Saturday, March 22, 2008






Should Fox News Apologize?



During my wandering down the information super highway yesterday, I came across the entire 'sermon' by Jeremiah Wright that has created a firestorm of controversy around Barack Obama and scored a damaging( but not fatal) hit to his campaign.
What I read was not only shocking, but infuriating and once again places the media in a bad light.
While Fox News was quick to bring us the 'news' of Jeremiah Wrights' apparent racist remarks, what they failed to do, and I can only assume it was by design, (whose though is another question) was to report the ENTIRE sermon, portions of which came directly from the Bible.
The quotes that caused the most ire with the voting public : "God Bless America, no God DAMN America" and "America's Chicken's have come home to roost" were not even Jeremiah Wright's but those of US Ambassador Edward Peck, a white man who served as US Ambassador to Iraq under Jimmy Carter. Peck spent 32 years in the US Foreign Service.
Another part of the sermon that was not reported: "I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday," Wright declared. "He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright went on to list other American endeavors that he found particularly unsettling, namely the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On further investigation, I discovered that many PROMINENT Americans: Dwight Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, and Albert Einstien to name a few, were horrified by the idea that American's would result to such drastic measures to end a war that by all reports was already won.
The surrender of Japan was all but a fait accompli when the decision to drop the bombs was made.
Wright's commented that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "killed far more people than the few thousand that died on 9-11, and we never batted an eye", and in that he was correct.
Wright went on to say: " Violence begets violence; hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism." And he ended his 'faith footnote" by attributing his comments to the man who made them, Edward Peck, "A white ambassador said that yall, not a black militant, not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice... the ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them... let me stop my faith footnote right there."
Now taken out of context as these quotes most certainly were by Fox News, it is easy to see how Jeremiah Wright's words have inspired such passion and aroused such anger in the American public. But, when you take the time to read the entire sermon, then the 'clear' cut picture of Wright as a racist and anti-American becomes a bit cloudy.
Fox News knew the entire truth, they had the whole sermon and yet they chose to present only the most damaging portions and failed to attribute those quotes to the man who actually made them, a white man no less.
As to the other comment about the US of KKKA, still digging around on that one. But given the sin of omission committed by Fox News, nothing would surprise me there.
This biased reporting against Obama had one Fox News anchor man get up and walk off the set. Brian Kilmeade walked off the set after a dispute with co-hosts Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy. and "Fox News Sunday" host CHris Wallace railed against "Fox and Friends" for what he termed "Obama Bashing." This was reported on the Huffington Post.
One has to wonder who's pocket Fox has snuggled down in. If you're going to report the news, report it accurately, and without bias. Let the American public make their own decisions about controversial reports, don't make it for us.
We want factual reporting, not sensational journalism. We don't care about your ratings and we certainly don't care about your personal political preferences. You are supposed to be un-biased, but Fox has proven themselves to be anything but.
Does Fox owe Wright and Obama an apology? I don't know and it's not my decision to make, but I do think they owe the rest of America one. Stop lying, and start doing your job, which is to report the news accurately and truthfully, with the emphasis on 'fully'.


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