The Dan Lee Report

As an American I have to say that I’m deeply distraught by the behavior I’ve seen from the Main Stream Media, not only this week with their shameful attacks against VP nominee Sarah Palin & her family, & even the 18 year old boyfriend of their daughter. It’s a trend that’s worsened over the last couple presidential elections.

Even beyond their blatant & biased interference into the political process, it’s become apparent to me that America needs to “clean house” with regard to the media’s corruption & bias, because they are an essential service to the community. In an age when people rely on accurate information to make what can sometimes be life or death decisions, there’s no room for constantly inserting extremely biased opinions into news that is essential to the functioning of our society, yet the Main Stream Media has increasingly blurred the lines between commentary, opinion, & hard facts.

The coverage of Hurricane Gustav was a good example of how badly the media wanted a bigger disaster. The media politicizing of the last Hurricane “Katrina” clearly caused reporters like Geraldo Rivera to run around New Orleans holding a wind gauge, & seemingly hoping for the worst. They even risked their lives to bring us images we could do without, rather than have a camera man or a news reporter needlessly killed. The reporting needed only to assist in getting people the facts, but once again it took the usual foray into reminding everyone that everything that goes wrong is always Bush’s fault. I guess the LA times was too busy chasing Britney Spears & Lindsay Lohan to talk about the whole story, as there’s no mention in the story of the two biggest fumblers in the Katrina debacle, N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin & then Governor Kathleen Blanco. It took for the old standby Reader’s Digest to show this news paper who’s supposed to report the whole story, just how it’s done.

The line between the Mainstream Media, Hollywood, & Supermarket tabloids has been seriously obscured, & there seems to be no end to the over dramatization of our news in sight. But Wait!

One guy that seems to be trying to correct the course of the media on this issue, is Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who’s ratings have just about doubled compared to the extremely leftist biased equivalent of his show over on MSNBC, Kieth Olbermann’s “Countdown”. If there’s any hope for the news, it may be indicated in the comparative ratings of these two shows. O’Reilly recently took MSNBC to task for the blatant & truly childish cheap shots taken at Gov. Palin, on the day her VP candidacy was announced. We highlighted that exchange here.

Maybe people ARE in fact getting tired.. The other day I read a report on one of the major Cable News websites that said 7-8 people had been poisoned to death in a chemical accident (was removed within minutes, & is nowhere to be found now), then it became two, & then it became no people died, but just injuries. All in the name of beating the competition to get the story out first. It didn’t matter if it was right, it just needed to be first. The result? Families of the factory workers possibly traumatized, & expecting that they might to have to go identify a relative’s body. Members of the public frightened unnecessarily by overblown coverage.

The bottom line is this is only one of thousands of examples of media butchery. It’s the kind of software company philosophy that we don’t need in the media. Just put it out, & we’ll patch it up later if it doesn’t work right. That doesn’t work so well when the end result is causing a public panic, influencing an election with misinformation or flat out lies, or just plain misinforming the public on issues that effect their lives.

It need to stop, & it needs to stop ASAP.

Contact your local & national media outlets when you see bias, unfairness, & inaccuracy in stories that are supposed to be hard news, & not political commentary or opinion. Ultimately only the people can keep the media accountable, by steering away from sensationalists with an agenda, & hair trigger reporters with no regard for truth.

~Dan Lee

Helen Thomas quote:

“What I really worry about is that I think the bloggers and everyone, everyone with a laptop thinks they’re journalists,” Thomas said. “And, they certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics, and so forth. There’s a deterioration,” she continued. “Reporters laid down on the job in the run up to this [the Iraq] war.”

Thomas made those remarks in a January 4 round-table discussion that followed the premiere of a documentary about the National Press Club 100th anniversary, “The National Press Club at 100: A Century of Headlines.”

Dan Lee Comments:

As a blogger who readily admits I’m not a part of the “Journalism” profession, I’m very glad I’m not. To be a part of that largely corrupt group of so called “Professionals” known as the Main Stream Media, would be to sell my soul to the devil, for a guaranteed opportunity to force my opinions into virtually every home in America, & call it “reporting the news.”

What I am is an American citizen with a voice, who is exercising my first amendment rights out of concern for my country. I know that frightens the status quo media folks who have turned the news into information brokering, a way of controlling, brainwashing, & ultimately fleecing the masses in our country by endorsing those with whom they are politically aligned. But like anyone with a conscience & a soul that still belongs to God & themselves, I want no part of that.

The difference between bloggers & the main stream media of course, is that no blogger I’ve ever read has ever claimed to be “Your only source for News & Events”. On the contrary, we tend to link to competitors who may have differing opinion, because we believe in a system of checks & balances, as well as actual free speech & information sharing, not the kind of “information sifting & filtering” that’s become the norm for the old guard that Helen Thomas helped to create.

Helen Thomas & her kind are afraid of bloggers, because we represent something her “profession” as a whole lost sight of many decades ago now, & that is the ultimate higher calling of the media. It is to serve their fellow man by providing the information needed to make life decisions, (often in reaction to the information provided) based on wisdom & knowledge that we are all taught in school, or acquire through spiritual wisdom & provenial grace.

We don’t need the media to make up our minds for us, or arbitrarily filter the information to us that they feel is relevant, or in their opinion “important”, but yet somehow the media has made themselves the gatekeepers of all common sense & relevance. The “news” they “allow” us to see or here is “the gospel according to their editors”, instead of a word for word, or pictured chronicle of events.

To Helen Thomas; The problem your industry has is that the general public is tired of your narrow opinions about “why” news happens, & would just like you to spend more time reporting it without always needing to have an analysis or opinion, as if without you, no man or woman could make up his or own mind, & would fail to understand it. You are gatherers & disseminators of information, you are not Gods, Kings, or Queens who issue their judgments & decrees upon the rest of us.

In short Helen Thomas, you may not see me as a “journalist” with your “ethics” & “standards”, but who in hell are you to pontificate at your very readers & customers what is a good product?

I bring my car to have the oil changed not because I can’t do it myself, but because I want to spend my time doing other things. However if I can’t find a shop to do it right? I’ll do it myself again. I’ll go find out what the right Oil filter part number is for my vehicle, & buy the parts myself, & do the work myself. Similarly, when YOUR customers Helen Thomas don’t think you’re doing a good or honest service for us, WE WILL get it done with or without you, & YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE MY LAPTOP OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS BEFORE YOU STOP ME from ideating (EITHER ALONE OR WITH OTHERS) on how to make or keep the country I Love a better place. If that goes against your “journalism standards”, then DON’T READ MY BLOG YOU OLD MINDED,UNPROGRESSIVE, SELF ABSORBED COOT! How ironic that those who have the most incentive to champion the first amendment, are using it to try & suppress the free speech of others selectively.

This in response to Michelle Malkin’s Story Here