The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 3/5

July 11, 2012

A UCLA Political Scientist studied the media and discovered it was biased. “While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.” Source: Media Bias is Real Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Then there is Murdock’s News Corp. Its television operations capture more viewers, more desirable demographics… than perhaps any other television group in the world and it is the world’s leading publisher of English-language newspapers, with operations in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the US. The Company publishes more than 175 different newspapers, employing approximately 15,000 people worldwide and printing more than 40 million papers a week.

Fox News, which is part of News Corp, has been accused of having a bias favoring the political right and the Republican Party. Fox News has publicly denied such charges, stating that the reporters in the newsroom provide separate, neutral reporting.

However, it’s well known that Fox News executives exert a degree of editorial control over the content of daily reporting. In the case of Fox News, some control comes from daily memos. For example: In December 2010, Media Matters for America released a leaked October 2009 e-mail between Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon and the network’s senior producers, which seemed to issue directives slanting Fox News’ coverage of President Obama’s health care reform efforts.

While it may be true that most Western media reporters are not pressured to slant the news they write, the reporters do not control the final content that appears in newspapers, or on radio and television. Editors and publishers may edit, add, cut and revise. In addition, the wording of a headline may be written to mislead and most headlines are written by an editor—not a reporter.

In fact, once, when I was a reporter, 90% of one story I wrote was cut to make room for an advertisement that came in at the last moment, which reveals that profit is more important than news.  Unknown to me, the cutting and revising was done by an editor under deadline pressure, and the balance in the piece vanished as facts were cut and/or moved around to fill the remaining space.

Breaking news or the death of someone rich and famous may also shorten other news stories or cause them to vanish so the public may never see them. The media beast is voracious and unpredictable. Its hunger for news runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and it never rests. In this rush to report the news, mistakes happen but there is more to the news than that as you shall discover.

Continued on July 12, 2012 in The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 2/5

July 10, 2012

Contrary to popular opinion, individual freedom of expression does not exist in the United States. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution only protects the opinions of citizens from persecution by the government. There is no freedom of speech in the schools or in business.

Speak out of line at work, and you may soon be out of a job without a paycheck to buy food or pay rent.

Defy a teacher by saying something that disrupts the learning environment, and you may find yourself in trouble and removed from the classroom or school.

Bully someone on the Internet, and you may end up in court and then in jail.

Slander someone publicly and get sued.

It’s easy to imagine a bumper sticker saying, “Go Ahead and Make My Day. Slander Me in Public and on the Internet.”

In addition, if you believe the American media is pure of heart and honest to a “T” since it is  protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, you are mistaken and out of touch with reality.

Cornell University Law School says, The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. [that is it!]”

In addition, nowhere does it say anything about honesty and accuracy in reporting the news or expressing opinions. However, the United States attempted to remedy this with the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, which died under President Reagan and when President George H. W Bush threatened to veto the Fairness Doctrine if Congress attempted to bring it back.

I majored in journalism and earned a BA in that field.  I then taught high school journalism in addition to English. Over the years, I learned that what the media reports is rife with mistakes and bias.  In fact, soon after President Reagan vetoed and killed the Fairness Doctrine, conservative talk radio was born, which is 100% biased and often misleading.

Continued on July 11, 2012 in The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 3 or return to  Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 1/5

July 9, 2012

China is often criticized for not offering the same freedoms of religion, the media, and expression that the United States offers its citizens.

However, no one seems to question what these freedoms mean and are they real? Do these freedoms put food on the table?  Do these freedoms pay the rent or mortgage? Do these freedoms provide jobs and financial security?

Many eligible Americans don’t vote and America’s next president will be decided by a few hundred people in the U.S. Electoral College, so why are these freedoms so important?

I subscribe to Poets and Writers magazine and a line in the March/April 2012 issue caught my attention.

Stephen Morison Jr. wrote a piece called Middle Eastern Rhythms. He interviewed several authors and poets in the middle east where these freedoms Americans take for granted do not exist.

Nourredin Zuhair, a traditional Arabic poet, said, “America was good because it encouraged individuality, but because of capitalism there is only one kind of individuality now… In the contemporary, globalized world, a new kind of censorship means you can never say democracy is bad.”

