Reagan, Media and Heroes

[laststeamtrain]

Reagan, Media and Heroes

By Robert Parry
April 13, 2009

When we write about a U.S. media culture that reflexively bends to the Right, some people dispute our analysis. After all, they’ve heard those endless complaints about the “liberal media.”

But there was a telling example of that rightward knee-jerk thinking in Monday night’s “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.” In a segment on the heroism behind the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, CBS producers incongruously inserted a quote from Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural Address.

“Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look,” Reagan said in the speech 28 years ago. CBS producers used the clip though it had no particular connection to the issue at hand.

Indeed, Reagan wasn’t even talking about the sort of extraordinary heroism displayed by Phillips in trading himself for the safety of his crew or by the Navy SEAL snipers who killed the three pirates to free Phillips. Reagan was saying that Americans who simply go about their normal lives are heroes.

<snip>

So why would CBS News even think to go back and grab a 28-year-old quote from Ronald Reagan to use in a piece about events on Sunday in the Indian Ocean? The answer would seem to be that it never hurts your career to cite the great and wonderful Reagan.

Who knows? Maybe at some point the producers feared they might stumble into the crosshairs of the right-wing attack machine – as four CBS producers did when they got fired over a 2004 segment on “60 Minutes II” regarding George W. Bush blowing off his National Guard duty.

<more>

http://consortiumnews.com/2009/041309a.html

[omega minimo]

1. it rings different for those who recall the Inauguration Iran Hostage release split screen scam

while Reagan delivered his first catapult load of horseshit :evilfrown: