Subscribe to BrookesNews’ Bulletin
A lying journalist v. President Bush
Gerard Jackson
A number of readers have complained that I’m being too harsh on our journalists. One in particular insisted that it was not fair to judge them on the basis of a couple of articles, using Roy Eccleston as an example. These critics have failed to see that I am judging journalists by their record — and Eccleston’s record is one of political bigotry and mendacity. Let us go back to the early days of Bush’s presidency as an example of what I mean.
As soon as Bush was declared the winner I predicted that within a short time the problem of the homeless and the alleged plight of minorities would suddenly emerge as issues. And lo and behold they did. Eccleston, the then Washington correspondent for Murdoch’s Australian, suddenly discovered the homeless. Ain’t that down right strange? During eight solid years of the Clinton presidency, probably the most corrupt in US history, the homeless disappeared — but once Bush became president they were immediately resurrected to be used as an ideological club by leftwing bigots like Eccleston.
Wasting no time in getting stuck into the Bush administration, while taking a snide swipe at business, Eccleston raised the problem of the homeless in Seasonal joy a bridge too far for the homeless (22 January 2000), where he put their number at 200,000. In Pity polls aren’t rocket science (20 July 2001) he returned to his favourite activity of maligning Republicans. According to this brilliant investigative journalist Bush’s America is defective because it allows Republicans to cheat on ballots, tolerates “Third World” conditions and discriminates against blacks and Hispanics.
First the homeless. The US population was about 282000,000 at the time, which puts the homeless, according to Eccleston’s figure, at 0.07 per cent of the population. Now for Australia. According to the Wesley Mission Faces of the Homeless report that was released on 1 May 2001 100,000 young Australians were homeless, 0.5 per cent of the population or 7.2 times the US per centage. The same report claimed that during the previous 12 months 300,000 people were turned away from emergency shelters. This figure amounted 4.2 time the number of American homeless.
Considering these figures, where did a leftwing Australian journalist get the damn nerve to condemn America’s record on the homeless? (It’s ironic that it was Eccleston’s paper that published these homeless figures). What he ignored in his first article is that about one-third of the homeless are mentally ill. So why are they on the streets? Because civil libertarians pushed for them to be released from hospitals. According to these twerps, confining the mentally ill for their own good is a violation of their rights. Unfortunately, cynical politicians agreed with them, seeing it as an opportunity to save money by shutting down mental wards.
Eccleston’s second article demonstrated what an outrageous liar he is. He claimed that a recent New York Times report had found that overseas ballots were counted even though they were postmarked after the election day while similar ballots from some Democrats were rejected. Ergo, Bush had cheated his way into the Oval Office. Now for the truth, the thing political bigots like Eccleston finds so unpalatable.
Overseas military ballots, which is what the fuss was all about, are not required by federal law to have postmarks. They are, as Eccleston well knows, perfectly legal and have been for decades. Nevertheless, Gore and Lieberman struggled to have these legal ballots disqualified. A fact that Eccleston never reported. (This nasty little stunt was masterminded by Mark Herron, a Democratic fanatic). No Democratic ballot was improperly disqualified, though the Democrats tried to disqualify thousands of valid Republican ballots. Another fact that Eccleston refused to report.
Once he finished lying about the Florida election he trotted out the old racist line about blacks and Hispanics being discriminated against, asserting that a report showed that the Hispanic death rate is 20 per cent higher than the white rate. Did he name the report? No. Did he give any details? No. Did he include Cuban-Americans and long-settled Puerto Ricans with newly-arrived Mexican immigrants? Of course he did.
In other words, his comment has no value whatsoever. But that didn’t stop him from making the vicious claim that Hispanics were being killed because they were being given the most dangerous jobs. Perhaps Eccleston would still like to explain why thousands of illegal immigrants risk injury and even death to enter the US if working conditions are so awful.
