CNN’s intrepid reporters…
Speaking truth to power and all that.
[ADDENDUM: Remember Remember CNN head Eason Jordan’s story of cover-up in order to get access to Saddam Hussein’s regime? The dilemma actually isn’t a simple one(employees could have been endangered by telling the truth, as Jordan points out), but what’s the point of access if it’s only access to cover up and lie?
As far as covering for Obama goes, CNN and other news outlets have no good excuse. Obama isn’t torturing and murdering them, except in the career sense by threatening to ban them as he tried to do with Fox. No, the news is a willing and voluntary collaborator with Obama.
And looking back at that story about Eason Jordan, and reading how happy he was about the fall of Saddam Hussein, reminds me of how much worse things have become with the press during the Obama administration. Gone are the days when any self-respecting liberal MSM outlet would talk about the tyranny and torture the Iraqui dictator wreaked—even though now there’s no need for “access” to Saddam or protection from his wrath for their staff in Iraq.
Now, their liberal/left ideology motivates them to hide the truth.]
The amazing thing is that these “insightful journalists” don’t recognize (or choose to ignore) the fact that Obama needs them to disseminate his propaganda even more than they need him.
Without the press, Obama’s messaging would be akin to the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear the sound.
I saw that exchange with Ed Henry of Fox News as reported at Ace’s. Unbelievable; cowards, all. I was sure that this story would really be” shaking the windows and rattling the walls” of even the MSM by today. But we’re getting crickets, mostly.
Looks like somebody’s was busy over the weekend calling media bosses….
This may be one of those things about which we never learn the truth. Like something out of a Diana West book that no one seems to be interested in reading despite the blockbuster revelations.
I wonder if Erin Burnett at CNN is going to see her big Special get canceled tomorrow night?
Is this the same media that couldn’t wait to report any negative tidbit about the GWB Administration?
I wonder what could possibly explain this change of heart?
I just got a notice from WaPo that they are selling out to Jeff Bezos. Is he already sucking up with his eBook Obama interview? I hope he knows that lots of his customers aren’t fond of the MSM or the president.
You’d think they would get bored following him around listening to the same old boring speeches. You could replace most of the WH press corps with a bushel full of rutabagas, and get just about the same information from a press conference.
I like the rutabagas idea – they could write better and might even have a nodding acquaintance with math…
“Now, their liberal/left ideology motivates them to hide the truth.”
I think it might be more a case of an ideological ‘requirement’, rather than mere motivation.
I wonder, in a decidedly mild fashion, whether today’s ‘journalists’ realize that they have become American versions of the Soviet Union’s Pravda journalists? That they are being dictated to, sometimes directly by their editors and producers and always indirectly by PC as to what they can and cannot say… I would guess that the great majority are willfully blind to their job having long been that of propagandists for the left.
It is of course, both inevitable and unavoidable. In any socialistic society, ALL thought, speech and behavior must eventually be classified as either forbidden or mandatory. No other categories are permissible.
CNN is self pimping.
This latest admission is psychologically on a par with the ‘anti-slut defense’ / rationalizations used by tramps.
Of course, this means that if the Obama administration were to begin rounding up and imprisoning dissidents, the MSM would do their best impression of the Three Monkeys.
There is no doubt that the MSM is the enemy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They enable the likes of BHO, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the malicious left. RINOs like McCain are in the same league. However, the MSM is gradually going down the drain. The NYT recently sold the Boston Globe at a $900 million lose. The WP just sold for a mere $250 million to Bezos. Newsweek & Time are essentially defunct. FOX continues to best CNN. ABC, CBS, and NBC news will continue shed viewers.
Its always darkest before the dawn.
rickl: ” . . . best impression of the Three Monkeys.”
Hey, do you mean the poo-flinging Pelosi, Reid, and Wasserman-Schultz?
Parker:
$ 70,000,000 – $ 1,100,000,000 = ($ 1,030,000,000) (loss)
AND the NYT is still forced to carry back the pension liability…
($ 1,030,000,000) + ($ 100,000,000) = ($ 1,130,000,000) (loss)
In sum, the NYT PAID $30,000,000 to give the Globe away.
The news announcement was re-crafted to shove the figure back up over into the positive.
It’s obviously a lie.
