Media Bias
Has Yahoo! Succumbed to Socialism?
Socialists have commenced a two-front war
Friday, April 6, 2001 700 p.m.
That last fortress of freedom and fairness, that great hope
for lovers of liberty—the Internet—is under siege
from the hideous infectious disease of socialism.
Freedom lovers saw the Internet as a communications tool
that could bypass the socialists' control of the major media.
But now, fairness on the information highway is under assault.
Besides Treacherous Ted Turner and Hanoi Jane now having
their hand in AOL's direction, Yahoo! seems to be taking the
subtle approach the National Education Association took—slowly
input your moles then indoctrinate the whole system.
Perhaps, the tide has turned against the freedom fighters.
The Internet is now under attack and will eventually be as
"unbiased" as the CBS Evening News.
Yahoo!'s Assault in the Freedom Wars
If you go to Yahoo!'s Home Page and click Government then
Politics, you will see 17 categories headed first by "Activism
Resources." When you enter the Activism Resources category,
you will not find a "fair and balanced" list of sites.
You will only see blatant "thumb your nose" leftist sites
and censorship against the right. Not even one conservative
site is listed. Who's calling the shots out there at Yahoo!
in California? Maxine Waters?
Is this a conscious exclusionary effort on Yahoo!'s part
to promote socialism?
The six categories in the "most popular" section (probably
the editor's favorite picks) are as follows:
- Protest.Net: From the site— "Confront the Global
Warmakers by participating in nonviolent civil resistance
to shut down the world's largest military targeting and
surveillance base! At Vandenberg AFB in California, USA
on May 19th."
- Media Activism: Go to "Local Activists" and you will find
organizations like "Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation"
that makes it clear what this site is like.
- Electronic Activist: This one is interesting. Yahoo!'s
description seems neutral. However, if you go to the web
site and look under "activism how to," they actually plant
spies at Christian Coalition conferences and teach all forms
of anti-right activism. "The Institute serves as a resource
for a wide variety of media, including CBS, CNN, NBC . .
."
So now we know where Dan, Tom, and the rest of the Politburo
gets some of its "facts."
- Progressive Secretary bills itself as a letter writing
cooperative with "topics selected by participants." Letters
like "Gore don't concede," "Free Leonard Peltier," and "Order
New Vote in Palm Beach County" says it all.
I searched hard but I did not find "Don't pardon Clinton"
or "Cut taxes AND expenses."
- Take Action: Yahoo!'s sinking stock prices seems to correlate
with stories from this site. Yahoo!'s stock was around $240
a share when the "Can You Trust Your Toothpaste" article
ran. Now that Yahoo!'s stock is around $15, this site runs
stories like "US and Mexico in Secret Dolphin Meeting" and
"Wake Up and Smell the Carbon."
Now that's something to show your kids. This is what happens
to a company's stock price when socialism takes root.
Maybe some representation of conservative and libertarian
listings in Yahoo!'s Activism Resources category might perk
up the stock price.
- Social Action and Leadership School for Activists: If
you dig into this site you will see "A project of IPS."
Who are these guys? The about us on the IPS site says "One
of the projects is Progressive Challenge." The Progressive
Challenge links activists to, guess who—The Congressional
Progressive Caucus.
The Caucus has "objective" luminaries and "proponents
of freedom and liberty" like:
The issue is not how socialist these organizations are, it
is that Yahoo! chose not to put even one conservative site
in the entire category.
Why Did Yahoo! Fail to List These Sites?
There are just as many, if not more, conservative activist
organizations as there are socialist organizations. Sentry
over America lists a number of conservative organizations
that can be categorized as activist in its Resources
Directory. Some are very large, established, and well-known
organizations that did not warrant even a radar blip on Yahoo!'s
screen.
Sentry contacted a number of these conservative groups and
posed the question if they have ever submitted their site
to be listed under Activism Resources:
- From Empower America: "Indeed, we are not found under
Activism, but to my knowledge we never directly petitioned
Yahoo! to be referenced under a particular category."—Press
Secretary Jeff Kwitowski, Empower
America.
No petition is needed. If Yahoo! is like Open Directory,
the "human editor" at Yahoo! also seeks out sites
and adds them to the proper category even without a submission
request by the site owner. Also, Open Directory editors
will place a site in the proper category if it is submitted
to one that is not the best fit. Empower America, with distinguished
Americans like Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Jeane Kirkpatrick,
is one of the premier activist organizations.
Do you think Empower America has more prestige than those
leftist sites on Yahoo!?
- From LoudCitizen.com: "Yes, I did report LoudCitizen.com
under the "Activism" section of Yahoo!."—Kevin
Conner, Founder & Chairman of LoudCitizen.com.
LoudCitizen.com received over 1 million hits in its first
month of existence and organized rallies all across the
USA post election day 2000. They are one of the most visible
of all activist organizations but certainly not visible
in Yahoo!'s Activism category, even though they requested
to be listed there. Why did Yahoo! not list this site?
- William Greene, VP Internet Development at ConservativeHQ.com
told Sentry they are listed by Yahoo!. True, but like LoudCitizen
and Empower America, they are buried down into a level 5
or level 6 category and should be at the level 3 under Activism
Resources where, theoretically, there is more web traffic,
and more closely describes the type of site they are.
