Liberal rant

I try to keep politics out of this blog, but I just had to say something.

On most topics, I'm a very liberal guy. And I get my news from a variety of sources. But because of the business I'm in, I read the Wall Street Journal every day. I must admit, their news reporting and stories are very fair and well done. I think they are about the best source for news out there in the mainstream media. Sure, about 85% of the time, their editorials are conservative, but I don't pay attention to those.

Today I saw an example of how an ethnocentric reporter can add a conservative bias to an otherwise neutral, apolitcal story. The article of which I speak is titled "Tourists Return To Damaged Coasts" by Gordon Fairclough and Matt Pottinger (yeah, it took two brains to write this one) on the front page of section D. Basically, it talks about how the tourists have come back to the beaches of Thailand just a week after the tsunami, and stresses the point by showing a picture of some Eurotrash sunbathers on the beach, while the locals clean up a pile of debris. The article gives a few examples of foreigners who are there on vacation and stress differences in their behavior. Among the good members of the foreign legion are - surprise - two girls from Texas with hearts of gold, who had booked a trip to Phuket long before the tidal wave hit, and decide to still go on vacation. And there are legimate good reasons for this - they are pumping desperately needed money into the local economy. The girls spend their days doing something they hadn't planned on - volunteering around the island; cleaning debris, etc... In the afternoon, they relax on beach. Fair enough.

But the reporter goes on the cite two examples of Europeans who are apparently behaving differently. One is a German couple who are portraited as callous in their indifference. the same could be said of a Swiss guy in a gold-trimmed Speedo, who gives his Thai watier very speicifc instructions on his drink order. The waiter was, just a week ago, fighting for his life against the waves, and still has nightmares of corpses washing up on the beach.

Conservatives can scream that the news media in this country has a liberal bias, they can point to pointless studies that prop up their incorrect viewpoint, but its simply untrue. Its right wing propaganda. If anything, the mainstream news reporting in this country is way too conservative. As an example, just watch the news in just about any other nation - CBC in Canada, or the BBC in the UK, doesn't matter - and you'll see what I mean. But the tactic the right uses is just to keep hammering away at this so-called liberal bias, thinking that if they say it enough, that people will believe that its true, even though its an outright lie.