Obama’s Fragmenting Media Support?

Watching the Media Watch Us
Several of us were in a conversation over at the Chicks on the Right blog talking about the media blitz the administration put on trying to pretend the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya was just a result of a protest gone wild. Almost as fast as the misinformation was coming from the administration, information of a very contradictory nature was making its way to the public.

Making the Reality Fit the Narrative
Still the fact remains the administration intentionally peddled a story they knew was not true… that the coordinated attack by an Al Queda affiliate was really just a response to an internet video.  The administration was fresh off a week of beating their chest, telling us “today Al Queda’s on it’s heels and Osama bin Laden is no more”. The reality check in Libya, courtesy of a not-so-on-their-heels Al Queda, was a most unwelcome distraction from the script.

So they flatly lied to us. PERIOD.

Obama knows we only know what we are told, so if he can control the story, the grim reality can be denied on his end.

The Watchdog vs The Lapdog
One thing that came up in our conversation was that though for 3+ years the media {with the clear exception of Fox}  has been seemingly happy to parrot any claims the Obama camp made, there have been notable defections lately.

Recent Evidence of Defections and “Off-script” Anchors
The first that comes to mind is ABC latching onto the Fast and Furious scandal and making it their own. Obviously not a position popular with the administration, they’d obviously have preferred they take the MSNBC route and pretend the story didn’t exist. [Think happy thoughts!] ABC didn’t play along.

In another defection from the scripted narrative, Anderson Cooper doggedly refused to accept flimsy excuses from DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz when she sent out an email that clearly misstated their opponent’s position by selectively editing a quote so far out of context as to make it laughable. DWS tried multiple times to gloss over i, to no avail. She was left looking like an idiot on an interview Dems have come to consider friendly territory.

A major recent event came from CBS war correspondent Lara Logan. Lara is NOT what we came to call a “SCUD bunny” during the opening of the Iraq conflict… one of the cute things brought in to read news stateside. In contrast Lara is an actual boots-on-the-ground in-country war correspondent. She goes where the bad guys are.

In a speech in Chicago she came out hard on the point that the Obama administration is just lying about the current status of the middle east, ignoring the strength of our opposition because it doesn’t fit the narrative that our enemies are weak and we are now near universally loved in the middle east because of Barack Obama.

[This is probably NOT going to go over well with some of her bosses, but she’s been there, most of them have not.]

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Anyway, the point is that for the last half century the press corps has had a somewhat adversarial relationship with those in power. They were referred to with reason as “media watchdogs”. If they smelled a story, God help the politician that screwed up. They took down Nixon, crippled others. They may have had a left lean, but they’d go for blood regardless of party.

Enter the Obama years, and former hard-bitten members of the fourth estate fell in love. MLKs dream finally was realized with their help, and it appeared they would go to any length to keep Obama free from harm. Some, like Chris Matthews, just went so far they are a shadow of their past selves.

But the problem lies here; most with a media related education were schooled on the an anti-establishment media-as-watchdog idea, Now the anti-establishment forces are in charge. We’re talking former protester types. So the media folks  are left in a paradox. If they support the anti-establishment types who have become the establishment… they effectively become what they were taught to hate: The Propaganda Machine of the government.

We’ve seen this before
Think about Communist China. It was established as a “revolutionary” government at the end of WW2 when the forces of Mao ousted the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Shek. They now pay lip service to this day of being a “revolutionary” movement, despite the obvious fact their government is the establishment and has been for over half a century.

Obama’s media support, once stable, is fragmenting
People like Lara Logan are the reason. They are reporters, not propagandists, and the idea of being used to cover the sins of foreign policy go against everything they are trained to do.

I predict the fragmentation will continue within the media, with people visibly taking sides… the Chris Matthews types cheering harder than ever for Dear Leader, the Lara Logan types bucking the trend to stay in the fold. Guys like Cooper may slide toward the center and just try not to be as biased on the simple grounds that they don’t want to be sucked under as the SS Obama takes on water and sinks.

The media is usually there to tell US the story
For a while it may be fun to watch THEM to see how this shakes out. Probably going to be a lot of personnel changes in news and commentary positions in the coming days.

.

.

.

.