More Conservative Media Bias

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050704&s=gitlin

It was left to an opinion columnist, the New York Times's Thomas Friedman, not a news reporter, to declare on May 27 that "the abuse at Guantánamo and within the whole U.S. military prison system dealing with terrorism is out of control. Tell me, how is it that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody so far? Heart attacks?"


I used the LexisNexis database to see what major US news organs have reported about deaths of prisoners in US hands since the beginning of 2005. Here are the results. On television: nothing on CBS, one brief mention on NBC, another on ABC. Nothing on CNN, nothing on Fox, nothing on MSNBC. On public television and radio, now under fire from the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for "liberal bias": After Friedman's column appeared, Jim Lehrer cited 100 deaths, considering twenty to be "homicide," and NPR's Talk of the Nation interviewed Amnesty International's William Schulz, who said, "Twenty-seven of those detained by the United States have been ruled to be the victims of homicide by medical examiners." That's it from the broadcasting subversives. Nothing from Time--or Newsweek.