Left-Wing Media Elites

Those left-wing east coast bastards just can't give the president a break! Oh wait... That's what they live for.

Salon makes a good point this morning about Jeff Gannon. No one is covering this. No one is looking into this. What could possibly be missing from this scandal? It's got the four Ps - porn, prostitution, propaganda, and possible security breach. Nothing is missing from this scandal from a media perspective, and it's chock FULL of malfeasance, (which is admittedly fairly commonplace in this administration).

So you might think, well... maybe a media issue isn't interesting enough to those outside of the "inside baseball" world to bother reporting. Also not true. And that's the part I forgot about:

What's also curious is that last December another media controversy erupted over the role a journalist played in posing a controversial question to top White House officials. It involved a reporter for the Chattanooga Free Times Press, Edward Lee Pitts, who helped a National Guardsman craft a tough question posed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding the lack of body armor for U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq. Rumsfeld's at-times-cavalier response created a small firestorm. ("You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.") The revelation that Pitts was involved in formulating the question, and the debate over whether he overstepped a journalistic boundary, soon became a story onto itself in the mainstream press. Unlike Guckert, who was criticized for bending the rules to toss softball questions to administration officials, Pitts was accused of bending the rules to ask a question that was too hard.

That line kicks ass. Explain this, MSM! Fucking Bill Keller of the New York Times is having some sort of email debate with Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis. Let's talk about this, Bill. They're spending time up in the clouds discussing the existential nature of "reporting," when it's not reporting that's the problem. It's the editors. It's the choosing the stories that's important. I don't think the New York Times can hide behind the usual excuses. Jeff Gannon is too wonky to be interesting? This ain't social security, Bill. There are naked pictures (now taken down). We didn't know about it? Gannon's name has appeared numerous times on your own op-ed pages. So what's their excuse? And what's Jarvis' excuse for not bringing this up as a single example of the failure of the MSM to protect us from the government when you have a forum with the executive editor of the New York fucking Times?

"Protect us, Michael?" You hoopleheads! You think this isn't a big deal? This is everything! Evil thrives in darkness, my friend. The media is here to shine a light into the darkness. I know that the mere suggestion of a future totalitarian United States is enough for you to shut me off and put a metaphysical tin foil hat on my head, but I've got news for you. That's the road we're on right now. Are we so arrogant as to think that it couldn't happen here as easily as it happened in Germany, or Spain, or Italy, or France? All it takes is a pinch of fear. *ding* An obsequious media or even a state-sponsored news outlet. *double ding* And a giant motherfucker willing to seize control by eliminating civil rights as he sees fit. *triple fucking ding* This administration is throwing innocent people into jails by the thousand, torturing them, denying them access to council, leaving them for dead in Egypt. How do you know that you're not next? Are you counting on your anonymity and that you don't stick your neck out? The greatest heroes of this nation all stuck their necks out at some time or another. What happens when no one is willing to do so anymore?

Let's face it. They're starting wars, annexing lands, pissing on our constitution. And Bill Keller and bloggerdude are debating sources and whether they should eat bagels or sandwiches at their sit-down. Look, when I complain about the mainstream media, it's not out of some fantastical notion that the blogs are the future of reporting or a ridiculous conceit that blogs are just better. This is shit. They're all shit compared to the New York Times. It's just that I'm legitimately frightened that if we go too far down this road that we're on, we're not going to be able to get back. I like voting. I like speaking my mind. I like learning about evolution in school. The tyrannical theocracy that they could be cooking up scares the bejeezus out of me. And that's my problem with the mainstream media. They're the only thing that protects us from THEM. And they're falling down on the job.