Boehner goes nuclear when he finds out that language was illegally inserted into the bill giving the AIG execs big bonuses with our money. This goes all the way back to the language in the failed Stimulus Bill.
This is the speech that Leader Boehner was referencing in the beginning of the video above
ABC’s World News on Wednesday and Good Morning America on Thursday both reported on the revelation that Newt Gingrich received almost $2 million while consulting for Freddie Mac over an eight year span.
Yet, the network ignored the fact that the company (with a Democratic President) is still giving massive bonuses and will now be asking the federal government for an additional $6 billion.
On World News, Jon Karl highlighted only the Gingrich connection, highlighting attacks by Michele Bachmann.
Yet, while ABC focused on this, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell explained, “So, here’s what set off the latest round of outrage. $13 million in bonuses for the two mortgage giants that had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Now these bonuses come after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually lost $4 billion last quarter.”
So, while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell offered snarky comments, such as insisting that Gingrich is “trying to explain his gold platted, insider status,” at least NBC allowed that the company still had issues, separate from their relation to GOP presidential candidates.
On CBS’s Evening News, Wyatt Andrews noted the “bipartisan anger” from Republicans and Democrats over the latest news.
Speaking of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae CEOs, Andrews added, “Fannie’s Michael Williams and Freddie’s Charles Haldeman, earned $9.3 million and $7.8 million over two years, which gives them, Republican Darrell Issa said, the best taxpayer-financed jobs ever.”
On Thursday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford mentioned the congressional investigation during a Gingrich segment. GMA only focused on the Republican presidential candidate. NBC’s Today did the same.
A transcript of the Evening News segment can be found HERE
[Today we have featured some of the illuminating work by Dan Gainor from the Media Research Center. Be sure to scroll down and read the three part series showing how some in the elite media abuse their positions to behave as Democratic Party operatives. In today’s piece Gainor shows how the problem goes far beyond rank and file journalists. George Soros, who has stated that he wants a new centrally planned economic order, is the single largest contributor to far left political causes. – Editor]
George Soros
Part I: Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?
When liberal investor George Sorosgave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
The ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site’s proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Throw in a couple investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy – a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media types like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who’s Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
• Christiane Amanpour – Anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts “giveaways,” the Tea Party “extreme,” and Obama “very Reaganesque.”
• Paula Madison – Executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBC Universal, who leads NBC Universal’s corporate diversity initiatives, spanning all broadcast television, cable, digital, and film properties.
• Matt Thompson – Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group’s advisory board features:
• Ben Sherwood, ABC News president and former “Good Morning America” executive producer
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigations are mostly liberal – attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The Center for Public Integrity is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their “web of influence.”According to the center’s own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template – important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
• Phil Bronstein (President), San Francisco Chronicle;
• David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
• Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
• George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2008.
Why does it all matter? Journalists, we are constantly told, are neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,” argues journalists need to be “transparent” about their connections and “be up front about your relationship” with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour’s biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
If journalists were more up front, they would have to admit numerous uncomfortable connections with groups that push a liberal agenda, many of them funded by the stridently liberal George Soros. So don’t expect that transparency any time soon.
Part II: Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations?
It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,” lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.
The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it’s news, but it nothing new. According to “Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,” he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included “history or journalism or some form of writing.” He served as “editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of” his own paper, “The Lupa News” and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party “encouraged” such papers.
Now as one of the world’s richest men (No. 46 on Forbes’ list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started with Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post’s board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There are journalism industry associations like:
• The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
• And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros’ media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen – a professional group devoted to “monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.” Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to one such as NPR’s Alicia Shepard or PBS’s Michael Getler, both directors of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen’s website front page is the line: “Supported by the Open Society Institute,” a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group’s membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
• Deirdre Edgar, readers’ representative of The Los Angeles Times;
• Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
• Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
• Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn’t address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There’s more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 32 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is “non-partisan investigative news.” The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose boardArianna Huffington sits.