There is some truth in Zuhair’s words. We may have freedom from government interference in what we say or write, but we are not free from other critics and the special interest mobs that use the media to push political and/or religious agendas causing this form of globalized individuality that Zuhair talks of.

In fact, the so-called free media contributes the most toward the growth of this cloned globalized individual.

Ask someone what these freedoms mean and see what he or she says. Ask if it makes life better

Continued on July 10, 2012 in The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Macao Bringing in the Cash

June 12, 2012

In 1535, Portuguese traders obtained the rights to anchor ships in Macau’s harbors and to carry out trade.  Then in 1557, they established a permanent settlement there. Moreover, this Western love affair for Macau has not ended. Analysts reported that total public revenue for January 2012 rose by 21.5% when compared to the same month in 2011, and it is all thanks to gambling tax revenue. Source: Calvin Ayre.com

Since Macau was returned to China in 1999, it has overtaken Las Vegas to become the world’s biggest gambling mecca. Since 1999, Macau, along with Hong Kong, is one of the two special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China, and it is situated on the western side of the Pearl River Delta across from Hong-Kong.

The next building trend was to expand into a global entertainment and high-end shopping hub along with leisure activities leading to tourism with gambling leading the way.

However, gambling remains Macao’s main moneymaker. Almost every business depends on gambling to survive.

In addition to gambling and tourism, Macao includes some manufacturing, and the days of Chinese Triads having shooting wars for control of the streets have gone.

Instead, Macao has become a territory where Chinese democracy advocates may speak out without fear and become elected to Macao’s legislature.

The PRC has promised not to meddle in Macao’s politics. One thing is apparent— many in Macao want the economy to have diversity that does not depend on gambling alone. However, MGM Resorts International’s net profit doubled to HK$3.28 billion from HK$1.57 billion—boosted by strong growth in casino revenues, which tells us that gambling is still king in Macau. Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Note: This edited and revised post first appeared November 20, 2010

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Searching for Impurity – Part 1/3

May 21, 2012

My goal with this post was to prove China’s critics and enemies were correct when they claim China is a horrible place to live and due to pollution—the worst country in the world.

I failed. Sorry guys. I should have only focused on air pollution and the rivers where most of China’s industries are located and stayed away from the global comparison lists.

After having read so much about “horrible” China due to its pollution, I decided to see how many of its cities made the top ten lists and was shocked to discover none made the list in 2011.

Time Magazine has a Blog called Ecocentric, and it is about all things green. Here’s that list of the world’s top-ten most polluted cities for 2011.

1. Ahwaz, Iran

2. Ulan Bator, Mongolia

3. Sanadaj, Iran

4. Ludhiana, India

5. Quetta, Pakistan

6. Kermanshah, Iran

7. Peshawar, Pakistan

8. Gaberone, Botswana

9. Yasouj, Iran

10. Kanpor, India

Did you see China on that list?  You have no idea how disappointed I was.

Ecocentric says that all of these cities have one thing in common—they are fairly poor except for number eight in Botswana, which is considered a middle income country/city. “Residents often burn heavy, polluting fuel for heat and energy—including firewood or even dung, which can produce heavy, thick smoke. Add in old, diesel-powered cars that belch black carbon and growing population density in urban slums—plus weather conditions like Ulan Bator’s extreme cold, which worsens air pollution – and you have an ugly mess.”

But what about China? After all, there is so much attention focused on China by Western Blogs and the media about China’s pollution problems, while often ignoring the same problems in the rest of the world, one would think that with more than 800 million rural Chinese living in near poverty using coal to cook and heat their homes, the air would be a thick, black pea soup one could swim in let alone breathe.

Then I visited the top  ten list at Mibazzar.com and discovered that two cities in China’s made that list: I was overjoyed, and then I saw that the date for that list was 2007. Darn! Failed again!

Those two cities that made the list in 2007 were Linfen, China (3,000,000 people affected) and Tianying China (140,000 people affected). Wow, that wasn’t even one percent of China’s population.

Two of the cities on Mibazzar’s 2007 list were in India, one in Zambia, one in Peru, one Azerbeijan, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, and Norilsk in Russia.

Continued on May 19, 2012 in Searching for Impurity – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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