IP: RE: All the News That Fits; How the media color their coverage.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "Rob Raisch" <info () raisch com>
> To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> Dave,
>
> Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" deals with the same issues, driven
> not by some misguided allegiance to knee-jerk liberalism but by those who
> command our own government.
>
> I take strong issue with this author's comparing the horrific murder of
> Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, with an equally horrific murder of a young
> Arkansas man by two gay men.
>
> In the case of Matthew Shepard, the rage that precipitated Matthew's torture
> and murder was driven by our society's marginalizing an entire segment of
> its membership simply based upon who they love; it was a hate crime.
>
> The case of two gay men raping and murdering another man wasn't predicated
> on his sexuality; it was driven by the same mental aberration driving most
> crimes of violence and murder.  While no less abhorrent, it says nothing
> about a kind of intolerance and fear endemic to our society.
>
> To say they are the same is to ignore the root cause of each.
>
> (I also note that Matthew is clinically identified in the piece as a
> "homosexual" while the Arkansas murderers are described as "gay", a reversal
> of respect that speaks to the author's personal prejudices.)
>
> The book makes a valid point, but one of its foundation examples is simply
> wrong.
>
> /rr

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