[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?
rebanesruminations.com 
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