A Classic Example of Media “Bias by Omission” in AP Story About Fox

They just keep doing it, but they can’t get away with it any more. The AP, byline Jim Salter, has a story about Michael J. Fox’s deceptive partisan ads and Rush Limbaugh’s speculation that the actor went off his Parkinson’s meds before taping them in order to make a more startling appearance. Readers of Secondhand Smoke know that Limbaugh has a solid basis for his speculation, since Fox admitted in his autobiography that he did that very thing to make a more dramatic effect before testifying in front of a Congressional committee.

Salter deals with the controversy and its effect on the campaign about Missouri’s Amendment 2, has a professor stating that Limbaugh is ridiculous to make such an assertion—and never mentions Fox’s admission from his book! (Nor, might I add, do reporters seem to be asking Fox about the matter. If the story concerned a non media-favored spokesperson, he or she would be hounded at every campaign stop and forced to admit or deny the assertion.)

Salter’s reporting is classic example of bias by omission, which is endemic within the MSM. If a pertinent fact interferes with the story the media want to tell, they ignore it. I saw it in Schiavo, when Michael was almost always merely referred to as Terri’s “husband” with no reference to his subsequent committed romance to a woman he called his fiancé, or their two children, leaving a materially false impression that he had remained loyal to Terri throughout her disability. Similarly, the media to this day almost always refers to Jack Kevorkian as the retired doctor who helped “terminally ill” people commit suicide—when most of his victims were not terminally ill. And here it is again in the Fox story, a small example, but very illustrative.

The good news is that there are alternative methods for getting the full story out past the MSM truth blockade. The biased traditional outlets still have more power to mold public attitudes about crucial controversies—we saw that raw power exercised with full vigor in Schiavo—but it is ebbing steadily every day.