Let’s review a few items of interests re: the W. Bush Administration:
- Paying Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher and others for favorable opinions about WH policies or to attack opponents of the WH.
- Planting Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions.
- Used reporters to out a CIA agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.
- Fed reporters misinformation about WMD (with malice aforethought, mind you) on Iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq.
- Waged a coordinated campaign against NBC.
- The Pentagon Pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks.
- Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.
- Told America and, specifically, journalists to “watch what they say and what they do.”
But, indeed, Obama’s administration calling out FoxNEWS as a glorified communications wing for the GOP is a yet another example of the President’s outlandish, Nixonian lawlessness. Truly unprecedented.
Call me when FoxNEWS turns over three hours of their vaunted “news time” in the mornings to a former Democratic representative. Likewise when msnbc hires anyone who is remotely like Glenn Beck for their “editorial” hours (which are loosely 7-10pm EST for both FoxNEWS and msnbc).
(Top 8 topics largely via Balloon Juice; links a free value-add for you, the Lemkin reader)
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