by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
august 25, 2004
No one does chicken like the Colonel. and no one does bias like the CBC.
an article was posted on the Canadian network's website on august 19 entitled, "Kerry blasts Bush on Vietnam War ad". The headline and the article that follows is a textbook case of bias; of injecting opinion into what should be a straightforward news story.
a headline should, as much as is possible, convey what the story that follows is about. By using the headline that it did, the CBC is saying that the news is not what the ad did or did not contain; rather the news is really the fact that Kerry "blasted" Bush for the ad. More importantly, there is a strong implication in the headline that the ad run was run by the Bush campaign; after all, if it wasn't a Bush for president ad why would Kerry be blasting George W. Bush for it? Those people who simply glance at headlines and never bother to read the story that follows would think that the George Bush campaign ran a negative ad that upset John Kerry. as good as that might sound to some, it is simply not true.
The CBC waits until the second paragraph of the story to tell its readers that the ad was run by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group financed by "several major Republican Donors". No evidence is presented, at least by the CBC that Bush is behind the ad or had anything to do with it.
The CBC article reports that Kerry accused the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of being "a front for the Bush campaign". again, no evidence of the group being a "front" was presented. and if the Bush campaign is denying that they are fronting the Swift Boat Veterans, that denial doesn't appear anywhere in the CBC story. The piece run by the CBC has absolutely no hint of presenting both sides of the story.
In support of the fact that CBC news is stranger than fiction, the article concludes with the following paragraph, "MoveOn.org, a liberal group funded by Kerry supporters, is airing an ad accusing Bush of using family connections to avoid the Vietnam War."
Taking the article as a whole, what the CBC is saying is that John Kerry was right in blasting Bush for an ad that someone other than the Bush campaign ran about John Kerry. The network implies that it is wrong for groups that are funded by Bush supporters to attack Kerry but there is nothing wrong with Kerry supporters running attack ads against George W. Bush.
Michael Moore would be so proud.