FAIR Media Views
>From letters to the public editor who defended Kathleen Parker's column that "seemed to agree with the idea that the 'full-blooded Americans' are really the ones who 'get' what it is to be 'American'": "Your op-ed acknowledged that the Tribune knew that they were code words, and yet paid for a right to spread her bigotry to hundreds of thousands of readers." As put in the May 30 edition of CounterSpin:McNulty argued that providing a megaphone for Parker's hateful sentiments was really a healthy exercise in, um, anti-racism? Sure, her ideas were "repugnant," but "I would rather see it on the op-ed page so that people can hold it to the light and repudiate the notion rather than deal with it as a whispering campaign." Unfortunately, McNulty has no evidence for the strange notion that presenting unopposed racist views in the paper really has the effect of squelching such views in the larger society. Intuition might suggest that actually such 'campaigns' would be emboldened by finding an echo for their sentiments in what are deemed legitimate news outlets.... Perhaps the most disturbing thought would be that McNulty really believes his own thesis that promoting bad ideas repudiates them.
The previous week's CounterSpin also noted that
Parker's attack wasn't even new. Weeks before, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wondered if Obama had ever gotten "misty" thinking about his country's heritage. John McCain, by contrast, "carries it in his bones." There's high tolerance in the corporate media for such repellent ideas; as Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell recalled, Noonan's column was praised by NBC anchor Brian Williams as Pulitzer-worthy.
