Tag: MSM

here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free “objectivity” is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones. Just look at the things that are allowed. The Washington Post lavished editorial praise on the brutal, right-wing tyrant Augusto Pinochet, and that caused no controversy. AP’s Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier got caught sending secret, supportive emails to Karl Rove, and nothing happened. Benjamin Netanyahu formally celebrates the Terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel that killed 91 civilians and nobody is stigmatized for supporting him. Erick Erickson sent around the most rancid and arguably racist tweets, only to thereafter be hired as a CNN contributor. […] Having someone who was part of the slaughter of 80 civilians in Lebanon on your Board is fine. [Having] a former AIPAC official with an obvious bias toward Israel […] is perfectly consistent with a news network’s “credibility.” But expressing sadness over the death of an Islamic cleric beloved by much of the Muslim world is not. Whatever is driving that, it has nothing to do with “objectivity.”

Glenn Greenwald, opining on the inexplicable firing of CNN’s Octavia Nasr. Read the whole thing. Your Liberal Media.

We are the AP, we are a for-reals, big-timey news agency. Without us you wouldn’t even know what was happening two towns over. Thus, re-using our content costs money, because our content is valuable. You, you are just some guy who runs a multi-million dollar company or some a-hole with a blog. Your content is meaningless pablum slathered on the walls of the digital romper room that is “the internet”. It is valueless and thus we are able to reproduce it in any way we choose.

InclinedPlane, Hacker News commenter, distilling what the AP meant to say in response to this.

I said: hot out there.

Average high for Boston today? 79°F.

Temperature right this very second? 88°F

The same can be said for most if not all of the eastern seaboard of Our Great Republic.

This must be extremely embarrassing for the global warming deniers. I’m already sick of the blanket coverage of this heat and how embarrassing it is for them. Such blather is sufficiently prevalent that probably one half of one degree of this heat is directly attributable to B-roll of eggs frying on pavement.

Note to MSM: they never expect you to be prepared. Even a high schooler realizes this. You want to seem relevant? You want to go viral? Be prepared.
Stop thinking that your ultimate goal is to be friends with these people and attend their beach parties. Pro Tip: they don’t invite you to those “to get to know you better as a person.”
The country will benefit if you just show up prepared. So will you.

BP’s Oyster

According to the New York Times, the oldest oyster-shucking operation in the country shucked its last oyster on Thursday. Towards the end of the piece is this quote from the requisite owner/operator:

We were just hopeful they would have capped that thing by now [such that we wouldn’t be forced to shutter the business]

Uh, even if they had completely and forever capped it yesterday, your business model (harvesting food products from the gulf) is over. Probably for decades. Remains unclear to me why the media, so obsessed with idiotic minutiae, utterly fails to comprehend The Big Picture. All these gulf-based industries except oil are going away. And in terms of those living on the Earth today, they are likely going away forever. Oh, right, “obsessed with idiotic minutiae.”

MSM: If you want a guvmint-should-be-doing-more story, how’s about the guvmint should be actively retraining these folks, starting now for some sort of useful job that they’ll be doing for the rest of their lives, because shrimping, shucking oysters, and the various other food-related gulf industries are over. Forever. It’s just that the media, and by extension America, doesn’t seem to grasp this yet.

GFCM

And, of course, one more I forgot:

CNN calls Erickson “a perfect fit” who is “in touch with the very people” they want to reach.

That would be the very same Erick Erickson who unleashed this gem on David Souter:

The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court.

Far from being fired for that remark, he was hired. As part of the “best political team on television.” But let’s all thank Lord Jesus that Helen Thomas is safely out of the way. The White House press room can now again serve as a refuge for the kind of deeply probing intellect exemplified in these recent gems (h/t Balloon Juice ):

Q: Can you talk about the criticism that the President isn’t making that emotional connection with people over the spill?

Q: Does the White House believe that it was a mistake for the President not to meet with fishermen or other local business people during his last visit?

Q: Did anyone in the White House yell [BP’s Tony Hayward] for making those comments?

IOKIYAR

Helen Thomas says something stupid (about Israel, no less) and what happens to her:

Thomas had been dropped by her speakers’ agency; upcoming appearances were being canceled; the White House was unlikely to call on her ever again; and perhaps most importantly, the board of the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA) was considering whether to revoke her front-row seat. The board was not likely to deliver a response Thomas would like – in a statement, the WHCA called her comments “indefensible.”

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, offers no apology this morning for his latest edition of fetid spew:

This morning on his radio program, Glenn Beck responded to the general outcry over his approving comments last week for the work of Elizabeth Dilling, a virulent anti-Semite who actively supported Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Beck’s response contained neither an apology nor a disavowal nor any indication whatsoever that he was at all contrite over using his considerable media presence to promote a discredited and hateful woman’s writings.

Rush Limbaugh likewise offered no apologies on his recent work re: the Nazis:

Rush Limbaugh, last week unfurled shocking rhetoric in which he compared the Obama White House to a Nazi organization and even likened Obama to Hitler. (“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”) The outlandish attacks seemed to be a case of Limbaugh playing catch-up to Fox News’ Glenn Beck (Limbaugh = Beck Lite?), who had been pounding the noxious Nazi angle for weeks.

There is literally nothing a right wing pundit can say that will get him or her removed from the “serious people” commentariat. Nothing. Concomitantly, almost any comment, no matter how banal, will, can, and probably has already been used to permanently silence someone with known left-wing tendencies. I don’t pretend to defend Helen Thomas, but her near-instant defenestration is absolutely without context relative to the treatment of far more horrifying offenses taking place daily from the mouths of commentators with far more reach and impact than Helen Thomas has ever had. Unforgivable. Your Liberal Media at work.

On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection

Barack Obama… in 1996

Precious Blame

unsolicitedanalysis:

Where was this clarity during the Bush administration? The failure of federal, state, and local regulators/agencies never absolved our previous President.

It was certainly absent if you’re looking for the MSM to provide it. But you’re missing the fact that Bush specifically was in favor of the failure of our federal, state, and local government and regulatory agencies. Need I quote Lord Reagan? I guess I do:

government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

You can’t deny the government a legitimate role in any issue, no matter how large or small, and then expect government to be secretly housing a massive underwater engineering specialty, or to have regulated the offshore drilling industry into essential safety. This is the fundamental disconnect of the current argument, not that that stops the spread of utter nonsense.
Every prior GOP administration has systematically weakened regulations on offshore drilling. These chickens come home to roost and it’s suddenly all Obama’s fault? How? Why? In what universe does that make any rational sense?

And, of course, the anti-government right’s reaction to the crisis? Blame the government. Obama should (apparently) be down there, personally, running the mud shot or at the very least torturing somebody aboard the mud shot injection machine.

Now, of course, were he down there, you get to play the “government meddling is ruining BP’s brilliant plan” card. That’s what I call good policy.