I want to point out a type of media bias that I find particularly dishonest. It is a form of the logical fallacy – the non sequitur – or presenting a bunch of true facts and then drawing a conclusion that does not follow.
The linked report appeared on the news at KHOU, the CBS affiliate here in Houston last night. In the run up to the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, they have been recounting the “history” of events leading up to it.
I enclosed history in quotations because it is history in the sense that it recounted past events but it is “history” because these events were presented in such a way that a casual observer lacking true historical knowledge could draw an incorrect conclusion.
This report spent about 3 minutes and 39 seconds expounding on how much vitriol and hate was being ginned up by the right wing in Dallas and how much it looked like today. They strongly promoted the racial angle and how the right wing “extremists” in Dallas were mostly segregationists – a component totally absent in today’s opposition to Obama…while what they said about the political and social climate is true – the right did not kill Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, a card carrying Marxist did – but you could be forgiven for not knowing this because out of the total 3:49 run time of the report, they spent a total of about 10 seconds telling you this and they even followed up by blaming the assassination on the right saying:
“Even though the extremism exhibited in Dallas emanated from the right and Oswald was a leftist, Minutaglio believes the threatening rhetoric of Dallas influenced the assassin whose actions stained the city’s name.”
This oversimplification of the situation completely ignores Oswald’s motivations. What killed Kennedy was a member of the radical left, not the “extreme” right.
The written transcript makes it seem more fair than it the broadcast video is. The imagery and the overall “feel” of the report is not exhibited in the text. If you watch the clip, you will see how they made it very easy for low information folk to fallaciously link Ted Cruz and the Tea Party to racism, segregation and the Kennedy assassination.
Great work KHOU, great work.
The Rio Norte Line 
Utah: The issue of deliberate misrepresentation of both objective facts and logical conclusions by the Obama White House and its media sycophants is reaching its logical end-point, which is a something that Orwell elucidated in both ANIMAL FARM and 1984. No longer content to lie about about and misreport current events, the Liberal/Progressives and their media allies are now “re-imagining” history, in the manner of the Ministry of Truth and the talented porcine flack Squealer. Since many if not most Americans today are ahistorical, the changing of past events and the drawing of impossible conclusions from fact patterns to fit the Obama narrative has become a strategy that often escapes recognition. Since after Monday’s Presidential Press Conference, it now appears Our Dear Leader may have a future in infomercials, his attempts to explain away his administrations myriad failures are likely to only become louder and more repetitive. It is delightfully ironic that the Obamacare 800-number Obama repeated three-times yesterday in his presser, answered calls by stating they were not permitted to provide any information. That is the basic position of this administration. CDE
In 1963 all of the South was dominated by Democrats. The KKK was Democrats. All of the “segregationists” were Democrats. The fallacy is that the media chooses to claim it was “the right” because they have already done this in the past successfully. How many times have you heard them refer to Hitler and the Nazis as “right wing”? Similarly they called the Russian Communist hard liners “right wing”. That was an incredible stretch since they were in effect saying the further left you are (i.e. communist) the more you were “right wing”. Mussolini was a Fascist, a form of radical Socialism where the government allows the factories to be owned by the individuals but the owners must do the governments bidding. But to many in the media Mussolini was “right wing” and even Fascism (the more radical version of socialism) is “right wing”. It is a way that they compensate for the problems left wing philosophies create. Sure the media is socialist and socialism is left wing but the really bad socialist must have been right wing don’tcha see because they were bad and we all know the right wing are bad people. This allows them to consider themselves “good little socialist” and certainly not right wing.
Gone: You are right on all counts. The monstrous regimes of the 20th century, including the Fascists, Communists, Nazis, Socialists and America’s Liberal/Progressives were and are all Collectivists movements of the “Left,” and had nothing to do with American Conservatism, libertarianism and other movements of the “Right.” By the way, the “Left” and “Right” labels were originally developed in Pre-Revolutionary France, and have no meaning in today’s world. The real differentiation today is between “Collectivists” of all varieties, and those of us who believe in individual freedom, free markets, limited government and personal responsibility. In America today that places Obama’s Liberal’Progressive/Democrats on the Collectivist side and American Conservatives and libertarians on the side of freedom and America’s founders. who we all Classical Anglo-American Liberals. CDE
I am curious what McPherson’s take on this would be …