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations all paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
Mainstream Media Pushing Hard to Defeat the Tea Party, Raise Taxes
The Politico headline read: “Conservative elites pine for 2012 hero.” They could have shortened that sentence to “Elites pine” or more likely to “Elites freak the heck out.” Because it’s not just the conservative cognoscenti, it’s all of them. The folks in charge of the mainstream media equation miss the good old days when they ran everything and ordinary American voters and taxpayers did as they were told.
Those days are gone and the in-crowd is afraid it is on the way out, too. Congress’s favorability rating is down to 13 percent and even the lefties at Mother Jones are whining that both political parties are cancelling town hall meetings to hide from angry voters.
The era when elite Washington – of all three major parties: Republicans, Democrats and the Media – could just raise our taxes or cut deals behind closed doors has gone bye-bye. And the Powers That Be are determined to turn back the clock.
They blame the Tea Party and rightly so. A combination of a grassroots movement and a sophisticated technology now able to actually inform Americans has successfully taken away some power from politicians and the media. The logical solution would be for both groups to reflect more what the public actually wants from them – a saner, more affordable government and a media that is fair to someone other than just liberals.
Instead, the elites have declared war on the Tea Party.
That in itself is nothing new. Since the first spot of tea a couple years ago, anti-tax, anti-Big Government protesters have been called bigots, violent and a dangerous fringe element. The recent debt battle took it to a far worse level as those in power sought to blame Tea Partiers on our nation’s unwillingness to spend itself into the grave.
The result of that battle was, seemingly, a toss-up. The debt ceiling was raised and a super committee established to discuss ways to solve the budget crunch. But the design of the committee makes tax hikes likely. The deck is stacked as everyone from President Obama and Vice President Biden to Speaker Boehner and almost every generic pundit is now pushing to do just that. And the clock is ticking as a Dec. 23 deadline looms.
At least a few admit they want to use the chance to raise taxes. Obama, most Dems and even loud-mouthed billionaire Warren Buffett are begging for a tax hike.
On Sunday, Aug. 21, the major media chimed in. The Washington Post ran two huge pieces skewering the Tea Party on the economy and more. Columnist Allan Sloan led off the business section claiming “the Tea Party types bear primary responsibility.” Over in the opinion section (as if the first piece wasn’t opinion), they ran a pro-spending, pro-Keynsian economics piece complaining that critics of such policies “almost surely have it wrong.” The critics are, of course, the Tea Party and politicians who are friendly toward it like Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The very same day, The New York Times produced an editorial urging “business leaders to change the minds of the Tea Party lawmakers” and back a “grand bargain that cut spending and raised tax revenue.”
The push to raise taxes is near universal across the media for two reasons. First, it boosts the size of the burgeoning Nanny State. The journalistic elite always support more government. Even when politicians trim the size of growth in government, reporters bemoan such “draconian” cuts. Journalists have never met a draconian increase in the size of government that they didn’t like, but taxpayers sure have.
Secondly, a tax hike would require squashing the Tea Party. And the elites have joined in the hunt.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. has claimed GOP politicians are “subservient” to the Tea Party. Dionne’s columnist at the Post, Richard Cohen, concurs and said Perry “occupies the cultural and intellectually empty heartland of the Republican Party” because he “vows to diminish Washington’s influence.” Cohen calls that a “moronic policy,” instead claiming “what America desperately needs is more, not less, Washington.”
The network news shows use the same strategy with just a dash more subtlety. When local Tea Party leaders confronted Obama in Iowa, they were put down on air. On NBC, Chuck Toddnoted the “bitter taste of the energy and confrontational style of the Tea Party” and their “in-your-face tactics.” ABC’s Jake Tapper referred to it the “unruly Tea Party style.”
Politicians took the same view. “Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who co-chaired the deficit commission, said the American people are rightly disgusted, and he’s personally bothered by Republicans undermining any chance of Speaker Boehner compromising,” explained Tapper July 12. That’s a Republican argument supporting Obama’s “shared sacrifice” plan where the elites control more of your money.
They were mirroring the elitist anti-Tea Party talking points, such as the one from Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod who called the downgrade of U.S. debt “a Tea Party downgrade.” That, despite the fact that Tea Partiers were the only ones willing to cut enough government to prevent the downgrade in the first place.
