The Koch Brothers, The Tides Foundation, and the Fundamental Dishonesty of the American Media

It's a principle of law that laws restricting right to free expression must be viewpoint neutral and can only regulate time, place, and manner of that expression.

Furthermore, it's not just the law itself which must be viewpoint-neutral -- the application of the law must be viewpoint-neutral as well. Thus a law which discriminates against some viewpoints might be struck down for being facially discriminatory-- its own words betray its intent to burden a particular viewpoint -- or discriminatory as applied -- the law itself seemed neutral on its face, but when cops and prosecutors actually enforce the law, they tend to only enforce it against a specific viewpoint.

My point here is just to note that people can pretend at neutrality, talking up a facially neutral law or principle, while in fact using that principle to discriminate like the Devil by only applying the restrictive law (or principle) to attack types of speech they don't like.

The media loves announcing "Neutral" Storylines and pushing them. They get to appear as crusaders, but, critically, as neutral, non-partisan crusaders, because the principle they're championing, or the law they're agitating for, is "neutral" on its face. They can claim they're acting in favor of a nonpartisan objective, while actually fighting like hell for a completely partisan one.

Case in point: The media and supposedly "non-partisan" groups like Common Cause (actually bought-and-paid-for liberal front operations to give a "nonpartisan" veneer to liberal politicking) say that Big Money in Politics is bad.

Well, that sounds neutral, doesn't it? They're not favoring a particular party in claiming that; there's Big Money on the left as well as on the right. Presumably they're against all of it; that's what makes this neutral. Right?

Not right. The principle is only enforced against the right. It may appear neutral; it's designed to appear that way, to fool the rubes. In fact it's as partisan as Pelosi.

Here's a couple of data points that bear serious thought this week by transparency advocates celebrating Sunshine Week and by everybody else who cares about protecting and preserving a free and independent press:

1,130 - Number of results for search term "Koch Brothers" on The New York Times web site.

64 - Number of results for search term "The Tides Foundation" [a left-wing political agitation Big Money donor] on The New York Times web site.

...

Similar results appear from the same searches on The Washington Post web site, which turns up 277 links to the Koch Brothers and 11 for Tides. And on the New Yorker web site, Koch Brothers generated 35 links and none for Tides.

The contrast was even more dramatic on the Common Cause site, where the Koch Brothers were linked 4,560 times versus one for Tides.

What do these search results tell us? Only that it appears the Koch Brothers are of vastly heightened interest to two of America's greatest daily newspapers and to the dean of campaign finance reform advocacy organizations than is the Tides Foundation.

Now, who contributes more money to political causes? Ahhh, you know. Of course you know.

So here's a better question: How many times more money does Tides donate than the Koch Brothers' foundations?

a) 150% as much

b) Twice as much

c) Three times as much

d) Five times as much

The Joe Bloggs answers for this question are anything less than "five times as much."

Now, given that Tides Foundation, a leftwing group founded by radicals is donating five times as much as the Koch Brothers, we'd expect at least as many mentions of Tides, right?

But of course not. Tides is permitted to operate in secret, with scarcely a mention; the Koch Brothers have the Scare Campaign ginned up against them.

The "Neutral" goal here is a lie. The agitation is not to drive Big Money out of politics.

It's about stopping money from supporting conservative initiatives and candidates only. Soros & Ilk are to be excepted from the law. After all, Soros and Tides aren't really even funding "politics" -- they're just funding Common Sense Practical Solutions (TM).

I wrote about these false non-Neutral Storylines before. Check it out, if you like.

posted by Ace at 07:37 PM

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