PrintMay 11, 2011
Our beloved media
The death of Bin Laden highlights the continued slow death of the Main Stream Media (MSM) and its credibility. The media's overall portrayal of bin Laden's death has been overwhelmingly positive, which is a welcome respite from the usual fare. The naysayers have been few. The complaints come from the ultra leftists like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore with the occasional ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) sufferer from the right. None of them made it onto the nightly news.
Can you imagine if the same event had happened in 2008 under President Bush's watch? Here is what I think would have happened.
- Every news program would lead with a piece on the assassination of bin Laden and questioning if it fits our "values" replete with interviews with international law scholars.
- A Democratic Congress led by Representative Grayson would be calling for the impeachment of President Bush for violating the sovereignty of an ally.
- The DNC would call the Navy SEAL action a political stunt, designed to give Republican candidates a boost in an election year.
- Senator Kerry would be demanding a full investigation into the event. Kerry would be complaining that the lack of transparency and changing storyline coupled with the failure to release photographs undermines our standing in the world.
Most of the programs that caused our media such heart burn during the Bush years are still in place, or have been expanded by President Obama. Rendition and Predator drone strikes in another sovereign country hardly merit much coverage by today's MSM. The one exception to Obama carrying on Bush programs is enhanced interrogation, which was only used on 3 targets under President Bush. Ironically the start of the trail that eventually led to Obama's shining moment, and Bin Laden's death, would have never existed without enhanced interrogation.
No peace marches, no calls for impeachment, no complaints about expanded executive power. No sense of irony by NPR hosts about the tribunal system working and a man going free versus the current administration's alternative. Which approach is more moral exactly?
Let's be honest, the media is in love and Obama can do no wrong. So instead of probing stories or challenging authority the MSM charges forward concentrating on peripheral issues that aren't important to a lot of Americans. It seems as if the idea is to distract the electorate from the horrible condition that the last 3 years of democratic rule have wrought.
Unemployment is more than 9% and underemployment is nearly 20%. Digging through a PDF of the president's long form birth certificate won't employ a single person. Which story got more headlines last month?
Our country is dependent on foreign energy sources, yet our president takes millions of acres of potential resources off the table. At the same time Obama is glad to export energy production to a developing nation like Brazil. How positively colonial of President Obama, shipping those "dirty" and "ungreen" jobs overseas. Did the New York Times notice?
The current administration is telling our country's most advanced and prosperous companies where they can set up shop, and whom they can hire.
The mainstream media's credibility may be dead for most observers, but that won't stop them looking for paranoid "birthers," Tea Party racists, and Obama Derangement Syndrome candidates to distract the voters from the sorry state our country is in. Pundits that feed into the media's stereotypes end up helping Obama's reelection chances by perpetuating the distraction.
A mind blowing national debt, crushing unemployment, and continued government overreach into almost every aspect of private American's lives won't end until there is a new President in the White House. The MSM won't tell your friends and neighbors that fact, so you will have to.