The average prole in unaware that assumed liabilities are ALWAYS part of the purchase price calculated for a going concern. When the selling party is compelled to eat those liabilities, then the true selling price has to be reduced.
In sum: it was sold for a negative $ 30,000,000.
======
Which brings us to the original, original, sale of Newsweak. It was pitched as being for $1.00.
Not so.
The buyer, Sidney Harmon, had to eat the pension liabilities. These were huge. So, he didn’t pay just a buck. Since liars lie, who really knows what the true pension tab was at the time. But it was hefty, to be sure.
He was able to swing the deal because he was dying. Thus, the losses from Newsweak massively offset his massive death estate taxes.
By this round about method, the Federal government ended up picking up the tab for about half the purchase price — all of which was directed to the ink stained wretches of the Fourth Estate.
I suspect that Sidney thought that he was blazing a trail for other liberal moguls (Diller) who would also run down their estates in the months before death — to sustain the MSM in the retirement style of the upper middle class and famous.
parker,
Perhaps 80-90% of high school and college graduates have been fully indoctrinated into the memes of the left. Those memes act as filters effecting the perceptions of those so indoctrinated. The top ranked 5 internet news providers are; BBC online, CNN interactive, the Huffington Post, NYT and Fox News…
Which begs the question; how do you know that this is as dark as its going to get?
It will get dark, darker, darkest. I’m not sure how dark, but it will be very dark. But what do I know? I’m just an aging Iowa farm boy. However, I can not give into despair. I can only prepare to take care of my family when the darkness comes.
Geoffrey Britain, 6:48 pm — “I wonder, in a decidedly mild fashion, whether today’s ‘journalists’ realize that they have become American versions of the Soviet Union’s Pravda journalists? That they are being dictated to, sometimes directly by their editors and producers and always indirectly by PC as to what they can and cannot say… I would guess that the great majority are willfully blind to their job having long been that of propagandists for the left.”
The Pravda “journalists” were being ordered what to print. (Most of) our present crop of “journalists” [I’ll use the word again as a proxy for “their editors and producers” so I can preserve the parallelism] are voluntarily, yea, happily, printing the vomit they print.
M J R:
As I’ve said before, the difference between the Pravda reporters in the Soviet Union vs. the American MSM today is this:
Pravda reporters told lies and spread propaganda for fear of being sent to the gulag. Modern American reporters do it willingly.
They lie. All Liberals lie. They lie all the time. It’s not pathological it’s purposeful.
If the question is why do they lie the answer is so obvious it does not need to be said. They lie for the reasons anyone lies.
A Liberal only and always tells a truth when it is in the service of a bigger lie. Truth is tactical for a Liberal. In this case, it was probably for CNN to retain the appearance and credibility (believability). The Liberal has to perform this exercise regularly. Like changing oil on a car. They all know it and never really punish a fellow Liberal for what they know is a general maintenance operation.
Mike,
ALL liberals do NOT lie. They are the dupes of the Marxist/leftists who do lie as you describe. You are conflating Marxist/leftists with liberals. Not the same animal. Why does the distinction matter? You can’t effectively fight an enemy you do not fully understand.
Websters defines a lie as, “knowingly telling of an untruth”. Marxist/leftists know they are lying. Liberals believe the lie to be the truth. However, liberals are guilty of willfully denying the truth, so as to keep believing the lies.
Hey, maybe there’s some fight left in the GOP after all: RNC hits NBC, CNN for Hillary films; threatens to pull debate rights
A baby-step, but better than nothing.
Mike, Geoffrey Britain:
On the difference between liberals and the left.
neo,
That is exactly my view as well and has long been so.
And looking back at that story about Eason Jordan, and reading how happy he was about the fall of Saddam Hussein, reminds me of how much worse things have become with the press during the Obama administration. Gone are the days when any self-respecting liberal MSM outlet would talk about the tyranny and torture the Iraqui dictator wreaked
Was there ever much talk by liberals about the hideousness of Saddam’s regime? Even around the time of the first Iraq War in 1990-91, I think it was downplayed, or at least not thoroughly covered. Or is my memory incorrect?
Boston Globe, Washington Post, Newsweak….
The TRUE deep story: the ink-letting in the propaganda room.
An entire generation — perhaps now two — of hacks are losing their stipends.
Which means that J-schools face a marketing wall: no-one wants their product.
