We Report, You Decide

I’ve always thought that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch must have enjoyed a huge joke on the MSM as they came up with some of the key tag lines of Fox news. The two most prevalent of those lines are; “Fair and Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide”. Both of them are a spoof on the MSM, a spoof which Rush Limbaugh began back in the ‘80s.

For anyone who has marginally removed the scales from their eyes by looking at the news from beyond the MSM they realize that it is VERY rare for the MSM to give you EITHER a “fair and balanced” view, or to report the news as the news and not try to tell you what to think about it. There is no easier time to see that than when they are faced with a story like the riots in France that they have no idea what to make of it. Suddenly you see the MSM acting like a NEWS (as opposed to opinion) source should act all the time.

We have been told for years what to think of France. They are “sophisticated, secular, socially responsible, peace loving, solid supporters of or even the very definition of “international” … all in all, a country that the US could and should learn a great deal from. Now they have a violent “Muslim Problem” (although most of the MSM is a bit anxious of even pointing that out) on their hands. From most of the reports however it is very difficult to understand “why”?

Anyone that reads more than the MSM understands that Europe in general and France in particular have a number of structural problems that exceed the structural problems that the US has with high deficits, unemployment challenges, including minorities into their culture, social programs that have created a sense of entitlement without individual responsibility, and a lack of values that removes the moral strictures to criminal behavior. We saw some of those problems on a local scale kicked off by Katrina, in France we see them apparently ignited by a couple of youths being electrocuted running away from authorities.

Were the MSM to have any interest in Americans being better informed on the real state of the world and the problems facing our and many nations, it would be good to spend some time on the real problems rather than the “Bush bash de jour”.