Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Yellow Journalism: New York Daily News' Hit Piece on Pamela Geller

I noticed from sitemeter that most of my hits today are focused on a prior post that shows Pamela Geller in a bikini.  I wondered why until I went over to Atlas Shrugs and read this post:

HIT PIECE: NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DHIMMIS DOWN ON NYC BUS CAMPAIGN: FREEDOM BUSES HIT NYC

The Daily News article is very antagonistic towards Geller's advertising campaign on the sides of city buses in major cities.  The ad campaign is an outreach to Muslims planning to leave Islam, offering advice and support.  This is necessary to save lives, since Muslims have a nasty habit of murdering "apostates."

The Daily News article resorts to guilt-by-association and ad hominem attacks against Geller, referring to her as a "rabble rouser," "racy rightwinger," and "archconservative" with "Tea Party ties."  It is obvious that the unprofessional reporters who wrote this drivel are merely serving up red meat to their leftwing readers.  There is no pretense at objectivity.

The article refers to Geller appearing in a bikini in various posts and videos, and refers to her pose in a superman suit on her blog.  Obviously, if Geller is a beautiful, sexy woman she can't be taken seriously.

Other liberal rags that took this path (of brazenly biased partisanship) have failed and are on their way to bankruptcy.  See Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.  The general public is quite able to distinguish between a hit piece and legitimate journalism, and abandon such "news" outlets for more reliable and objective information.

In years past, such journalistic malfeasance was known as "yellow journalism."  Ironically, the practice began with two New York newspapers (per Oracle Thinkquest:):
Yellow journalism, in short, is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion. It was particularly indicative of two papers founded and popularized in the late 19th century- The New York World, run by Joseph Pulitzer and The New York Journal, run by William Randolph Hearst.

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