Letters to the Editor

I've been known to fire off Letters to the Editor. I sent a long one in after the Supreme Court decided our president in 2000. I sent one a couple of months ago when my city and local triple A baseball team blew that change to land the Mets Triple A team.

I came across this letter last week in our paper.

To the Editor:
According to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, 64 percent of the national media's stories about Gov. Sarah Palin's record in Alaska were negative, 29 percent were neutral and 7 percent were positive.
In their overall reporting during the campaign, the media gave Sen. John McCain 57 percent negative stories, 29 percent neutral and 14 percent positive. Sen. Barack Obama received 29 percent negative stories, 35 percent neutral, and 36 percent positive overall. That means Obama received 71 percent neutral/positive stories overall versus 43 percent for McCain.
The national media gave Palin only 36 percent neutral/positive stories in their coverage of her record in Alaska.
Pew Research found that MSNBC was the most partisan of the three cable news networks. MSNBC attacked McCain and Palin with 73 percent negative stories and reported 86 percent positive stories on Obama and Biden. CNN attacked McCain with 61 percent negative stories and reported 61 percent positive/neutral stories on Obama. Fox was the most balanced and objective. It attacked McCain with 40 percent negative stories and Obama with 40 percent negative stories.
According to The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, of the three broadcast networks, NBC was the most partisan and negative. It attacked McCain and Palin with 84 percent negative stories and reported 56 percent positive stories on Obama and Biden. NBC's 56 percent would have been higher except it ran some negative stories on Biden's factual mistakes and speaking gaffes.
CBS attacked McCain and Palin with 69 percent negative stories and reported 73 percent positive stories on Obama and Biden. ABC attacked McCain and Palin with 58 percent negative stories and reported 57 percent positive stories on Obama and Biden.
It's clear that MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC wanted Obama elected and nobody was going to stand in their way. McCain and Palin were destroyed by the news reporters and didn't have a chance.

So, I went back to my desk and fired off this letter, which got printed in last Sunday's paper:

To the Editor:
In his letter Dec 30 on "Media Spin", MT's stats cliam to show Fox was the most balanced. On the whole it is the most biased news station of them all.
Secondly, when you run a negative campaign, as John McCain did, it makes sense for most of the news coverage to be negative.
Third, the people of the United States elect a president, not the news channels. With such a large margin, it was clear people wanted a change.

Then today, I got someone to respond to mine. Please tell me your thoughts on this. There are so many ridiculous things about it... but I want to see what you pick out of it. Please, only liberals responding to this post.

To the Editor:
It is clearly apparent that Jen is a true liberal and herself extremely biased after reading her letter that appeared in Sunday's edition of The Post-Standard. She outright states that Fox News is the "most biased," but fails to tell her audience the source of her so-called truthful claim. The fact is that Fox News is the least biased, according to such reputable outlets as the Media Research Center, Center for The Media and Public Affairs, Accuracy in the Media and others. I would strongly suggest Ms. Zingaro Google any or all of these outlets and enlighten herself.
As far as Sen. John McCain running a negative campaign, she is dead wrong on that statement. If she checks the record there were several campaign ads developed by McCain staffers that did not meet with his approval because they in fact were negative. There is much documented out there on this subject and confirmed at least a few times in Mike Huckabee's new book, "Do the Right Thing." I would suggest Ms. Zingaro purchase a copy and read it.
It really bothers me that people can write untruths with no factual data to confirm what they are penning and then having it published as factual, but then again this is America, and Amendment No. 1 gives us all that right even if the written words are dead wrong.
Douglas Fuegel
Central Square