatus to mark this waypoint on the trail of Humboldt’s blogosphere credibility to call out the purporting.  And please note that this purporting was followed on THC by a diatribe on AFSCME and it’s members. I hope those of you who are paying attention and may be on the fence are taking note.   How many creds should anything following a purport be given?  I don’t think there is any doubt the imaginary number would be negative.

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