Posted on 06/24/2014 7:55:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Guess how the press reacting to IRS’s commissioner’s implausible testimony
At a marathon hearing on Monday night, congressional investigators grilled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over the nature of the targeting scandal and the agency’s recent revelations that it lost two years’ worth of email communications from former executive Lois Lerner.
The hearing was contentious with Republicans accusing Koskinen of charges ranging from ignorance of the law to the active misleading of Congress. Democrats, meanwhile, played defense by shielding the agency and the White House from criticism while accusing their GOP colleagues of playing politics.
The hearing was a significant event in the course of the investigation into the IRS’s alleged targeting of conservative groups. Today, U.S. Archivist David Ferriero and White House attorney Jennifer O’Connor, a former IRS counselor to the commissioner, will testify before the congressional investigators. The revelations regarding what could most charitably be described as the tax collection agency’s incompetence (malfeasance, at worst) keeps coming.
So how did the nation’s most visible media outlets react to the latest news out of the IRS?
Let’s check out the Paper of Record as of 9 a.m. ET:
Above what is the web equivalent of “the fold,” The New York Times printed nothing about the IRS commissioner’s testimony. The story barely registered on the site’s U.S. news section. It was the Times’ politics section where it was determined the IRS story should lead.
That is striking because, in one post on the Times site billed as a Q&A style explainer for the IRS scandal, many questions are asked and admittedly not satisfactorily answered. The content of the Times betrays the apolitical nature of this scandal, even if The Grey Lady’s editors hope to convey the political nature of the investigation to their readers.
Well, maybe it was just the website. Let’s check the print version of the Times:
Nope.
What about this morning’s Washington Post? Surely news consumers in the nation’s capital would not stand to see this story buried:
There it is! Above “the fold” even. Oh, no. That’s not a report, it is an op-ed by the conservative editorialist Michael Gerson. Again, the impression being conveyed is clear: the IRS scandal is a political event and not a general interest news story.
In the Post‘s limited coverage of last night’s testimony is one article which focuses on Koskinen’s claim that the White House was not informed of the missing emails. The majority of the article, however, was a roundup of Republicans spouting off indignantly about the IRS commissioner’s flippancy.
Even The Wall Street Journal, a paper with a large circulation and a relatively conservative editorial board, neglected to update their readers on the IRS scandal and last night’s hearings. Two perfunctory posts on Koskinen’s testimony and today’s scheduled hearings were buried in the Journal’s Capital Journal section, the equivalent of the paper’s politics page.
The network newscasts, which uttered not a single word about the scandal on Monday evening, are playing catchup on Tuesday. While ABC’s Good Morning America broadcast only a one-sentence summary of last night’s events, CBS’s This Morning broadcast a detailed recap of the night’s hearings, Republicans’ concerns about the IRS’s conduct, and Democrats’ defense of the IRS and the White House.
NBC’s Today broadcast a similarly detailed package in which reporter Peter Alexander reported on the expanding scale of the allegations about the IRS’s misconduct, but focused extensively on the partisan nature of the investigation.
While the press still seems inclined to dismiss the IRS scandal, those who opine on politics for a living have a different take.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the hosts had a difficult time explaining away the apparent misconduct of the IRS based on Koskinen’s testimony. In a revelatory moment, the crew turned to MSNBC host Alex Wagner to absolve the IRS of blame. Her attempt at exculpation was not particularly compelling.
“It’s a gross, big bureaucracy,” Wagner said of the IRS. “They’re using really old machines.”
She added that, unlike server-based public email, the IRS keeps their electronic mail records on tape. “And then that tape is destroyed every 60 days, because the IRS is like 1960s Soviet-style bureaucracy,” Wagner opined.
Accepting Wagner’s premise, the rest of the group then wondered why Americans should empower this tax collection agency with more power like what was done after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Finally, former McCain campaign veteran Steve Schmidt suggested that partisan Democrats efforts to pardon the IRS for its behavior have the potential to backfire on them if more damning revelations about the tax collection agency’s conduct are uncovered.
Sure, the IRS scandal has the potential to backfire on dismissive Democrats in the same way all matter has potential energy. Not everything reaches a kinetic stage, however, and the forces that could focus the nation’s attention on the scandal are determined to treat it as yet another partisan exercise by Republicans.
