I'm afraid

Ok, so I have to admit, I violated my own call for a boycott of CNN. I'm too much of a media junkie, and CNN has become my barometer for the right wing of the popular media (FOX being the radical right). They are right wing, not because of the political attitudes indicated by the positions they take, but rather by the fact that readership seems to have become more important than fact.

I have started to wonder whether the media would turn strongly against Obama, as Hillary looks done for. They can't want this veritable piggy bank of a news story, the constant battle between Clinton and Obama, to end just yet....

Some background:

Instead of reporting all of the different sides of a story, CNN likes to basically reduce their stories to catchy, vague one-liners posted on the right side of the screen, designed to make you click on them. The worst one I've seen is "Bear Falls Out of Tree with Loud Womp".

The worst one in this campaign cycle was "Kucinich to drop out of presidential race." This, in and of itself, seems quite legitimate..... but then five minutes later, they retitled it "Dem to drop out of presidential race." They seem to think that, with the original title, we won't click on it, because we already have the story, OR because we don't care/know about Kucinich. The bottom line is: they need advertising revenue. So, they makes things as vague, strange and provocative as possible.

A sampling of the current lines from the front page:
1) Smear or story? I-Reporters on McCain latest
2) Prof who found noose hit for plagiarism
3) Utah students hide guns, head for class
4) Throat-slashed player "knew it was bad"
5) "Virgin Mary pretzel" for sale on E-Bay

Now, those are all disgusting, and the first one is downright pandering to the radical right. But the worst of all the stories listed on the right is side of the site is this: "Clinton sparks standing ovation". Now, they could have said, "Obama calls Hillary's attacks 'silly season'", or "Clinton booed for xerox comment", or if they wanted to be positive towards her, "Hillary ends on a strong note".

Strangely enough, my final statement is exactly what was up on CNN following the debate. Then, they kept the link destination the same, but changed the wording. The title of the story after you follow the link is still "Hillary ends on a strong note", but the wording of the link has now become "Clinton sparks standing ovation". Now, that is clearly biased towards Hillary. During the debate, she was also booed for comments she made. But the shilling for Hillary is really not the worst part. It's that the ovation is questionable and the comments that supposedly elicited it suspect.

In the past weeks, she has accused Obama of plagiarism, which I will not dignify with a response (he did, and it was a "zinger"). Then, during this debate, she took Edwards's closing sentiments from an earlier debate, reworded them, and provided her final answer, for which she was awarded with a standing ovation. Obama's campaign feels so strongly about this plagiarism, they immediately put out a press release showing it. Wait, wait, if you didn't follow me on this, and think I am just standing by my man (Obama), this is not the actual point of this post.

The penultimate point is the ovation. It came at the end of the debate, and strangely enough, the audience gave a standing ovation at the break too. Now, I'm sure that there are those who were excited by her speech (plagiarized or not), but how can CNN be so sure that the standing ovation was a direct result? Strong enough to post it on their front page?

But as I said, even this is not the final point. The real question we should be asking is: Why did CNN choose to pick out specifically that point to put on their front page? Does that not show an extreme bias? Why did they favor one candidate over another?

Clearly CNN wants Clinton to stick around. Why? Perhaps so they can sell more advertising? Or because they want her to win? Why does CNN no longer report news? Why is the NYTimes under attack when they got the story on McCain from a McCain source? Has the anti-intellectualism really reached the point where the media is against the educated? Or controls the non-educated? Is it all for financial gain? I'm truly getting afraid.