“Wall to Wall Adulation”

[PG-13, reader caution advised, some strong language - Martha, send the children from the room]

George Rebane

That’s actually a quote from Charles Krauthammer describing the MSM in their sad attempts at journalism, at least when it comes to reporting on the Obama administration.  This set me thinking about the state of journalism today in light of the White House’s recent admissions about how they have controlled the news media since Obama’s campaign over a year ago.

Rahm Emmanuel, Anita Dunn, and David Axelrod are regularly interviewed on their lackey networks as they explain in a workmanlike manner how they “managed” and “controlled” the media.  They did it by releasing Obama and spokesperson videos and audios without giving the journalist an opportunity to engage them in any spontaneous give and take where embarrassing questions could be asked.  As a news producer, all you could then do was to run segments of it and go on with other topics, which for the MSM has been to surround the placed pieces with puff-ball analysis.

It became clear early in this administration that if you wanted White House access, you played ball according to the rules set down by the designated propaganda czars.  The result has been the ‘wall to wall adulation’ that the MSM has been spewing much to their discredit and loss of viewership.

Fox News, by presenting a complete spectrum of important news topics and balanced analysis (always with prominent liberal pundits like Juan Williams and Mara Liasson of NPR participating) not available on other channels, has now made the ratings game an embarrassment to the leftwing media.  Fox’s viewership alone totals more than all the others – CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, … - put together.  No wonder Pelosi, Reid, and the other socialists in Congress are starting to work on the next version of their ‘media fairness doctrine’.  Totalitarians have always mentored nascent tyrannies to grab the mass communications channels if they nurture any hope of taking control of a people.

Things have gotten so bad that the MSM ‘news journalists’ are now fabricating quotes and attributing them to conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh – just making them up out of whole cloth.  The White House recently assigned a specific office to sit and watch Fox all day so that they know what is happening and what Americans know.  The joke on the liberal media has grown to the point where Glenn Beck has sent the White House a private phone number to a red phone that sits on the studio set from which he does his daily broadcast.  The phone is manned by one of his staff who just sits there waiting for a call to correct anything that Beck says on the program.  No calls to date.

The radical leftwing administration has not been able to dispute or correct any of the facts or questions which come out of Fox.  All they can deliver is the standard sleazebag response, ad hominem attacks on the commentators.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The White House can do more and have now launched an attack on the entire Fox News network.  They have singled out Fox as the news outlet that will no longer have any access to White House or administration officers and staff.  Among other assaults, they are asking their lickspittle MSM outlets to “stop treating Fox as a news network”.  These MSM outlets are the same clowns assigned the boar hog’s hind nipple on breaking significant news events that they garner from Fox, and then in quiet tones finally broadcast three or four days later.  The New York Times recently went public with its embarrassment in attempting to hide the radical socialist/communist staff now ensconced in the White House.

I wonder what it feels like to be a young journalist in a leftwing news outfit.  You arrive with your ideals about truth and integrity all intact, and then are told that here are the no-no areas you will not report regardless of what you discover in your research and fieldwork.  You can’t cover news as you gather it, you have to put out what your editors pass on to you from their Washington handlers.

All the while you watch your viewership and readership dwindle as that of Fox soars.  And you know that most Americans out there can tell the difference between the bullshit you ladle and the real news of the day.  What is it like to have a career like that?

Comments

[Russ Steele]

The attack on FOX is backfiring as more and more people are tuning into FOX to see what all the fuss is about and staying for a the real news.

The New York Times continues to layoff the news room staff as readers seek alternative sources online and ad revenue sinks toward zero. Other big city newspapers are going out of business as they continue to cling to their political correctness and filter the news through a liberal lens.

The Liberal Democrats have to some something real soon now or there will no MSM to carry their message of gloom and doom.