Given the outstanding questions surrounding this controversy, the gravity of the charges, and the disinterest of the press, the IRS’s defenders better hope nothing more egregious is uncovered. If there are more revelations to come, many more than just the bureaucrats at the IRS will have been complicit.
If the House Republicans order the House Sergeant at Arms to arrest Lerner for Contempt of Congress and then imprison her, which they have the power to do, then that would make the front page of all those Corporate Media rags.
Even assuming, as implausable as it is, the computer hard drives crashed and the back ups were just over written tape files, there is no accountability by the government for failing to maintain records they require individuals to do for up to seven years plus there is no interest by the press into the fact the IRS was used to stiffle political assembly. Only in Amerika. Goerbels would be proud.
Fox News radio reported this morning that the IRS Comm. said that he saw ‘no evidence that any laws were broken,’ but failed to also report that Gowdy proved that the IRS Comm. never looked up the statues and couldn’t say what the laws were anyway.
That omission says a lot.
RE: If the House Republicans order the House Sergeant at Arms to arrest Lerner for Contempt of Congress and then imprison her, which they have the power to do, then that would make the front page of all those Corporate Media rags
__________________________
They should really start with Eric Holder. He has ALREADY BEEN HELD IN CONTEMPT. Yet, here he is — still free to do damage to the Republic.
If Congress had any balls, they would be doing this as soon as they held him in contempt.
As things are now, either this Congress is gutless or holding someone in contempt means nothing.
Open season on these vermin who lie for the oligarchy is coming, sooner than these anti-Truth scum could even imagine. Once the collapse arrives, these verminous liars will have to be dealt with if the Republic is ever to rise again.
We live in a different era on at least two levels.
First, in 1973-4, there were only four networks, and if they all covered hearings, nothing else mattered—and they all covered the Watergate hearings, and nothing else mattered. Today, there are a hundred networks, 1.5 of which—C-SPAN and FoxNEWS—are covering the hearings, so everything else matters and the hearings do not matter.
Second, in 1972, the first true globalist progressive, George McGovern, had been repudiated by the American people, and it became necessary for the globalist progressives to repudiate the loss, to demonstrate that it had somehow been rigged and the winner had not deserved to win, and that the American people would have voted for the “correct” person otherwise. It took two years of concerted effort, plus the support of the media which wanted nothing more than to demonstrates its power to destroy people in power, but it was done.
Today, by contrast, the first true globalist progressive elected (WJ Clinton came close, though when push came to shove was still willing to side with the US) must not be seen to be repudiated by the American people, even though he was elected twice—fraud or no fraud, neither was a rout like Nixon over McGovern in 1972, and it is evident that a majority of the American people are experiencing a great amount of buyer’s remorse. So the MSM will never show, allude to, or discuss what is happening, barring a massive uprising, political or otherwise, by the people themselves, because that would amount to a repudiation of globalist progressive political philosophy, which has been unthinkable since at least the 1974 equivalent of a bloodless coup overthrowing the freely-elected President whose election repudiated globalist progressive political philosophy.
The IRS is an agency of the Treasury department. It most definitely is part of ‘the government’.
“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The government agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes and the interpretation and enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code.”
bump
Another scandal going no where.
Defund them.
RE: Defund them.
Easier said than done. This will entail a tax law overhaul. We did not get to where we are ( Over 70,000 pages of tax rules) overnight.
A weak congress has sent a clear message to Dems:
Stonewalling, dissembling, and obfuscation tactics work. When there’s no fear of consequences or punishment, the lawless bureaucrats will do as they please.
The Republican controlled House has utterly failed to establish itself as a serious body that does not tolerate arrogance or deceit. And so it will only subject itself to more of the same type of behavior.
I know.
Fair Tax is a good place to start looking at how it can be done. Maybe not the only way, but it would have to be implemented over a set period of time. Americans seldom entertain the thought of terminating government agencies.
They just keep taking the kick in the chops. Because we don’t feel we can change it.
These retards consider their ignorant opinion to have equal value as verifiable facts.
Works for Odingo doesn't it?
Yep, I’m hearing the same incredibly negligent biased material omissions from the media
Why not?
Obamacare appeared, full blown, in only a matter of weeks!
< /sarc >
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