Posted on 12/13/2014 11:12:12 AM PST by DanMiller
All the news that fits the desired narrative, and none other, shall be reported by the legitimate "news" media.
On February 11, 2013 Vice President Biden said that he and Obama are "counting on...legitimate news media" to help in their gun control efforts.
He said he knew people would continue to "misrepresent" the positions taken by himself and Obama, but that "legitimate news media" would cover them in a way that's helpful to the administration.
In this post, I use the term "legitimate 'news' media" in the same sense that Biden apparently did.
I have been reading Sharyl Attkisson's November 2014 book Stonewalled. Its thesis is that favored businesses, Government agencies and politicians set the agenda of the legitimate "news" media, which defer to them in what they report and how they report it.
Since Obama's 2008 nomination and subsequent election, the legitimate "news" media have embraced Him by reporting (or creating) good news for Him and His administration while ignoring or disparaging any reports that they consider inconsistent with their pro- Obama ideological talking points. In doing so, they have relied excessively on administration spokespersons without verifying, independently, what they have been told.
On December 11th, The Washington Times published an article by Monica Crowley titled How do we protect Barack Obama today? It relates to the ideological perspective of the media as related by a broadcast journalist shortly before the 2012 presidential elections.
When I asked her for an example, she replied, “Every morning, we hold a meeting about how to build that evening’s broadcast. We’ve been doing this for decades. Everybody talks about which stories we’re going to air, what the line-up looks like, and which reporters we’ll have live in the field and which ones will be filing taped pieces. In the past, the left-wing bias was always left unspoken. People just ‘got it,’ because they all thought the same. [Emphasis added.]“Once Obama pulled ahead of Hillary and certainly once he became president,” she said, “the bias came out of the closet. Now, every morning when we meet to discuss that night’s show, they literally say — out loud — ‘How do we protect Barack Obama today?’” [Emphasis added.]
Shocking? No more shocking than any other common but unpleasant reality. And it is congruent with Ms. Attkisson's multiple accounts in Stonewalled. Less than half way through her book, I have learned more than I had previously understood about what, how and why the media reported -- and did not report -- on the green scam, the Benghazi scam, the Fast and Furious scam, the IRS scam and others. It's disgusting but neither shocking nor surprising.
We have a "free press" in the legitimate "news" media. They are free to lie, to accept officially authorized "news" and to reject as not newsworthy or wrong anything which disputes, or is even merely inconsistent with, the prevailing narrative based on the official line.
Here are two interviews with Ms. Attkisson:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lER7A0Y3pGk]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi0YuR6PIYw]
Many viewers and readers of the legitimate "news" media seem to be catching on. Perhaps that explains the decline in their numbers of viewers and readers. Do the legitimate "news" media care? They must, because it impacts their bottom lines. Will they continue their march into oblivion by running ever more bland pap while hoping for change they can believe in? Or will they, eventually, begin to report hard news, regardless of whom it might distress?
Please read Stonewalled. Depending on where you live, it may (or may not) be available at your local public library.
The reality is they are now the enemy media.
The fourth estate has become a fifth column. These days, I openly mock the media when I see them on the streets and in places I go. I point them out to my children, in decidedly disparaging terms that upsets these mediots to the core of who they are.
Dinosaur media, Drive-by media, Obamabots, Mediaots, DemocRAT shills, and so forth. It is fun to see how demeaning and derogatory I can get with them.
From the daily beast website:
In the Sony emails, there are numerous correspondences of Sony execs complaining about being constantly harassed by movie moguls Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg for high-priced donations to back various democratic candidates, from Alison Lundergan Grimes to, yes, Hillary Clinton. In one, dated October 3, 2014, Tom Rothman, President of TriStar Productions, angrily emails Keith Weaver, EVP of Worldwide Government Affairs for Sony, about an email Spielberg sent him requesting his presence at a fundraiser.”
“This is from steven spielberg, who has hit me for 32 fucking k for some Hilary event for the senate Can you pls check and see if, please god, I have already given to that so that I can’t give that much now. These guys are killing me...”
Nice quote from Michael Savage.
Another one for this case: The watch dogs have become lapdogs.
I have seen the fourth estate/fifth column line for 15 years here on FR. It was outsourced when I first saw it.
When I came to Atlanta 1.5 yrs ago, I often saw local news people standing around their vans by the courthouse, etc. I struck up conversations with them and asked them about the unity of opinion among them, even when it was obviously wrong.
I used as example their coverage of the weather and Atlanta’s experience with traffic in the snow which was relatively non-political unity in ignorance and lies.
Both on-camera faces, producers and cameramen were honest and agreed that they all had a herd mentality and “could not” say something different from the agreed-on spin.
But none of them could describe how, in Atlanta, one particular spin becomes the agreed on spin and must persist, even when it is blatantly false.
In contrast, in my field of IT, there are always people who speak out contrary to the official story and state the truth, even if it is ignored by management.
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