- However you feel about the Terri Schiavo case, one fact
is indisputable: The mainstream media (MSM) coverage of the matter has
been abysmal.
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- On a fundamental matter of life and death, the MSM heavyweights
have proven themselves utterly incapable of reporting fairly. Take a widely
publicized ABC News poll released on Monday that supposedly showed strong
public opposition to any Washington intervention in Terri's case. Here
is how the spinmasters framed the main poll question:
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- "As you may know, a woman in Florida named Terri
Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years.
Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible.
Her parents and her husband disagree on whether or not she should be kept
on life support. In cases like this who do you think should have final
say, (the parents) or (the spouse)?"
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- A follow-up question asked:
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- "If you were in this condition, would you want to
be kept alive, or not?"
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- The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those
polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never
been on "life support." The loaded phrase evokes images of a
comatose patient being artificially sustained by myriad machines and pumps
and wires. Terri was on a feeding tube. A feeding tube is not a ventilator.
Terri can breathe just fine on her own.
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- And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have
argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow
on her own as well. She is disabled, not dead.
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- But ABC News did not see fit to inform either the poll
takers or its viewers of the truth. Instead, it misled them -- and the
result was a poll response that produced -- voila! -- "broad public
disapproval" for any government intervention to spare Terri from slowly
starving to death. Blogger Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters noted: "Either
ABC is completely incompetent in conducting research, or they have attempted
to fool their viewers and readership with false polling that essentially
lies about the case in question. Since when does ABC conduct push polling
for euthanasia?"
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- Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if
ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill.
Not in excruciating pain. Capable of saying "Mommy" and "Help
me." And of "getting the feeling she's falling" or getting
"excited," in her husband's own testimony, when her head is not
held properly.
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- Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if
ABC News had informed participants that in a sworn affidavit, registered
nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who worked at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent
Center in Largo, Fla., while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified:
"Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on
Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died
yet?' and 'When is that b---h gonna die?'"
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- Now, if you were in this situation, would you want to
be kept alive, or not?
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- Not to pick on ABC News, but, well, let's. In an attempt
to embarrass Rep. Dave Weldon (R.-Fla.) who noted that withdrawing food
and water from someone like Schiavo was extremely rare, ABC's Jake Tapper
last week featured this counter-quote from Prof. Bill Allen, of the University
of Florida College of Medicine:
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- "Feeding tubes have been removed in the United States
for many years, and it's been a common practice. This has happened in many
cases, probably a hundred thousand times in this country."
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- "A hundred thousand times"? There have been
a hundred thousand cases of non-terminally ill, non-brain dead individuals
slowly starved and forced to die in this country? Tapper demanded no proof
from his professor. Instead, he dismissed lawmakers as ignoramuses contradicted
by "experts," cited the biased ABC News poll cited above, and
tossed it back to Jennings with this slam: "Terri Schiavo and her
family deserved better than the way Congress worked this week."
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- Meanwhile, contradicting the experience of every starved
child in Africa and abandoned street animal at your SPCA shelter, the New
York Times informs us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle
Death."
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- Is it any wonder the credibility of the MSM (main stream
media) is withering on the vine?
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- Copyright © 2004 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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- http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=6942
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