[Russ Steele]

NEW YORK (AP) - Journalism is at risk and American society must act to preserve it. That's a key message in a new report co-authored by Len Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post.
In a paper commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, Downie and Michael Schudson, a Columbia professor, argue the government, universities and nonprofit foundations should step in as newspapers suffer financially.

Among other steps, the authors recommend that the government ensure the tax code allows local news outlets to operate as non-profits. They urge philanthropic organizations to support local reporting. And they suggest a fund be established using fees from telecom or Internet providers for grants to innovative local news groups.

[Wade]

Things have gotten so bad that the MSM 'news journalists' are now fabricating quotes and attributing them to the President's apocryphal "college thesis." Oh wait, wrong MSM I guess...

Just a few points, George:

1) The true crime of the MSM is that they can be accurately described as "Wall to Wall Balloon Boy" rather than "Wall to Wall Adulation" of Obama.

2) Propaganda Czars? The last admin credentialed fake journalists in the WH press corps to throw Fleischer and McClellan propaganda pitches, attacks on other media, or just plain softballs until Jeff Gannon was outed as a gay hooker who "wrote" for a fictitious "news" organization. It also secretly paid other "journalists" to promote its policies. Propaganda is when the majority of a certain network's viewers believe that Iraq perpetrated 9/11, not when Anita Dunn says that that certain network is right-wing. Propaganda is organizing, promoting, and orchestrating teaparty / townhalls, then trying to pass off your own handiwork as "news."

3) Fox presents a "complete spectrum" of both the Republican party *and* the conservative movement, both the corporate supply-siders and the culture warriors are represented (with room for just plain crazy, all over the map stuff a la Beck). Juan Williams? Mara Liasson? Please. Those two are absurd as either "prominent" or "liberal." Try Howard Dean or Paul Krugman and I might attempt to take the "1 non-hard-right-conservative on a panel with 5 doctrinaire neo-cons" format more seriously.

4) Fox has high ratings? Higher than the other "news" networks? Interesting. The comparison is sort of an apples / oranges one if you do not assume that Fox News is actually "news." It is more accurately described as political infotainment. In the same sense, Rush Limbaugh isn't "news" either, he's a talk show host. Nearly all of FNC's newscasters are talk show hosts like Rush. Rush has high ratings too. If popular appeal is the yardstick of news quality, does that mean that People magazine is superior to The Economist? To Foreign Affairs? Do the comparative sales mean that a Big Mac is "better" than a porterhouse from Peter Luger in Brooklyn?

5) The Fairness Doctrine? I can't find any evidence that anyone is working on a new version. Either currently or over the last couple of years during which this meme has floated around unsupported.

6) If it's true that "Totalitarians have always mentored nascent tyrannies to grab the mass communications channels if they nurture any hope of taking control of a people.," and I believe that it is, what does that say about those who currently control the mass communication channels? What does it say about Rupert Murdoch?

7) So, no correction calls to Glenn Beck from the fantasied "person-i-invented-in-the-white-house-basement-assigned-to-watch-glenn-beck" means that EVERYTHING Glenn Beck said was TRUE? Because surely they would have called, right? That after all is EXACTLY what the prop phone is there for. Brilliant! Sort of. The best part is where the White House is supposed to call to correct the notion that someone in the White House is watching Glenn Beck all day, so that must be true too! I hereby PUBLICLY invite Beck to disprove the fact that he wears diapers. tick-tick-tick . What? Nothing? Thought so. Glenn Beck wears diapers. It is a proven fact.

8) I'm not sure any of the administration's statements about FNC qualify as "assaults" nor does their management of Presidential access for interviews. After all, George Bush wouldn't let the New York Times interview him ever. For 8 long years. It wasn't a "dictatorship" and it wasn't a 1st Amendment violation - just the famously thin-skinned Bush treating what he saw as a "left-wing" newspaper the way he saw fit. Just as he saw fit to not do press conferences like other modern presidents.

9) If FNC has all the ratings, doesn't that make it, kind of by definition, "mainstream?"