- FreeRepublic.com could be listed under Activism Resources
with its local chapters and successful grassroots events.
It has an incredibly active forum and is, like some others,
buried deeper down at lower levels of the directory.
My guess is FreeRepublic.com gets more hits in one week
than those sites listed on Yahoo! get in one year. A good
editor would list this site under both Activism and Forums.
Many other conservative activist sites are nowhere to be
found in any Yahoo! directory.
The rest of the 26 or so entries offer similar "balance"
like "Cause Communications" whose founder's BIO starts with
"I'm a former senior manager for Greenpeace." Then there is
Grassroots.com that urges you to sign the "Lesbian and Gay
Immigration Rights Task Force's petition" for immigration
rights for same-sex couples.
If Sentry over America can list a large number of conservative
activist sites, then the "900 million page views
per day Yahoo!" should be able to find at least one.
The Final Battle for Fairness of Information
Fairness on the net will be a lot like Yahoo!'s stock price.
From the heights of the heavens, it will sink to the depths
of despair unless freedom loving Americans wake up, show some
outrage, and get involved with some conservative activist
organizations.
"However, for the last three weeks, our AOL subscribers
-- some 17,000 of you -- have not been receiving The Federalist.
According to reports from those using Ted Turner's Internet
service, AOL has cut them off -- effectively blocking The
Federalist from delivery to their e-mail accounts. We are
currently trying to confirm these reports and resolve the
problem. (Of course, unless we have found a work-around,
nobody on AOL is reading this message!)"—Mark
Alexander, Publisher of the
Federalist
Is this a temporary "technical problem at AOL"
or is Treacherous Ted Turner firing a salvo in the culture
wars?
The NEA indoctrinates our kids to liberalism at school.
Hollywood brainwashes viewers continually both overtly,
like Oscar night, and in a stealthy fashion—pick your
choice of movie or sitcom.
The press, spearheaded by leftist loonies like Dan Rather
and Bryant Gumble, admits to being 89% liberal.
A typical day for a student is socialist propaganda teachings,
mandatory leftist school assemblies (like those reported by
FOX NEWS' O'Reilly Factor last week at Tamalpais H.S. in CA),
going with friends after school to be entertained by leftist
Hollywood music or a movie, while their more studious sibling
goes home to watch Dan Rather's slanted news reports for a
homework assignment.
And you wonder why the kids vote for leftists?
We have lost the battle to the socialists at the schools.
We have lost the battle to the socialists for influence in
the mainstream media and entertainment industry.
We have lost the battle to the socialists for balance in
the press.
We have just begun the final battle—the battle for the
Internet.
With Yahoo!'s bias and Treacherous Ted Turner and Hanoi Jane's
hand on the AOL control panel, the socialists have commenced
a two-front war in the final battle for balance and fairness
of information.
Copyright © 2001 Sentry over America
Notes
Update on the AOL blackout of the Federalist
From the Federalist Easter Special Edition:
(This info was received after Issue 8 of Sentry was
published where it was indicated that Treacherous Ted turner
may have deliberately blocked the Federalist from being
received. As it turns out, that is precisely what happened.)
(A NOTE REGARDING THE AOL BLACKOUT: On Tuesday
afternoon, as our legal counsel was preparing a motion to
“encourage” AOL to restore delivery to our subscribers using
their e-mail service, our technical supervisor was contacted
by AOL’s technical support operations. AOL admitted they had,
indeed, deliberately blocked our IP — which explains why some
20,000 subscribers using AOL and their affiliates, Compuserve
and Gateway, have not received The Federalist for weeks. While
no sufficient explanation was given as to why we were blocked,
we were assured it will not happen again. Suffice it to say,
the blackout occurred after we published the latest Christian
bashing comments from AOL Time Warner executive Ted Turner.
On March 9th, 2001, in Federalist #01-10, we quoted Turner’s
comment to a group of CNN personnel observing Ash Wednesday
with an ash mark on their foreheads: “What are you, a bunch
of Jesus freaks?” Turner chastised. “You ought to be working
for Fox.” The following week, the AOL blackout began. Coincidence,
we suppose.... Without our knowledge, thousands of our loyal
readers on AOL initiated a protest, which is precisely why
the block was lifted. [Of course, we will monitor our subscriber
accounts at AOL closely after we publish Turner’s next public
defamation of our brothers and sisters in Christ.] Thank you
for your vigilance! —Mark Alexander, Publisher)
________________________________
Note from Sentry over America: Yahoo! was given
the opportunity to respond to a series of questions regarding
the reason for excluding conservative sites, questions about
the editor's scope of control, and others. From Nicole at
their public relations firm: "I did want to let you know
that Yahoo! has declined to comment on your story."
A search engine is different from a directory.
The directory is put together by humans. The search engine
is done by unbiased software (as far as we know, Yahoo! currently
uses Google as the search engine). In Yahoo!, using the search
engine instead of using their directory, you can pull up sites
not listed in their directory. However, new or less sophisticated
users will utilize the directory first so bias by the editor
in putting the categories together can result in censorship
or the "Dan Rather style of fairness."
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