Warner. Have not we been here before? (;~> gary Hillary's car hits cop - media mum

Warner. For some reason, that reminded me of the following event, which the media ignored, as well. I would imagine that had the Senator at the time been a leading Republican candidate in this years election cycle, that the press would have never stopped hounding them about the issue. I add to the story. A follow up account noted that Hillary never got out of the car to see if the officer was OK, and that no-one ever bothered to follow up with the officer to see if he was OK. Insensitive and uncaring comes to mind - with the "it takes a village - taking a back seat:

10/14/01) YONKERS - A bizarre accident at Westchester County Airport involved Senator Hillary Clinton's entourage Sunday.

Sources tell News 12 Westchester that a vehicle in Senator Clinton's security team tried to bypass a mandatory check point at the airport, which has been under a heightened state of alert since the terrorist attacks. A county police officer attempting to stop the vehicle from getting through injured his shoulder. That officer was taken to Saint Agnes Hospital in White Plains, and his condition is not known.

Senator Clinton, who turned 54 Sunday, was en route to board a private jet to an unreleased destination. The former first lady could not be reached for comment.Copyright © 2001 News12.com.

 

The Bush headline makes it sound as if the motorcade itself killed the cop -- perhaps running down some hapless flatfoot who was just trying to direct traffic and got turned into roadkill by the cruel oblivions escorting Bush.

 The Clinton headline makes it sound as if somebody -- perhaps some enemy of Clinton? -- deliberately killed the stalwart man in blue who was bravely protecting the former First Lady from her many heinous enemies.

You can't tell me that they chose their words without trying to convey these impressions. They're professional wordsmiths, not Korean ESL students struggling to express themselves in a foreign language. 

What is also interesting is how the Time story completely omits any detailed explanation of incident that caused the man’s life.

For example, was it similar to the hit-and-run incident when Hillary’s car struck and injured a policeman while she was deliberately running a police blockade at an airport a day or so after 9/11? That incident was particularly interesting because for reason never explained the injured office, and I believe his supervisor too, were so intimated that they refused ever to talk to reporters about the incident. Never mind the sensation in Chris Matthews’ leg, this matter send a chill down my spine every time I think about this woman being president. To the best of my knowledge the MSM never reported this incident whatsoever.

In answer to my own question, Hillary probably was not directly responsible for what happened today because Time did report this story.

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.

Warner,

I think NB should establish an "NB Hall of Infamy" for the most outragious examples of liberal news media bias.  I'm sure that this would rank in the top ten!!!!  NB could do a yearly "Razzie" type award and invite the top three winners to a national media attended dinner (they LOVE to dress up and go to these affairs).

I can picture it now..."And the winner of the 2008 Most Outragious Media Bias Award is...(drum roll please)...Time Magazine!!!!

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this around a 2.5 in terms of bias potentiality.  And that is (in my opinion) primarily attributable to the sloppiness in the wording of the Bush headline.

If one's mission is to find bias, you can be certain it will be found.  It brings to mind the observation that where the only tool one has is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. There will be more than enough legitimate examples of MSM leftward tilting to keep a website such as NewsBusters thriving far into the future.  But there will inevitably be occasions where the alleged bias exists more in the mind of the hunter than in the behavior of the prey.

The comparative Time headlines may raise an eyebrow, but they hardly establish a level of anti-Bush animus that Warner and most others on this thread suggest.  Indeed, the case might well be made that the Clinton headline was more susceptible to a negative interpretation--for the following reason:  The Bush headline was depersonalized.  And despite Warner's spin at the end of his blog [wherein he illogically concludes that "Time magazine gave us a headline that seemed to say that Bush actually killed his unfortunate officer..."(emphasis mine)], no discerning reader should properly surmise that the President had personally taken anyone's life.  The cause was clearly an inanimate object--the motorcade.

In contrast, the Clinton headline employed no such depersonalization.  Here an officer died while escorting Hillary.  Hmm...was he murdered like others who have crossed the Clintons, or did he die a mysterious death like Vince Foster at the direction of the Clintons and their assassination teams...if one believes what many at NB apparently believe, then those might be distinct possibilities.  The headline, at least, doesn't blame it on some unliving, outside agent, i.e. a motorcade. 

My honest take on this item:  Bias is in the eye of the beholder.  That said, I think Time could have written a better headline in the Bush incident...but I don't see this an an example of blatant, egregious bias.  Indeed, Time printed a number of overwhelmingly positive articles about both George and Laura Bush during the 2000 campaign and early in his administration.  As a matter of fact, Gore supporters were upset with what they considered clear favoritism by Time toward Bush.

Jer