Do they think we’re stupid?:
On Thursday night, CBS anchor Katie Couric began a short news update on Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska by immediately highlighting his party affiliation: “The senior Republican in the U.S. Senate went on trial today for corruption…†Stevens was appointed to his seat in 1968. But the night before, in an item on ethical questions surrounding Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, a House veteran elected in 1970 who is Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Couric failed to inform viewers he’s a Democrat.
The Big Three networks used to get away with this stuff. But not anymore. Imagine if there had been an alternative news source in the ’60s and ’70s to counter the networks’ anti-Americanism and defeatism. If we’d actually known what was happening, such as that Tet was actually a victory for the U.S., we might have won the Vietnam War. People like Morley Safer and friends have a lot to answer for. (One of Safer’s biased CBS reports is featured prominently in “No Direction Home,” the Martin Scorcese documentary of Bob Dylan’s early years.)
