Today’s national media often toady to power

Viewpoints

July 18, 2010

Stephen Dick CNHI The Richmond Register Sun Jul 18, 2010, 02:00 PM EDT

RICHMOND — The major national media are a joke, content to take dictation from officials and write revisionist garbage to appeal to the lowest intellectual denominator.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart banged this nail firmly on the head when he said “the media kinda sucks” after showing snippets of TV talking heads wondering how Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings could get close enough to Gen. Stanley McChrystal so the general could hang himself.

While the majority of the embedded military media copied down bravado nonsense, Hastings did some real reporting. Then the media superstars smugly noted that Hastings will never have that kind of access again. Well, he doesn’t need to.

One thing the media has never learned is that when they cover the powerful, they need to be prepared to burn bridges.

David Halberstam knew this. So did Neil Sheehan. Their early reporting from Vietnam for the New York Times infuriated the Johnson administration but proved prescient. The media are worried about access and also e-mails from patriotic numbskulls who think every war is a God-given test of U.S. durability. Mustn’t rock the boat.

When they’re not toeing the official line, journalists are making up outlandish nonsense to try and pacify all sides of a political debate, and attempt to make one view as important as another with no critical discussion.

Last weekend, USA Today had a cover story about the tea-party movement (what else on July 4 but old time conservatism and anti-government patriotism). The newspaper asked the question of what the tea partyers are against. Its answer - so egregious in its lie - was Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Huh? Bush as the subject of tea-party wrath?

If the teabaggers were against Bush, they certainly had plenty of opportunities to form a decade ago and demonstrate against illegal wars and wiretapping, a huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry and the rape and dismemberment of the Constitution with torture and the Patriot and Military Commissions acts.

But they didn’t. They didn’t care about anything during eight years of safe, chest-puffing Republican rule. But now they see a black man in the White House, and they’ve been told by their media masters that he is a socialist.

Even the Bush bank bailout has now been attributed to Obama by the right-wing noise machine. Recently The Republican National Party chairman and certifiable loony, Michael Steele, said Afghanistan is Obama’s war of choice.

Even after USA Today mentioned Bush, the article listed a host of grievances tea partyers have against Obama, but Bush’s sins were omitted.

Why such dishonesty in a major national newspaper? A couple of reasons. It tried to give the tea party added bipartisan legitimacy by mentioning Bush. Above all, it tried to be balanced.

Balance doesn’t exist in the tea party so USA Today has to provide it. The newspaper had already compared the tea-party mentality to the July 4 celebration simply by writing the article so dropping in Bush’s name kept it from being a complete genuflect.

The media is rife with this laziness and intellectual dishonesty every day. You would think that an institution entrusted to keeping America informed so citizens can participate in democracy would strive to be honest and to report without fear or favor. You would think.

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