Having swooned at President Obama for nearly five years (his four year first term and the campaign year that preceeded it), the MSM has been less than objective in its reporting. It has chosen not to report negative news about the Democrats and the President or downplayed things its done. One small example, which really isn't that big of a deal, is when President Obama gave a press conference wherein he admitted he didn't know a term in Austrian:
It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, probably made after a long day when the President was tired. Here's another one:
Again, it's a meaningless, simple gaffe, probably made at the end of a tiring day. It was mentioned briefly, if at all, with an avuncular chuckle by the press. Had this been former President Bush, we'd still be talking about it today. But the MSM cleans up this President's messes, big and small, and these incidents, meaningless when taken in isolation, portended bigger things if only we'd known it.
Now we have the Grand Slam of scandals: Benghazi, the IRS, the AP and the Secret Service. The MSM is just addressing three -- more on that anon -- and not even talking about the Secret Service one, wherein six agents who engaged prostitutes on their detail in Cartagena, Colombia, were put on indefinite, administrative leave without pay. A report was written by someone with unimpeachable credentials that included mention of two higher-ups at Secret Service who not only also patronized prostitutes at the same time (it's legal in Colombia, apparently), but did so in the same hotel in which the President was staying. The investigator mentioned it in his report but was told to redact it. When he wouldn't, he too was put on administrative leave.
This is the kind of thing we expect from the British. Back in the '80s, with the Troubles continuing to fester, Maggie Thatcher sent John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, to investigage claims that the authorities in Northern Ireland were cooperating with Protestant groups against the minority Catholic groups. Stalker's report, commissioned by the British government itself, found among other things that in fact Northern Irish and British authorities were providing information to Protestant para-military groups on the whereabouts of Catholic paramilitary personnel and then turning their backs while the Protestant groups went out and murdered the Catholics. It also discovered the infamous Shoot-to-kill policy. When Stalker presented his report, it was suppressed under the Official Secrets Act. The British government even tried to try Stalker, but an independent court ruled in Stalker's favor.
Here, we have no Official Secrets Act that, at first blush, should be considered a good thing. Transparency is necessary for a free and informed public. As Justice Brandeis once said before he ascended to the Supreme Court, sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. Yet the MSM continues to maintain a film over the things to be examined by either not reporting them, reporting them and then discrediting them or editorializing. The other night, Scott Pelley contorted himself to say that there was no evidence there was any political motivation for the IRS scandal. Think about it for a minute: Were a conservative in the White House and liberal groups had been the targets, would the MSM have been arguing that there was no political motivation? What's more, why is the MSM even addressing this without all the facts being in evidence? When did the MSM's job expand from mere reporting to advocacy and cheerleading?
This puts the MSM in a bind. It now has to divorce itself from its self-appointed role as cheerleader-in-chief and promoter of the President's agenda and begin to report objectively on scandals that may or may not have an impact on the government of this country. It's struggling to do so and, by and large, failing.
I go back once again to what my learned liberal friend Bill said about this: The MSM is letting the country down. I have uttered the hyperbole that this verges into Goebbles and Riefenstahl territory, but I'm not entirely wrong. The news organs that exist in this country -- the MSM and Hollywood, the majority of which stand side-by-side with the liberal elite -- are putting out a skewed and therefore almost one-sided perspective of the goings-on in this country. What's more, when a conservative member of the media points out things that don't conform to the administration's -- and by extensions the MSM's -- version, the liberal establishment discredits the conservative news organ as being politically motivated. It's a substratum of ad hominem and ad baculum argument styles.
None of these incidents, by themselves or even collectively, will bring down the Republic. They will, however, continue to erode the people's confidence in government, widen the divide between groups and begin preparing the stage for the ultimate breakdown of the best experiment in human history, thereby proving Plato correct.
And ironically, it may very well set the stage for a conservative backlash that could be more strident than what even the liberals fear now.
(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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