Wherever you look, elites are moving to crush resistance.
The West does it the democratic way of course. In Syria and Libya, they use tanks and guns and SCUD missiles. Here in America, elites use the more dangerous weapon of the media to hang on to power over everything we do. Their bosses envy the power of their counterparts elsewhere. France , for example, just “announced $16 billion in new taxes to ensure it reaches its deficit-reduction targets,” rather than cut its massive welfare state.
In the U.S., Democrats and Republicans alike embrace the tax-and-spend approach, so the Tea Party threatens them all.
Naturally, it must be stopped. Rep. Frederica Wilson, (D-Fla.), made it all clear in a recent speech. “Let us all remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party – the Tea Party holds the Congress hostage.”
Like most politicians, she’s wrong. If the Tea Party really had that much sway in Congress, our economy and our nation would be in much better shape.
Conservatives are crazy. Sometimes they’re stupid, racist or even evil. On creative occasions they’re all four – at least that’s how they’re portrayed by the American media. All that reflects the typical lefty view that right-wingers are “son of bitches” who need to be taken out, as Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa so sweetly explained. Hoffa envisions a “good fight” because his opponents must be the opposite – evil.
This election season, journalists have partnered fully with the left to depict conservatives in the most vile ways they can muster. While it’s nothing new, the sheer volume of attacks is noteworthy. What’s worse is that many are coming from supposedly legitimate news operations. . (It is fun to note this nasty attack comes just days before Obama pushes his latest “bipartisan” legislative effort.)
Every national conservative politician battles these media characterizations.
Ronald Reagan was crazy or stupid, depending on the lefty arguing it or the phases of the moon. Nancy Reagan was allegedly the power behind the throne, so she was crazy and evil.
President George H.W. Bush once ran the CIA – evil.
His son, President George W. Bush, managed to be crazy, stupid and evil. (Lefties liked to depict him in Nazi regalia or as a chimp, or both. Conservatives who use identical phrasing or images for Obama are, of course, category four – racists.) Vice President Dick Cheney got the Nancy Reagan treatment – crazy and evil.
It’s almost a party game to list the top conservatives and describe how the media and left are depicting them. But it’s no game to candidates. Prominent media outlets are trying to sabotage every viable conservative opponent to Obama.
Rep. Michele Bachman, (R-Wis.), is called crazy for her gas price predictions or for just being her. Newsweek’s Aug. 15 cover story on Bachmann was called “The Queen of Rage,” complete with a cover photo of a crazy-eyed candidate. “In Iowa, where she was raised, Bachmann has become the living embodiment of the Tea Party. She and her allies have been called a maniacal gang of knife-wielding ideologues. That’s hyperbole, of course,” wrote Lois Romano. When reporters write something that vile and follow it with “that’s hyperbole,” what they really mean is “no, it’s not.”
Then there’s ESPN’s L.Z. Granderson, also a CNN contributor, who called Bachmann “crazy.” Granderson said that “the people aren’t going to vote for crazy. And she [Bachmann] still registers as crazy with a lot of independents.” But those attacks were repurposing the lefty theme that has been around for years. Crazy Mother Jones magazine called her “Bachmann (R-Crazy)” in a 2008 headline.
With Bachmann now running for president, Matt Taibbi resurrected that assault in Rolling Stone’s June 22 issue. “Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions.” Taibbi summed it up by saying she’s “exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy.”
Then there’s stupid, a subject the old school media know all too well. Politico, the lefty publication that caters to Washington insiders, ran an Aug. 29 cover story with the headline: “Is Rick Perry dumb?” This sterling bit of journalism began with the premise that Perry is “confronting an unavoidable question: is he dumb – or just misunderestimated?” (That last bit is a dig at Bush the Younger, of course.)
This theme has been everywhere for years, enshrined even in T-shirt form as a red-white-and-blue elephant with the slogan: “Never Underestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Numbers.”
Tune into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and there’s co-host Mika Brzezinski bashing the right for not hiking taxes in the debt limit negotiations. “I think the Republicans look stupid and mean. I’m sorry, this is stupid.”