Now let’s look at some facts, something that leftwing bigots like Eccleston think is beneath them. There were 100,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in in 1967 and 862,605 in 1995. (Unlike Eccleston these people actually work for a living). Their college enrolments were 411,000 in 1975 and 1.2 million in 1995.
It’s true that this group’s overall income has not kept pace with whites and blacks. But this might be caused by the inflow of unskilled labour from south of the border depressing wage growth. If so, this means that heavy immigration has skewed incomes, statistically concealing the financial success of many Hispanics, including Cuban immigrants and their children.
There is also the fact that the median age affects income statistics. For example, the median is higher for Cubans which means their median earnings are higher. Of course, these are matters that a leftwing journalist like Eccleston would never dream of raising. His ignorant comments about blacks, whites and Hispanics made it clear that he hasn’t got a clue about the various factors that lead to disparities between groups. But then he doesn’t really care about facts, especially if they contradict his lefty ideology.
Let’s now look at the conditions of blacks. In 1993 the layoff rate for blacks was the same as for whites. If there were discrimination the layoff rates for blacks would be higher, as it used to be. In fact, during the 1990-91 recession minorities actually gained jobs as whites lost theirs. Somehow, I don’t think race had anything to do with this situation. However, it’s indisputable that there are severe problems within the black community. But what can we expect when about 70 per cent of black births are to single women, up from 22 per cent in 1960.
It is equally indisputable that children, particularly boys, born to single women tend to do badly academically and are more inclined to criminal behaviour. Moreover, having children out of wedlock tends to trap these mothers in a poverty cycle. Then there is the destructive effects of minimum wages on black youth. (See Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions). These are facts Eccleston never wrote about. He found it much more ideologically satisfying to blame everything on the evils of American racism (code for Republicans).
To prove that blacks were discriminated against in favour of Republicans, Eccleston refers to the thoroughly discredited report by US Civil Rights Commission that trotted out the Democratic furphy that black voters had to use old voting machinery. And yet a national study by academics Martha Knopf and Stephen Knack showed that the accusation was baseless, that black-dominated counties suffered no more from old or badly maintained machinery than white dominated counties. So why didn’t Eccleston refer to this study, as if I didn’t know.
Another thing that Mr Integrity conveniently omitted is that the Commission’s findings were rigged and dissenting members censored by its chairwoman, Mary Frances Berry, a lying race-baiting political bigot who also adored the Soviet Union. The legal affairs columnist for the National Journal and former Justice Department correspondent for the New York Times, Stuart Taylor, stated that under Berry’s control the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has become nothing more than “a propaganda mill for the victimology wing of the Democratic Party.”
The leftwing Berry was so enamoured of Soviet tyranny that she publicly declared that: “Subjected to a massive barrage of propaganda from the American news media, few knew about Russia’s constitutional safeguard for minorities, the extent of the equality of opportunity, or the equal provision of social services to its citizens.” Perhaps this statement helps explain her Soviet-like view of elections. Eccleston finished with the Democratic Party line that Bush didn’t really win the election.
There is no other way of putting it: Eccleston is a vicious lying bigot who ought to be fired.
Condoleezza Rice branded a liar by journalist
Roy Eccleston, a Rupert Murdoch journalist, is another Bush-hater
How the Bush-hating media abetted Richard Clarke’s lies and attempts at character assassination
A Murdoch reporter reveals his loathing for Bush and Israel
A Murdoch reporter joins the Democrats against Bush
How Rupert Murdoch's Australian carrion leapt on Linda Chavez
Aussie journalist joins Gore's election campaign
A Rupert Murdoch journalist takes a swipe at Ronald Reagan
A Rupert Murdoch journalist tries to belittles President Reagan's achievements
Reporter smears President Bush with cocaine and AWOL charges
How one of Rupert Murdoch's reporters twisted the news about Bush and WMDs
Lefty journalists attack Republican wolf ad. They think it’s “scary”
Arnold Schwarznegger, Bush and our bigoted media
Murdoch's rag lies about the CIA and Bush
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 6 February 2006