by: J. D. Heyes
In another sign of the weakening “influence” of the mainstream media, not one of the major scandals currently swirling around the Obama Administration were broken by what you could fairly call the establishment press.
Fact: Over the past few weeks, three major scandals have broken over the Obama Administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media are not responsible for breaking even a single one,” writes John Nolte in Breitbart News’ Big Journalism section.
He goes onto note that the three scandals – involving the IRS; NSA/Verizon phone records; the Justice Department’s improper seizure of Associated Press phone records; and Benghazi – were either broken by foreign media or the so-called U.S. alternative media (of which NaturalNews is a proud member).
The Verizon story was broken by The Guardian, a British newspaper (the whistleblower in this case, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, an NSA analyst, probably didn’t trust anyone in the U.S. with this story).
How about the IRS’ improper targeting of conservative political action groups? Again, that story was broken “with a planted question,” Nolte points out.
In the case of the Justice Department’s targeting of AP reporters and editors, even The Associated Press failed to break that story; it only emerged after the Justice Department notified the AP what had occurred, so essentially, the department tattled on itself.
And Benghazi? Again, nope. Even though there was plenty of smoke there, the mainstream media – which has been in bed with Obama since day one of his initial campaign – took a pass en mass. There were a few exceptions, most notably Jake Tapper and Sharyl Attkission, but other than that, only Republican members of Congress and Fox News have been aggressively seeking the truth about what actually took place there when our ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was killed and brutalized.
“Left up to the media, we wouldn’t know anything about Libya. All of the media’s energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered,” Nolte wrote. “And do you want to know what makes this realization especially pathetic? In three of the four scandals (the AP being the exception), had our media been less interested in protecting Power and more interested in holding Power accountable, these huge, career-making stories were right there for the taking.”
What’s more, the media has been extremely hypocritical (no kidding) on some of these scandals. Take the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups.
In early June an editorial published by the editorial staff at The New York Times was highly critical of the president over his administration’s targeting of the phone records of millions of Americans, all in the name of protecting national security. And rightfully so; it is an abuse of the Fourth Amendment like no other in the history of the country.