It’s a common theme over at MSNBC: conservatives are stupid. “Sarah Palin Has Proven Herself To Be Profoundly Stupid,” whined “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
If it’s evil you want, Matthews throws that term around like beads at Mardi Gras. Let’s see: Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are evil: “These people are evil in what they’re doing.” All because he thinks they’re wrong about climate change. Then Matthews bashed former Speaker Newt Gingrich as “evil” and looking “like the devil.”
The media pile on Perry as the front runner. ABC’s Jim Avila called out conservative Texans as evil, even if you didn’t quite use the word. “Some argue that, deep in the heart of Rick Perry’s Texas, there is little heart.” “Some.” That’s another journalist weasel word, allowing Avila to say what he actually feels without owning up. It’s the same theme over on the left, typically blasting the Koch brothers with the term. A 2010 Gawker headline explained it only a bit tongue-in-cheek: “Republican Billionaires Arrange Secret Meeting to Plot Evil.”
Those attacks are awful, but the scarlet letter attack in today’s world earns the “R” for racism. Matthews is good at that one too, saying Perry “could be Bull Connor with a smile.” Matthews gave the Bull Connor comparison to Perry twice. (Connor was a civil rights era racist who unleashed police dogs and turned fire hoses on protesters. He was also a Democrat.)
If you’re white, even a bogus claim of racism is almost impossible to defend against. It’s the favorite of charlatans and media hounds, and a persistent media theme since Obama first announced for president. Everybody who’s anybody – the Tea Party, Fox, the GOP and more – are all racists for daring to oppose Obama.
Donald Trump’s request to see Obama’s grades? “That’s just code for saying he got into law school because he was black,” explained CBS’s Bob Schieffer.
MSNBC’s lefty religious expert Frank Schaeffer tells viewers about “a racist white bloc in the Republican Party that has come dressed as the Tea Party.”
Even black GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain gets abused as “racist.” TV nutball pundits from foul-mouthed comedian Bill Maher to massively inked, one-time comedienne Janeane Garofalo have criticized his candidacy – supposedly designed to deflect “the racism that is inherent in the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the tea party certainly.” Garofalo actually claimed Cain was being paid to fend off charges of racism against the GOP. Of course, you can’t fend off such disgusting charges. Even a lunatic like Garofalo knows that.
Because such charges get repeated dozens, hundreds or thousands of times. The examples above are just scratching the surface. We could fill newspapers with these outlandish claims, if any bothered to print such truth. Crazy, stupid, evil and racist. The four horsemen of the liberal media apocalypse this election. And every one of them has already been set loose.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture.
Normally we make it a practice to not republish an entire piece, but this is so important for readers to understand and share in this case we are making an exception. Read carefully.
If you’ve been following the news this week, you’d get the impression that America is a scandal-plagued nation. Scandals to the right of us, scandals to the left of us.
Take your pick. There’s the media assault on GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, the deadly “Fast and Furious” federal gun-running case, the Solyndra solar loan fiasco, the collapse of MF Global, led by former Democratic N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine and, of course, the deeply disturbing allegations of child sexual abuse at Penn State.
But the real scandal isn’t any one of those. It’s how journalists pick and choose which controversies to play up and which to play down. They are so inconsistent, you’d think they studied ethics at Penn State under Joe Paterno.
Heck, maybe he studied under them.
Take the allegations against Cain. We are watching ABC’s George Stephanopoulos attack Herman Cain on how he deals with women. This is the same George Stephanopoulos who worked for Bill Clinton and did his best to undermine attacks against him. Remember, Clinton was charged with a variety of women-unfriendly incidents including rape. Yes, rape. Not that the networks made a big deal of it at the time.
Here’s Stephanopoulos, on page 267 of his autobiography “All Too Human,” “Most important, I wanted to keep reports of Paula [Jones’] press conference off television … It wasn’t a hard sell.” His book goes on to say how he tried to discredit her. Yes, this openly Democratic operative is a “newsman” now.
Don’t believe it for a second. The different between “journalist” and Democratic Party operative is often non-existent.
