Posted on 06/24/2014 7:28:13 PM PDT by lasereye
We live in a strange time. Historically, reporters and editors have believed that their job is to disseminate news. That is no longer true. Now, most reporters and editors believe that their principal function is to prevent people from learning things they are better off not knowing. Day after day, they run interference for their party, the Democrats. Blockading inconvenient stories from making the news is job number one.
Consider Fast and Furious. The Obama administration deliberately encouraged guns to be sold illegally and transferred to Mexican drug lords, for reasons that have never been explained. Hundreds of Mexicans and least one or two Americans died as a result. Was that a news story? In Mexico, yes; here in the U.S., it was generally greeted with yawns.
Benghazi: four dead Americans, including an ambassador who had pleaded with his own State Departmentrun at the time by a prominent presidential contenderfor security that never came. Mysteries abound: what was the ambassador doing in Benghazi anyway? Why did the CIA have an annex nearby? Why did one of the alleged ringleaders of the attack give one interview after another to American news outlets while the Obama administration did nothing to apprehend him, or any other participant in the attack, for nearly two years? Why didnt the administration even attempt to send help to the Americans while they were under attack? Where were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the disaster unfolded, and what instructionsif anydid they give? Was Obama too concerned with his fundraising trip to Las Vegas to pay any attention to the Americans who were besieged in Benghazi? And where did the crazy story of the internet video come from, anyway? Why werent we told that on the night of the attack, our intelligence agencies reported that the terrorist attackers were using State Department cell phones to report to their superiors?
On the VA, dont get me started. Just today, more details about the scandal emergedsecret waiting lists, altered records, dying veterans. A year or two ago, leftists like Paul Krugman were touting the VA as evidence that socialized medicine is a smashing success. Mightnt the current scandal tell us something about the desirability of government-administered medicine? Our reporters and editors wont touch that angle with a stick.
Then we have the burgeoning IRS scandal. If you are a New York Times reader, let me bring you up to date: the IRS, urged on by Democratic Party politicians, has gone to considerable lengths to suppress conservative-oriented nonprofit organizations. Among many other things, it sent 1.1 million pages of documents, some of them confidential materials that it is a felony to disclose, to the FBI, encouraging the FBI to stir up criminal prosecutions of conservative donors. When its activities came to light, the IRS stonewalled and likely destroyed incriminating documents, while its key employee refused to testify under oath, relying on her privilege against self-incrimination. Scandal, anyone?
It is impossible to understand our presss supine performance without acknowledging that most reporters and editors are Democratic Party operatives who would rather conceal the news than report it. Pete Wehner writes:
Heres a thought experiment. Assume during the George W. Bush administration the IRS had targeted MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, the Center for American Progress, and a slew of other liberal groups. Assume, too, that no conservative groups were the subject of harassment and intimidation. And just for the fun of it, assume that press secretary Ari Fleischer had misled the press and the public by saying the scandal was confined to two rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati and that President Bush had declared that there was not even a smidgen of corruption that had occurred.Lets go a step further. Assume that the IRS Commissioner, in testifying before Congress, admitted that the emails of the person at the heart of the abuse of power scandal were gone, that the backup tapes have been erased and that her hard drive was destroyed. For good measure, assume that the person who was intimately involved in targeting liberal groups took the Fifth Amendment.
Given all this, boys and girls, do you think the elite mediathe New York Times, Washington Post, The News Hour, and the news networks for ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNNwould pay much attention to it?
Answer: They wouldnt just cover the story; they would fixate on it. It would be a crazed obsession. Journalists up and down the Acela Corridor would be experiencing dangerously rapid pulse rates. The gleam in their eye and the spring in their step would be impossible to miss. You couldnt escape the coverage even if you wanted to. The story would sear itself into your imagination.
That is true, obviously. Look what the so-called mainstream media did with an inconsequential lane closure on a bridge! The one place where I part company with Wehner is his reference to the elite media. There is nothing elite about the New York Times or the Washington Post, although the Posts editorial board is actually pretty good. I cant imagine anyone claiming that the CBS, ABC or NBC evening news shows are elite. All of these news outlets are, in fact, low-grade and partisan. They are entitled to no deference and should be accorded none.
If the media reported on Obama for one week like they did on Bush and Reagan, he’d be impeached and prosecuted. His corruption has become so emboldened that the IRS destroys critical evidence and thumbs its nose at Congress.
The press is only as corrupt as the citizenry allows. This kind of corruption is unheard of historically from Washington but our citizens are fragmented, uneducated and dependent.
Great piece by John Hinderaker... thanks for posting.
ping - you’ll like this one...
Yeah it sucks.
But 51% of the American public keeps voting for it.
51% think it’s great.
51% are cheering the Democrat party on.
So what do you want me to say?
oh for a return to those days of yesterweek......
America Pre...”transgendered”
The Old Media has NO MORAL COMPASS whatsoever
There is absolutely no difference between the democrat party, the federal government, and the mainstream media. If things continue, we will either dissolve into a totalitarian state or the union will dissolve.
The smarmy, smart aleck answers by the IRS chief said a lot about their mind set. I can just imagine what would happen to an audited taxpayer with such an attitude.
Read the LA Crims at breakfast this morning. nada on the IRS hearings.
My soon to be Unpublished letter to the LA Times submitted today.
Just as you did in the first few months after the terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the Times did not cover last nights historical event, the congressional hearing on the IRSs destruction of evidence in the investigation into the allegations the president used the FBI to go after his political enemies and sway the election of 2012. The picture or high crimes by the administration is now coming into focus.
Using Watergate as a standard, the Obama administration is guilty of far more serious crime, failure to protect and respond to the attack and covering up the nature of the attack. The consequences of the administration using the IRS on such a widespread basis far exceeds Nixons break-in of the democrat headquarters.
Whether he is impeached and removed or just disgraced, history will record these crimes, whether or not the Times chooses to report them.
The times policy is to not publish letter if they are not in response to a times story. So if they don’t cover something your letter will be sh!+canned.
bkmk
Our once republic of republics is a memory.
Our once President of the United States exercises power far closer to a despot of antiquity than George Washington.
The tyranny is here, and no election can reverse it.
I don’t believe it is more than a third or so. The rest is fraud and corruption.
To think that a fellow American knew he was hiding long waiting lists and deaths of VETERANS, and then took a bonus for lying about that fact, its almost too much to bear. I am leaning more and more to leaving this once fine country.
If your theory is true, then we’ll never win again.
How do you beat someone who’s cheating when every single branch is aiding and assisting them in their cheating?
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