Jan 21 2004
Liberal Media
Check out this sub-headling on this article at cnn.com about the Bush’s state of the union speach last night: “Ten months before facing voters, President Bush used an upbeat State of the Union address Tuesday night to promote his stewardship of the nation at home and abroad and to call on Americans to stay the course.”
The part that caught my eye there was the last blurb about ‘calling on Americans to stay the course’. I thought, “Gee, is Bush asking millions of Americans to stay the course by continuing to stand in the un-employment line? Or maybe American troops in Iraq should stay the course in Iraq where every day 10 soldiers are wounded and 1.5 are killed? Maybe blue collar Americans should stay the course and just watch as their jobs continue to be shipped overseas by corporations that aren’t punished for laying off thousands of workers, but actually get tax benefits for doing so?
I wanted to know just what this president thought we should stay the course on!! But after reading the article on cnn.com, I couldn’t find any specifics about my course. So I thought the person who wrote the article maybe just paraphrased something the president said, and I should go to the source and read the transcript myself, because I really want to know what course I should be staying on!
To my surprise, I couldn’t find one instance of Bush saying anything about ’staying’, ‘holding’, or even ‘idling’ on any sort of ‘course’, ‘direction’, or ‘mandate’.
I guess my questions is why did CNN use a phrase(and a lame one at that) to describe what the president wants Americans to do that the president himself didn’t use? It’s pretty ridiculous when a major news organization like CNN is spinning policy speaches like this instead of giving an objective point of view, which last time I checked was the job of the news media. Sadly, I expect to see more of this as we get closer to the election this fall from the media. Is it CNN who wants us to stay the course or the president?
The only thing ‘liberal’ about the news media these days is it’s application of subjectivity to the news stories it’s putting out.
“We have faced serious challenges together, and now we face a choice: We can go forward with confidence and resolve, or we can turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us. We can press on with economic growth, and reforms in education and Medicare, or we can turn back to old policies and old divisions.”
Sounds pretty similar to ’stay the course’ to me.