Congressman James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Wednesday compared America's media to Nazi propagandists.
Speaking on Sirius XM's POTUS channel, Clyburn also said people will believe anything they see on television or read in the newspaper (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JON DECKER, SUBSTITUTE HOST SIRIUS XM’S “MORNING BRIEFING”: Congressman, what about race relations? Do you think that they have improved under President Obama?
CLYBURN: Oh yes. There’s no question about that. But, remember, President Obama is serving at a time when a tool like the internet that can be so positive in so many ways can also be very negative in many ways. And we have seen the negativism that can flow from this.
When you have manufactured controversies, and that’s what’s happening here, controversies being manufactured, and then you have people’s words and phrases being misrepresented and looped through the news media, thrown out there on the internet, and people run with it. These things start getting reported in the mainstream, and before you know it, people believe that stuff.
Now, you know, the people of Germany believed Hitler [sic] foolishness that led to the Holocaust. They believed that stuff. And, and, and, and people will tend to believe what they hear through the media. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say things to me, and I say, “Where did you get that from?” “It got to be true. It was on the television,” or “It was in the newspapers.”
So, people think these things are true, and most of these people are not media people. They are bloggers. And they are bloggers for the extreme right-wing who misrepresented Shirley Sherrod’s words, cutting phrases, and next thing you know, Shirley Sherrod has lost her job. Who misrepresented what was going on with ACORN, and next thing you know, it was de-funded. All of that stuff was manufactured, and people tend to act now and ask questions later. And that’s what we’re falling subject to.
So President Obama has had so many of his activities misrepresented, and the media has not been discerning enough in my opinion to say to people, “This ain’t news. This is foolishness."
As readers likely surmise, there's much to agree with Clyburn on here.
On the other hand, he nicely avoided how the media activities he discussed are mostly done by liberals either attacking conservatives or defending the President from scrutiny.
This is certainly true of what happened in Benghazi and at the Internal Revenue Service which the media have shamefully ignored or covered-up.
As for "people’s words and phrases being misrepresented and looped through the news media," we could bring up example after example of this happening to Republicans in order to completely misrepresent the meaning of what they actually said.
Alas, I doubt Clyburn's at all concerned with that.
(HT dentonexable)
