Much to their chagrin, the Obama message makers haven’t been able to put the clamps on foreign media yet.
Ms. Gutmann trots out some curiously older examples of the plunge off the left edge of sanity by the LA Times and CBS but didn’t provide any of the six hundred million or so she could have pulled from MSNBC or even CNN since last January. Naturally, the New York Times has become such an embarrassing tabloid that it doesn’t bear much examination in these discussions any more.
She does make a point about the first part of the problem in U.S. journalism.
Everyone has a point of view. People tend to go into journalism precisely because they have strong feelings about issues. What else attracts them? It’s certainly not the money. And if they don’t have strong opinions, they certainly develop them over time. We are not, and not supposed to be, stenographers.
Good reporters take account of their biases and attempt to be fair to the other side. But fairness starts with acknowledging one’s own bias. The alarming thing about Dunn and Axelrod is that they don’t understand they start with political preferences. Apparently, their views are the only acceptable ones; anything else is somehow “other”, in a different dimension, something to be marginalised as “Republican propaganda.”
Reporters today don’t begin by acknowledging a personal bias. They’ve deluded themselves into believing that they are not only impartial but that any personal feelings which happen to creep in are representative of the majority of Americans. One of the reasons that it’s more interesting to read British newspapers is that they don’t play this little game of make-believe.
The other aspect of what’s going on with this administration and any contrary opinions expressed in public is that we are dealing with perhaps the most sensitive and extraordinarily thin-skinned president in history. As I said in my previous post, it’s always about him and it always has to be positive.
Don’t for a second think that the orders to coordinate an effort against Fox News aren’t coming from the top down.
Take a breath and imagine for moment the stunning waste of resources that would have been involved if President Bush had spent his eight years in office trying to officially silence his detractors in the press.
Contrast that with a president who can’t make up his mind about supporting troops in Afghanistan but can direct an offensive against the one American news outlet that doesn’t drop to its knees and drool when he walks into a room.
He’s pathetic.
Hot Air has a post today that makes the case that the war against Fox News is about keeping the friendlies safe from any flak about not reporting real news stories. If Van Jones and ACORN are only being spoken of negatively on Fox News then it’s not really news, right?
True, Fox News has a rightward tilt but that doesn’t mean everything they report on is irresponsible. What’s irresponsible is the the President of the United States perpetuating that lie.
If Fox News covers a story that MSNBC, CNN, et al refuse to look at because they’ve abandoned all journalistic principles, it’s not being biased, it’s being the only outlet doing the job.
In a not-too-distant journalistic past in America, both the Van Jones and ACORN stories would have blown wide open in a heartbeat because reporters had integrity and self-respect. Both of those traits have to be checked at the door for any reporter who wants access to this president.
Why? Because the smartest administration ever has been an endless parade of highly dubious decision making and appointments and they’re terrified of scrutiny.
So they are engaged in message control and an assault on the First Amendment.
And most of the press is shutting up about it.