Are the intrepid reporters of CNN (and the rest of the MSM) mere liberals or are they leftists?
Carl…
Anyone who watched “Broadcast News” would come to realize that the boobs with the microphone are but pretty puppets — airheads.
Their mendacious masters are up in the booth, invisible to the public eye.
The circus is well enough established that the clown know their roles. More than a few are mentally unbalanced attention whores. These are the kids we all knew in high school who just HAD to run for drama queen.
Such antics were wittily explored in “To Die For.” It’s a funny film because we’ve all seen ‘Susan Stone’ on the small screen.
In sum, the typical face you see is that of a pretty boy airhead. That’s why they got the role. There’s not a deep thinker in the lot.
Journalists have a somewhat high profile on the list as it stands. Their position keeps going up with time.
Neo – I understand your concern not to think that people can be as rotten as they are….but time immemorial says that it is nearly a certain and universal truth that people really are as rotten as they are.
I understand your concern because I understand the thought-world you have grown up in – the postmod blankety blank one. There is a good book on the topic btw, called (I thing) “Understanding [or Explaining?] Postmodernism by someone named Hicks. Brilliant expose of the truth of their lies. And it is most definitely true that they lie and they do it on purpose. At the best, they agree with themselves to deceive themselves about their deceptive personal natures.
You – of course trying to be a tolerant and understanding person – make a distinction between the rank and file liberal Dem and the committed leftist. You therefore “excuse” the very people who are the actual cause of the problem, and put all the blame on their dear leaders. Not buying it.
Let;s turn it around. There are two classes of Conservatives: The rank and file who vote conservative because they have conservative values, and their committed leaders.
I know. Put that way it is ridiculous.
here is the truth. Conservatives are good. Liberals are not. Conservatives want good and normal and decent things. Liberals prefer Hell.
I say we let them have it.
Mike, in the context of what you are saying, it isn’t as useful contrasting Leftists with liberals or those who believe in freedom of whatever.
It would be more relevant and effective to contrast civilian casualties in war with enemy combatant casualties. All the women, children, and other people in those villages the US bombed or blew up or attacked, weren’t all “enemies” of America, so to speak. Yet their deaths were caused nonetheless by operations designed to break the back of terrorist or insurgency organizations.
A human shield is not the same as a terrorist, yet tactically speaking, one must shoot through the shield as if it was a terrorist, because the terrorist is right behind the shield.
The alternative is to drop our weapons and ceasefire, which many Westerners have done. Curiously, it has promoted the use of human shields more and put more lives in danger as a result.
There were quite a number of men, women, and children that died burning alive in those cities of paper that US warplanes dropped incendiaries on. Even though the British actually came up with the concept and pushed it hard. Not all of them were enemies of America or even hated America. Many of them were just supporting their country, their group, because of the bonds of love, faith, belief, and duty/debt. The same can be said of Jews or blacks or white Democrats.
But nonetheless, the non combatants, the factory workers, and the combatants all died in a screaming fire the same. With no particular differentiation taken against one or the other.
If such things were “necessary” by military justifications for a foreign enemy… why isn’t it necessary for a domestic enemy?
People with conservative beliefs are not super humans, perfect, or divine saints. They have faults. Many human problems.
Good or Evil is a more complicated ocean than merely the conservative beliefs can control
In a sense, the Left is both right and wrong about black and white issues. They are right in that the world is more complicated than merely 2 choices (cat is dead, cat is alive, in Schrodinger’s box. Witch is dead, thus innocent or witch is alive, thus a witch). However, what makes them wrong is that they think their own particular brand of black and white is better and the real truth.
I would describe Good and Evil, the choices that lead up to it, via this symbol.
http://taoism.about.com/od/visualsymbols/p/YinYang.htm
There is no light without darkness. The deepest darkness comes on the brightest day. Wherever there is light, there must be a dot of darkness. Wherever there is darkness, one can find the light in it.
Whether people recognize this or accept it, isn’t that important. What’s important is the actions people are willing to do. It doesn’t matter what people think about human shields, its ethics or not. All that matters is what they choose to do about it.
Shoot?
Don’t Shoot?
Find some other option?
Mike:
My point of view is not about my “concern.” It’s about my observation of the world and people, particularly liberals, whom I know like the back of my hand.
And that last statement is literally true, because I was a liberal for most of my adult life. I am the same person now as I was then.