Category Archives: Journalism

Bob Schieffer Nazi comment, Schieffer CBS owe Americans and Nazi victims apology, Nazis confiscated guns herded Jews, Edward R Murrow reported truth

“surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.”…Bob Schieffer

“While my father was hunted, Schieffer lived comfortably in Texas, where private citizens had guns and children were safe. There is no need to denigrate Schieffer, but he and his ilk need to be educated before invoking the worst evils of mankind.

The NAZIs were nothing like the National Rifle Association. They were the exact opposite. The Nazis were anti-gun. They confiscated guns, starting with those owned by Jews. Like many liberal American Jews today, German Jews were told everything would be fine. The government would protect them.”…Eric Golub

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”…Edward R. Murrow

There was a time when I had respect for Bob Schieffer and CBS News. That respect and trust has eroded for years. Recently, any respect I had for Scheiffer completely evaporated.

Recently Bob Schieffer referred to the struggle against gun proponents in the context of defeating the Nazis. At CBS, the home of Edward R. Murrow, who knew first hand the tyranny and terror of the Nazis, who took guns away from the Jews, herded them up and destroyed them. Murrow did his best to inform America and the world of these atrocities.

Bob Schieffer and CBS owe the American public and victims of Nazi atrocities an apology.

From Last Resistance January 18, 2013.

“I desperately tried to find a great quote that would summarize my thoughts on what I’m about to write. I searched all over the web, and could find not a single quote that encapsulated the preposterousness of what Bob Schieffer said on Wednesday. So rather than blather on with platitudes, like I usually do, I’m gonna get right to it.

According to Bob Schieffer, President Obama’s battle against the NRA is comparable to both Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights battles, and the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Here’s the exact quote for your perusal and general amusement:

“Let’s remember: there was considerable opposition when Lyndon Johnson went to the Congress and…presented some of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the history of this country. Most people told him he couldn’t get it done, but he figured out a way to do it. And that’s what Barack Obama is going to have to do…what happened in Newtown was probably the worst day in this country’s history since 9/11. We found Osama bin Laden. We tracked him down. We changed the way that we dealt with that problem. Surely, finding Osama bin Laden; surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.””

“Now onto the second part of Schieffer’s diatribe. In his rant, he equates going up against the NRA with defeating the Nazis. Seems a bit extreme. Bob Schieffer is exaggerating to such an extent, that it goes beyond simple hyperbole; it moves toward irresponsibility.

So, when actually analyzed, the information in Schieffer’s quote is nothing more than simple lies through omission, and grotesque exaggerations. It is really disturbing to me that this man is regarded as a national treasure in the news industry. He distorts the truth, and propagates gross misrepresentations; which is the exact opposite of what a journalist should do.

I would admonish Schieffer; tell him that he’s better than this garbage; but I know he’s not. Schieffer is just one of a million “journalists” who are propping this President up. Don’t believe a word he says, because he is a snake.”

Read more:

http://lastresistance.com/1064/bob-schieffer-obama-taking-on-nra-defeating-the-nazis/

From  Eric Golub and the Washington Times January 17, 2013.

“Liberals like Schieffer cannot stop. Maybe they are pro-Adolf Hitler, given their insistence in injecting him into every conversation about conservative policies from tax cuts to gun control to foreign policy. Hitler, Brown-shirts, Nazis, Goose-Steppers, and similar analogies flow from their lips as casually as others say “nice day” and “lovely weather.”

This is deeply personal for me. My father is a Holocaust survivor. So were his parents. They lived in the woods, constantly on the run. Like animals, they survived through luck and instinct. My father was a baby, spending his first four years hunted like a dog. My grandmother would keep him under her shirt to muffle his cries. Christians (those people the left keeps demonizing) risked their own lives and smuggled my grandfather food and clothing. There was no shelter. After four years on the run, World War II ended. Four years after that, my father and his parents came to America. They were lucky. His grandparents, my great-grandparents were all murdered.”

Read more:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/tygrrrr-express/2013/jan/17/bob-schieffer-nra-and-nazis-never-again/

Edward R. Murrow

RTNDA Convention October 15, 1958

“Believing that potentially the commercial system of broadcasting as practiced in this country is the best and freest yet devised, I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. These instruments have been good to me beyond my due. There exists in mind no reasonable grounds for personal complaint. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done–and are still doing–to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.”

“One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this.”

“Sometimes there is a clash between the public interest and the corporate interest. A telephone call or a letter from the proper quarter in Washington is treated rather more seriously than a communication from an irate but not politically potent viewer. It is tempting enough to give away a little air time for frequently irresponsible and unwarranted utterances in an effort to temper the wind of criticism.”

And this brings us to the nub of the question. In one sense it rather revolves around the phrase heard frequently along Madison Avenue: The Corporate Image. I am not precisely sure what this phrase means, but I would imagine that it reflects a desire on the part of the corporations who pay the advertising bills to have the public image, or believe that they are not merely bodies with no souls, panting in pursuit of elusive dollars. They would like us to believe that they can distinguish between the public good and the private or corporate gain. So the question is this: Are the big corporations who pay the freight for radio and television programs wise to use that time exclusively for the sale of goods and services? Is it in their own interest and that of the stockholders so to do? The sponsor of an hour’s television program is not buying merely the six minutes devoted to commercial message. He is determining, within broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the entire hour. If he always, invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or “letting the public decide.”

“I refuse to believe that the presidents and chairmen of the boards of these big corporations want their corporate image to consist exclusively of a solemn voice in an echo chamber, or a pretty girl opening the door of a refrigerator, or a horse that talks. They want something better, and on occasion some of them have demonstrated it. But most of the men whose legal and moral responsibility it is to spend the stockholders’ money for advertising are removed from the realities of the mass media by five, six, or a dozen contraceptive layers of vice-presidents, public relations counsel and advertising agencies. Their business is to sell goods, and the competition is pretty tough.

But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.”

“But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, “When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.” The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.”

http://futurewewant.org/2012/an-inspiring-quote-from-edward-r-murrow/

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular”

Edward R. Murrow