Wake of Echoes

For the past couple of months, I've talked a lot about media bias: the forms it takes, where we find it, how it's manipulated by candidates and how to identify it. Today, I want to take a practical approach by analyzing a current event and how it is covered by several media outlets. Our case study involves Hillary Clinton's State Department giving preferential treatment to Clinton Foundation donors in the wake of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. To summarize the story, recently leaked State Department emails show a pattern of preferential treatment for "FOB" (friends of Bill) or "WJC VIPs" (William Jefferson Clinton very important person(s)) in contractors looking to help aid earthquake victims, in both emergency response and with more long-term rebuilding roles. As you might expect, liberals contend there's nothing to these stories -- no one financially benefited from an association with the Clintons, the emails in question simply express typical ne...

Juliet said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Maybe. But only if I'm holding the rose and smelling it while calling it an onion. If I don't have a rose in my hand, I mentally "smell" something very different when the words "rose" or "onion" are mentioned. The fact is, words have rich, full-bodied value. We attach meaning to them without even thinking about it. We make judgments based on words we didn't even consciously hear. And that, my friends, is why labels are so important to politicians, strategists and media types. About this time four years ago, a friend of a friend posted something about the Obama/Romney election on Facebook that I (unwisely) decided to respond to. (I don't remember every word she wrote, so I'm paraphrasing, except the part in bold, where my recall is perfect.) Here it is: She:  I know one thing about this election: you just can't vote for the party that supports corporations ...

I don't know if I can do it. I just don't know if I have the stomach to watch tonight's debate. Just to remind you of my position on the upcoming presidential election, this pretty much sums it up: via GIPHY My niece, Amy, who will be voting in her first presidential election this year, put it this way: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump might be the most un likable, un trustworthy and un sympathetic presidential candidates in the history of forever, leaving most of us completely  un enthusiastic about how this election is going to turn out -- no matter how it turns out. And yet, tonight's debate is expected to have as many viewers as the Super Bowl . So we hate them, but we love to watch them? I guess so. Which leads me to these questions: What can we expect from Hillary and the Donald tonight? More specific to our discussion of fairness and bias, what can we expect from the media during and after the debate? The media are already showing their...

When I was in third grade, a family of Vietnamese refugees moved to the small Eastern Washington town where we lived at the time. The family was large and included two school-aged boys, Wa and Him, who started going to our school. Wa was in my class and I wanted to make them all feel welcome, so one day after school, my sister and I walked to their house and knocked on the door. Wa’s family welcomed us inside and gave us watered down Coke to drink. None of them spoke English, but they smiled and nodded at us while we drank our Coke. I don’t remember much else about the experience except that my feelings were all positive, they were super nice and I was glad that our little town had taken in refugees from a war-torn part of the world. I tell this story to remind you of who I am. To soften you for what I am about to say next. Because I STILL want to accept refugees from war-torn parts of the world and from our neighboring countries to the south. My heart bleeds for people despe...