Even If You Hate Mainstream Media, The DOJ Needs To Be Held Accountable for Its Trespasses
Attorney General admiring the president’s tie |
Our dear Attorney General Eric Holder has scheduled an off-the-record meeting with the Washington bureau chiefs in order to explain to them how they, and their journalists, are to handle leak investigations. Our government officials are telling our mainstream media correspondents how to acceptably report on news (and leaks) that concern their, the criminal government officials’, activities.
The New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has announced her bureau chief will not be in attendance. This is a hopeful sign that the media networks will give Eric Holder the kind of relentless hell he deserves. Holder signed off on allowing the seizure of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s records. Holder first denied any involvement, under oath, of having anything to do with that unprecedented and illegal activity.
Even if you loathe Fox News, don’t get caught up in your partisan cheering — the principles offended in this case are unforgivable, and those guilty need to be routed from their nests of power like that unsettling infestation of cockroaches you dealt with in your kitchen.
From the Huffington Post:
“We will not be attending the session at DOJ,” Abramson said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time.”
I smile at the phrase “aggressively covering”. What a powerful expression. I’d love to have no stone left unturned in this scandal, and ultimately see the Attorney General locked up in a holding cell, crammed in with a bunch of irritating marijuana dealers his DOJ helped to incarcerate.
Of course, the New York Times and the rest of the dinosaur media have not been any less guilty than Holder in their lack of pursuit for real truth. They have failed as the Fourth Estate, and it’s no wonder the mega networks are hemorrhaging viewers and readers.
Bethania Markus wrote a great article about why the mainstream media doesn’t deserve the sympathy of the public in this latest AP scandal, yet for the safety of our nation, and for the integrity of our government, the DOJ’s spying should concern every single one of us:
The American news media has made pandering to power standard practice when their mission should be speaking truth to power and “afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted.” In fact, new Orange County Register co-owner and publisher Aaron Kushner flat out told his newsroom that the long-held journalistic credo of “afflicting the comfortable” no longer applies. This runs parallel with fantastic displays of incompetence like the flagrant misreporting of facts surrounding the Boston marathon bombing by the likes of CNN and New York Post.
The story of Gary Webb also illustrates how “in bed” the mega media networks are with Washington, the CIA, and this country’s special interests. The LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post (the gatekeepers of ‘real news’) smeared Webb as a conspiracy theorist when in fact, as time later proved, he was correct about the CIA running drugs from South America into Southern California in the ’80s, and their role in kick-starting the crack epidemic that prompted the Drug War and eroded our 4th Amendment.
So, the mainstream media has never been meant to be fully trusted. With this recent AP scandal, it’s like two ignorant bands of thugs fighting by night. Both the media and the Holder DOJ have skeletons in their closets, yet the seizure of journalists’ records to be used to hunt down whistle blowers is criminal, and threatens the foundations of our free and just nation.
The freedom of speech. The right to call out corruption, whether it be corporate or government corruption. The safety of those speaking truthfully and honestly. And the upholding of no unlawful search and seizure.
Without those protections we’re living in a Disneyland version of North Korea, or China, where individuals who have witnessed the crimes or malfeasance of higher-ups fear for their lives, their peace, and their freedoms. We will be left having only the right to shut up and enjoy the official government truths and narratives shown to us by our television screens with flashy programs funded by global corporations.
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