In 1973, the press was almost uniformly adversarial; today it has shamefully functioned from 2009 onwards as a Ministry of Truth, a sort of force multiplier of the West Wing. Everything Nixon did was suspect, often with good cause, and seen through the prism of his excesses; in the case of Obama, from Fast and Furious to Solyndra to the EPA and NLRB freelancing to the selective enforcement of the law, the press has more often been an enabler, working to explain why a scandal or an excess is really some sort of right-wing obsession, emanating from suspect or even racist motives. Something very scary started in 2009-10 — and that this new way of doing business was supposedly done for the proverbial “people” to ensure “fairness” has made it even more insidious and far more difficult to come to terms with.
It’s been in the news for weeks. I can’t do everything.
http://blogs.wsj.com/canadarealtime/2013/04/30/canada-watchdog-anti-terror-spending-doesnt-add-up/
Something….went horribly wrong.
What I wanted to say was that the ‘fact checkers’ are the worst. They don’t check facts, they just obfuscate and distort. Re the ‘fact checking claims’ regarding Paul Ryan’s statements on auto plants getting shut down.
Superb column by Mr. Hanson.
Well, let’s see if the press are actually repentant, and not just angry that their Barry made a spectacle of them.
If they are repentant, they can start working twice as hard to expose Obama and his lieutenants, their backers on Wall Street, and their crimes against God and man, as they did to promote their cause.
I look forward to seeing the American newspapers get serious about investigating the real circumstances of the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown, the rigging of the 2012 election (and which banks paid for it), the truth about what Obama played at in Chicago saunas, and the true identity of the sire of Michelle Robinson’s pups, just for starters.
Oh, and they can start printing the truth about who America’s murderers and rapists and thieves and terrorists and traitors really are so we can have that “honest conversation” about race, religion and morality they keep nattering about. Printing lists of the names and addresses of their city’s known Muslims and homosexuals would be an excellent start.
While we wait for such a list to be compiled, a list of the city’s Obama campaign donors will suffice, so the plain people of the city know whom they need never bother speaking to, buying from or hiring again.
While they’re at it, the American press owe the social credit movement a few retractions, and a fair-minded discussion of how social credit would work and how it could fix the US economy tomorrow morning—and make sure it stays fixed. Any time you’re ready, Mr. Krugman.
I agree with VDH to a point, but he seems to use too broad a brush here in portraying the MSM as universally “adversarial” in the recent past. Those who remember or who are history/news junkies may recall that the MSM press was always supportive of every military venture that arose out of US foreign policy – they were part of the empire building efforts of Washington for the most part of the last century, right up to and including the use of the Nuke on Japan and the Korean and Cuban Missile conflicts to stop Imperialist/Fascist/Communist hegemony. They were “nonadversarial” to all these military interventionist policies.
However the worm seemed to turn after the Kennedys and MLK were assassinated – that was an era of coup where the power structure elite took the US/Washington into modern imperialism and the media was split on the change in direction. LBJ got little support for his foreign policy (Viet Nam), same for Nixon. Liberal media expanded its size due to its populist stand against the draft and the war making economy. A noble cause as the cold war (assured mutual nuclear destruction) had rendered a stalemate between the super powers so they played a game of chess with the globe through proxy wars in dozens of 3rd world battlefields. It wasted a lot of money and lives and still ended in a stalemate until Reagan broke the Soviet’s back in technological one-upmanship.
Nixon was as bad as LBJ and it is essential to realize that the media ragged Johnston as much as they did Nixon on foreign policy. However things took a turn for the worst as the post Carter MSM became distinctly partisan for Democrat causes and candidates. Media historians attribute this to the old Liberal guard still being POed at Republicans for the McCarthy attacks on the 1st amendment and a new breed of reporter, schooled in progressive activism in the newly leftist-infiltrated college systems, entering MSM ranks.
Of course now, all the old guard true liberals are gone from the MSM and with them went reasoned narrative, a jaded attitude towards authority and old styled investigative journalism. The new university-radicalized left has staffed the MSM editorial ranks and with that change we see open partisanism and situational ethics. This gives the MSM a polemic roll in public discourse but the polarization often takes shape as the media representing and championing the attitudes and agendas of authority (big government bureaucratic tyranny and malfeasance) to the public, not the other way round as the once “suspicious of authority” press used to do.
So in my observation the MSM’s “bias: is more towards authority and statism rather than populist empathy with the citizenry as it once was. This transcends partisanism, Right wing media apologise for the malfeasance and error of republican regimes as Left leaning media apologise for Dem policy failures. The real danger is that the 4th estate, (supposedly the watch dog of the public warning us of abused by authority/the establishment) has now become a wing of the state.authority/establishment – the nonconformist adversarial role of the media has vanished with the change of the guard. The leftist activists in the media love big government, authority, and growing the mega-state.
LAS sez: “It’s been in the news for weeks.”
– So have the facts unravelling over Obama’s 5 Watergates – which dwarf any innuendo our media may presume about Canadian government malfeasance. As long as we’re talking scandals, and you seem to be a deep researcher on such matters, what ever happened to the millions that Paul Martin promised the LPC would pay back to the Canadian people for the money which was stolen though the Adscam scandal?
We have no Media except the Sun .
The rest have become boot licker s for government appointments.
Shills for leftist Ideology. A cover for Islam’s many atrocities.
It makes most tyrannies Media look like play time at a Kinder garden they are so leftist political. Both in the Americas, along with Europe.
Reality is forfeit for Marxist dogma.A side show that leeks lies as truth.
The MSM is now a tool of Government to hide its mistakes. To cover for criminals in suites.
To propagate PC multicultural fantastical ideology . At the expense of its Citizans. It no longer investigates anything but its paranoia at the so called right wing.
Mom & pop who want lower taxes.
It has become an arm of repression, for controlling information, not disseminating news.
Propaganda has its own reward.
CBC does more for internet literacy in Canada than any other funding.
The decline of media can’t be hid.
The 4th estate is now the fifth column.
Todays irony, polls show Hudak losing; after polls get it wrong again.
Polls and polling firms inaccurate, poll results = news?
what ever happened to the millions that Paul Martin promised the LPC would pay back to the Canadian people for the money which was stolen though the Adscam scandal?
The fact that you still have to fall back the ‘BUT ADSCAM’ is pathetic, and totally expected for a partisan like you.
My first post was supposed to go into the reader tips. I don’t understand how it ended up here.
L-ASS…. “I don’t understand how it ended up here.”
there is much U don’t understand, butt that’s par for the course for an “intellect” like U
Uh, you clicked the wrong thread? The only other alternative is that some meanie at SDA dumped your comment here.
Reader Tips are just one post down from this one.
But it couldn’t be you, could it, LAS? It’s never your fault. You didn’t do anything. I know. I know.