It shows in everything they do. We aren’t even two weeks into CainFest 2011 and the broadcast networks have done 117 stories on him. One-hundred and seventeen? That’s more than a small war would get.
Actually, it’s 58 times more than a small war has gotten. Obama ordered troops into Uganda in October, before the Cain allegations came out. CBS and NBC have each mentioned it once since then. ABC hasn’t mentioned it at all.
But the networks don’t care about American soldiers at risk. They are more concerned that Obama’s presidency is at risk.
That’s the only explanation for how they’ve covered, or not covered, the “Fast and Furious” scandal. You’ve had to look hard to find consistent coverage of this corrupt government program that cost the life of at least one law enforcement officer. Allegedly the goal was to track U.S. guns to drug cartels and arrest gun runners.
But the program was poorly run and it cost the life of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. A good leader would take responsibility for that. A moral leader would have called the family to talk to them or meet with them in person. Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t do either. All he did do was lie to Congress about it.
According to Holder, the program was furiously “flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution.” That skips any blame for when he told Congress he had heard of the program only weeks before. Now we know that’s just not true. In any other city than Washington, D.C., what Holder did was a boldfaced lie.
Not that you’d know it from most network news. While CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson has shown her top-flight skills as a journalist, and been abused by the Obama administration for it, her competing networks have abandoned their responsibility to their viewers. Both NBC and ABC skipped the House Republican roasting Holder received on Capitol Hill.
It’s been much the same in the Solyndra scandal. There only ABC has shown any semblance of journalistic skill covering Obama’s failed green program. It’s a $500-million scandal involving an Obama fundraiser, a solar panel company that had a dot.com era idea on how to make a profit (none) and it’s gotten nowhere near the media coverage a Republican scandal might have gotten. (Just ask Herman Cain.)
A recent Media Research Center analysis found “just 15 stories mentioning the Solyndra scandal since its August 31 bankruptcy filing.” For those who find math difficult – like many journalists – that’s about one eighth of the stories the Cain controversy has gotten.
But hey, Solyndra wasn’t run by a former governor considered as a possible Treasury Secretary and hailed by news outlets as an economic expert. That would be a real scandal. Or not, if he had the infamous “D” after his name.
The former governor is Jon Corzine, who has the reverse Midas touch. He’s run Goldman Sachs, New Jersey and, most recently, MF Global, which just collapsed amidst a $2-billion bankruptcy. MF Global fell apart in what CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called a “mini Ponzi scheme.”
But not one story on ABC, CBS or NBC has mentioned that Corzine is a Democrat, was considered an Obama adviser and possible pick for a top spot in his administration.
Every time there’s a controversial story, media types are making these choices. They love the Occupy Wall Street crowd, so they play up the good from those protests, despite rapes, vandalism, arson, assaults on police and more. But they hate the Tea Parties, so everything they do is somehow nefarious.
It’s time the media covered their own scandals. They have plenty.
According to a University of Miami study, those historical rankings of American presidents that pop up every year or so are significantly weighted in favor of Democrats, thanks to the liberal leanings of academia.
Political science professor Joseph E. Uscinski, one of the study’s authors, said the new analysis shows that the overwhelmingly liberal academic community consistently ranks Republican presidents about 10 spots lower than the public would.
“I don’t think anyone is surprised,” Mr. Uscinski told The Washington Times. “Among the political scientists and historians that I work with, Democrats outnumber Republicans 8 to 1.”
What was eye-opening, he said, was the stark difference between the historians’ assessments of Republicans and the grades given by the public.
“On average, all the Republicans get the short end of the stick,” he said. “But the one it impacts the most is [Ronald] Reagan. It’s often difficult for people to fathom why he’s ranked as low as he is.”
The University of Miami report, to be published in the scholarly journal White House Studies, looks at presidential rankings from historian Arthur Schlesinger’s seminal 1948 survey through more recent polls, including the Wall Street Journal’s 2005 list and C-SPAN’s 2009 survey.
In the C-SPAN rankings – the focus of much of the University of Miami analysis – Reagan in 2009 broke into the Top Ten, behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 