Sputnik radio's host of the show BradCast, Brad Freidman, talks about how the American people have been conned by the right wing media and how it has infiltrated its way into other media such as The New York Times.
“Even the New York Times has been proclaiming articles with the headline like ‘Have Democrats pulled too far left?’ Because this question is always answered affirmatively by the corporate media, one does not even need to know that the author of this article, Peter Weiner, served in the last three Republican administrations. Hence, it is obvious the answer will be yes.”
Friedman says that the facts, independently verifiable facts, are something that should still remain even if the article is an op/ed. The article by Weiner for The New York Times is “intellectual dishonesty”, Friedman says in his podcast.
Despite the predictable thesis of the New York Times article, Weiner writes that Barack Obama has “moved to the left compared to new centrist democrat Bill Clinton,” but whenever Weiner makes a claim that can be checked it’s simply empty rhetoric.
Weiner’s claim that Clinton lowered the capital gains tax rate where Obama has proposed raising it, doesn’t look at the fact that Clinton lowered it to 20%. Under Obama it went up to 20%.
“Clinton cut spending and produced the surplus writes Weiner, under Obama spending and the deficit reached record levels. But the facts point out that from 1993 to 2000 Clinton reduced the US budget imbalance as a proportion of the US GDP by 6%, whereas Obama reduced it by 7% points,” Friedman noted.
Then again, Friedman says that perhaps the most deceptive part of Weiner’s op/ed is when he blames Obama’s ‘supposed’ shift to the left for the failing fortunes of the Democratic Party.
Weiner in his New York article writes that after two enormous losses by the Democrats in 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Republicans controlled the Senate and the House of the Representatives; it’s true, as there are currently 31 Republican governors compared with 18 for Democrats. But when Weiner says that the “Obama years have been good for Obama but disastrous for his party,” there is a definite hoax there.
Freidman responds to that by saying that “Weiner should remember that after the first half of Clinton’s first term, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the remainder of his administration, exactly as happened under Obama.”
“There were 30 democratic governors when Clinton took office and 19 when he left. There were 29 democratic governors when Obama took office and currently there are 18.”
Friedman goes on to stress that if facts do not measure up, media should not run them. “It’s one thing when Fox does it but it is entirely another matter when New York Times does it.”
He points out that it is “important to undo the cons that folks like Fox News and New York Times perpetrate on the electorate.”
