Media bias, or is this journalist just plain stupid?
From the WaPo:
“We know that terrorists have come into this country by way of Mexico.”
— Herman Cain
Cain is wrong. The Houston Chronicle looked closely at this question and found that no one arrested at the border has faced terror-related charges or carried out a terrorist act.
The analyst at the Post, Glenn Kessler, clearly does not understand basic logic. Herman Cain did NOT say that some people arrested at the Mexican border were terrorists. In fact, he asserted exactly the opposite - namely that some of the terrorists who have come in, came in via Mexico.
I don't kow if Cain's assertion is correct. I'm going to give Kessler the benefit of the doubt and say that he is not actually this stupid; I can only therefore conclude that he is deliberately biased against Mr Cain.
And that's not the only example:
“When you sanction the Iranian central bank, that will shut down that economy.”
— Perry
In foreign policy, if there are really such easy solutions, they would have been tried already.
It is not so simple to sanction the Iranian central bank. Such a move could also harm allies such as Japan, which gets oil from Iran, or countries such as Russia and China with substantial investments in Iran, thus harming other U.S. foreign-policy interests. Taking this step could also push oil prices higher, potentially harming the U.S. economy. Our colleagues at PolitiFact have a comprehensive look at the potential pitfalls in this approach.
All of Mr Kessler's comments sound reasonable, and may even be true. Perry didn't say it would be easy, nor did he say there would not be knock-on effects. What he did say was that it would shut down their economy. Given the effects Mr Kessler asserts, it sounds like Perry is 100% correct - loss of money from Japan, loss of lots of other trade from Russia, etc.
Does this mean we should? I don't know; it's a complex question. But Perry is right; we could, and Mr Perry, again, is showing his political bias.
All of this is a good lesson to keep in mind in _all_ marketing writing. Are your biases showing? If they are, it will completely blow your credibility.
