A True & Deserved Tongue-Lashing for the Media

[TruthAboveAll]

During a recent bout of researching, I stumbled across this article, Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? I'm sending the link to this out via e-mail to all my contacts, as it is a clear, clarion warning to the public about the shenanigans of the MSM.

Opening:

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

Much of the body of the piece is details about the sub-prime/financial tsunami. A part of it:

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

And a direct confrontational section, in part:

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Finally, some hard-to-swallow icing on the cake:

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

These are my selected highlights. The piece is lengthy, and at a few points a bit repetitious, but it's so filled with truth I wanted to do my part to try to get it out there...

 

[Pandora]

Journalism died

 

[TruthAboveAll]

Journalism died

I agree with Card, it's not too late. Close to that cliff, and on life support, but still a chance... Of course, if BO gets elected, he and the CongreDems can work on a big financial bail-out for the failing media. Newspapers are going belly up all over the place. My suspicion is that it is due to, in PART, the fact that so many of them have lost all credibility.

 

[Pandora]

I agree with Card, it's not too late. Close to that cliff, and on life support, but still a chance... Of course, if BO gets elected, he and the CongreDems can work on a big financial bail-out for the failing media. Newspapers are going belly up all over the place. My suspicion is that it is due to, in PART, the fact that so many of them have lost all credibility.

if he gets in the first thing he will target is fox news and all conservative talk radio. if he can silence them he can play god for as long as he wants

 

[Mr. Carpenter]

Journalism died

Yes it did, a VERY long time ago. The formal announcement of it's death was on February 27th of 1968 when Walter Cronkite, perhaps the most well respected 'journalist' of his day, made the pronouncement that "we are mired in a stalemate that could only be ended by negotiation, not victory.", completely ignoring the fact that we had completely routed the NVA and VC in the Tet Offensive.

He abandoned any and all pretext of "objective" journalism, completely ignored all of the facts of our victory, and is, IMNSHO, the original "surrender monkey" of which there are many of his progeny here today.