I’m going to do something I don’t do all that often at erin-go-blog…I’m going to get serious.

In his book Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, Al Franken disputes the notion that there is a liberal media bias. He does not, however, claim that there is no bias in the media. Franken says there are two biases the mainstream media is guilty of…sensationalism and laziness.

I have to agree.

I majored in communication arts. I worked as a journalist for several years. As an undergrad, I did a paper in which I essentially proved that it’s nearly impossible to eliminate all bias from your writing. No matter how hard you try, your personal biases will manage to work themselves in. With this in mind, I worked extra hard to write articles that were thoughtful and well-rounded. When an issue was in dispute, I made sure to get the story from both sides.

This should be a no-brainer, right? Maybe I’m being naive when I say that I believed other reporters, for the most part, did the same thing.

I’d like to turn your attention to an article in yesterday’s Buffalo News:

Pro-war veteran group endorses candidates

This article centers around the activities of the group Vets for Freedom. They are a non-partisan nonprofit organization committed to supporting the war effort. One of the founding members of this group is my boyfriend’s brother, David Bellavia. The article’s author, Jerry Zremski, also wrote an article which appeared in the news on June 25. (no longer available online)

Now, if I didn’t know one of the people involved, it’s unlikely that I would have even read these articles. But what struck me first when I read the first one was that the writing was incredibly weak. And in talking to David afterward, he confirmed that many of the things reported in the article were either untrue or half-truths.

The article came about because the organization contacted the News (and many other publications) when David and another of the Vets for Freedom members traveled to Iraq for ten days this summer to get up-close-and-personal accounts of what was actually going on over there. They contacted the media to see if anyone wanted the chance to run these accounts.

Apparently, someone smelled a story.

The “story”, as they saw it, was that Vets for Freedom was not a nonpartisan organization and in fact had ties to the Republican party.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why or how this idea came about…maybe it’s as simple as our collective culture not having the ability to separate support of a particular idea (the war in Iraq) from support of a political party.

I’m not going to remember every “fact” that supported these ties, but here are just a couple of them…

One was that David attended this year’s State of the Union address as a guest of “a Republican representative in Congress.” While this is indeed true, it is also true that David attended the SOTU as a guest of his representative in Congress, Tom Reynolds, who happens to be a Republican.

Another was that the PR representative who contacted the News on behalf of Vets for Freedom, Taylor Gross, was a “former white house spokesperson under President Bush.” Again, technically true…but there are a couple of facts missing from this story. One, Taylor Gross is with the Washington PR firm The Herald Group. There is no mention of a PR firm in either article. Simply reading what was written, one would assume that Vets for Freedom had hired Gross directly out of the White House as a full-time PR representative for their organization.

According to David, this PR firm was chosen because they’d also done work for a high-profile Democrat…John Kerry. If I were a reporter and not a blogger, I’d contact the firm to verify this fact. But I’m not. 😉

Finally, Mr. Zremski doesn’t seem to have tried very hard to speak to anyone at Vets for Freedom. In yesterday’s article, there’s a quote that makes it appear as if he talked to Wade Zirkle (the executive director), but in fact, the quote was pulled from the website. David personally tried to reach him a number of times and his calls were not returned.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t end with The Buffalo News. Here are the google results for Vets for Freedom. SourceWatch, PR Watch, Wikipedia…and on and on and on. The group recently took out an ad in support of Joe Lieberman:

Thank you, Senator Lieberman.

Iraq and Afghanistan are complicated wars. But you have not let politics influence your position. We are grateful for your integrity, leadership and unwavering commitment to America’s troops. We are veterans of these wars, and we salute you.

Now, whether or not you agree or disagree with their stance on the war or their support of Senator Lieberman, there’s nothing negative or smear-like about that ad, is there?

Then why is it being compared to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against Kerry?

Have we become so polarized, so blinded by our own belief systems, that no one wants to see the actual truth anymore? Have we become so apathetic that we simply don’t care?

Issues are complex. There’s often more to the story than a 15-second soundbite, but we rarely get more than that. And when we do, it’s frequently from a liberal or conservative source attempting to call its troops to battle.

I think we’re better than this. I think we’re smarter than this.

I think we can handle the truth.