http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/...hn-bolton.html

I love Dershowitz, even when I disagree with him. I admit that's less often than in the 80s and 90s, b/c he is first and foremost a defender of civil liberties, and in the 80s the fear was from the New Right and now the fear is from the Left.

But unlike most every other talking person in the media, Dershowitz is true to his own compass, and readily calls out anyone who uses the tactics of McCarthy or calls on repression of speech and ideas and expression. Today that's mostly the Left calling for the end of free speech, so this New York traditional Democrat finds himself in an odd situation.

Doubly so b/c he's a strong defender of Israel, which is also in the Left/Democratic Party crosshairs these days.

But I also post this b/c the article by Dershowitz keenly points out how media bias works, really how bias in presentation works no matter the medium, but these days it's mostly mass media as few people go to lectures or political speeches in person these days.

Anyway, read the article if you get a minute and care to, it lays out how NBC smeared John Bolton as being chair of an "anti-Muslim think tank", despite that being wholly untrue.

now that was on network news, presented as fact, not opinion. Their support for it was articles published about Muslim "no go" zones in Europe, and that some of their tweets were retweeted by Russians 4 times.

They fail to mention that the Reid, the biggest leftist on MSNBC, has been retweeted by those same Russians 267 times. Or that the articles were simply policy discussion of a known issue even Merkel has now admitted exists.

But the damage was done, the slant put out there. Bolton has an anti-muslim background. It's not supported by any facts, but they cherry pick a few things that they then put together to give the IMPRESSION of such a thing.

As Dershowitz points out, that's the working definition of McCarthyism. He used the same tactics, to cherry pick things and then use broad guilt by association to give the impression of people being Communists or communist sympathizers, with no real evidence.

This goes on every day. If a Republican gets embarrassed in a story the media mentions he/she is a Republican, but when the NY AG gets accused of beating women and resigns major media outlets all forget to mention his party affiliation.

of course the bias goes far deeper, and with Trump it's pretty much out of the bag b/c they have all but given up any pretense of objectivity, like focusing on the release of hostages being "staged" and somehow callous by Trump to get media coverage for it, when Obama has held Rose Garden photo ops for such things, but this is the every day, every hour subtle bias that most people miss, and thus it is far more effective.

That's why most Americans, and about everyone who votes conservative, knows not to trust the media, and why I support Trump calling them out. The Fourth Estate has a right to exist and operate, and when they become little more than a biased mouthpiece for an agenda the other side of the aisle has every right to point it out as loudly as possible.

But I do enjoy Dershowitz, thought this was an interesting piece.