Monday, October 1, 2012

Because There IS A Difference

If this was 2008, and George Bush was President, the Washington Press Corps would be hounding the Chief Executive at every possible opportunity with this story:
The Spanish language television news network Univision unleashed a bombshell investigative report on Operation Fast and Furious Sunday evening, finding that in January 2010 drug cartel hit men slaughtered students with weapons the United States government allowed to flow to them across the Mexican border.

“On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez,” according to a version of the Univision report in English, on the ABC News website.

“Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.”

Citing a Mexican Army document it obtained and published, Univision reported that “[t]hree of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”

That operation was Fast and Furious.

You know it.
I know it.

If Obama wins re-election, it will be, at least in part, the result of a rim-job, asshole-licking press corps.
You know it.
I know it.

12 comments:

RW said...

Lol...

Bike Bubba said...

Well said, Gino. If a Republican President had allowed thousands of guns into Mexico, causing the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans, you bet the media would have been crucifying him.

Change the visual effects, BTW, Gino.

K-Rod said...

Very compelling counter, Brian. Heh heh heh.

You know the media has passed the point of no return when the National Inquire gets the scoop first on presidential candidates bastard children...

Brian said...

If you can convince a substantial portion of your supporters that the press is simply not to be trusted, that they are in the bag for the other team, then you are effectively never going to be held accountable for anything that you say or do.

You are completely deluded if you think this is not a conscious and deliberate strategy on the part of the right.

Mr. D said...

Leave the partisanship aside. Is this story important? Should the public know about it? Let's start there.

Mr. D said...

If you can convince a substantial portion of your supporters that the press is simply not to be trusted, that they are in the bag for the other team, then you are effectively never going to be held accountable for anything that you say or do.

This is a chicken/egg scenario. If the media were more even-handed in their coverage, these suspicions wouldn't arise. There was a time when the press did a better job of covering Democratic malfeasance. I commend to your attention the coverage of the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s/early 1980s.

You are completely deluded if you think this is not a conscious and deliberate strategy on the part of the right.

I don't doubt that for a minute. It's human nature to wish, at one time or another, that you won't be held accountable for your actions. We're all sinners in one way or another and I have no illusion about that. There are plenty of scoundrels on the Right. I can give you an itemized list of them any time you'd like. So could Bubba, or Night Writer, or Gino. And our lists would only partly overlap.

I can only speak for myself, but what I want from the press is pretty simple -- hold everyone accountable in equal measure. And that also requires watching the watchers and self-styled fact checkers on the loose these days.

Brian said...

Bullshit, Mr. D. You cannot seriously expect to assert repeatedly and loudly that the press is in the bag for one side and then simply "leave partisanship aside."

OF COURSE the F&F story is important. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that. Of course people should know and care about it. But the fault that more people don't lies in the general complacency of the American public, particularly as it pertains to dead non-Americans in other countries.

I'm arguing with Gino's assertion that "If Obama wins re-election, it will be, at least in part, the result of a rim-job, asshole-licking press corps."

A press that fails to hold those in power to account is a problem. But so is half the country assuming that anything the press has to say critical of one side of the argument is a product of corruption and dishonesty.

Mr. D said...

OF COURSE the F&F story is important. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that. Of course people should know and care about it. But the fault that more people don't lies in the general complacency of the American public, particularly as it pertains to dead non-Americans in other countries.

People gotta live their lives. Very few people have the time or the inclination to make independent inquiries on these issues. Perhaps they should, but it's unrealistic to expect it. So for better or worse we rely on other people to tell us what's happening. Complacency is a problem, but it doesn't relieve those who are in the business from being honest brokers.

A press that fails to hold those in power to account is a problem. But so is half the country assuming that anything the press has to say critical of one side of the argument is a product of corruption and dishonesty.

Strawman argument. "Anything" is a product of corruption or dishonesty? I don't believe that. In fact, I generally assume that people in the press are operating in what they perceive to be good faith. But they have blind spots on some issues. As do you and I.

Gino said...

I'm arguing with Gino's assertion that "If Obama wins re-election, it will be, at least in part, the result of a rim-job, asshole-licking press corps."

fair enough, Brian. there will be other things involved in his re-election as well, but it does not change the fact that are a few things that should be outrages that are not getting the ink that they should.

while far lesser events were used to pummel the previous administration (that i did not vote for, either)

W.B. Picklesworth said...

A press that fails to hold those in power to account is a problem. But so is half the country assuming that anything the press has to say critical of one side of the argument is a product of corruption and dishonesty.

So the group of people who have come to distrust the media because of the media's history of bias is actually to blame for the media's bias? Isn't that kind of circular? Why isn't the media to blame for their own bias?

I would love to be able to have some trust. But why in the world should I? Or perhaps more to the point, how COULD I? It's not as if I have to try to not believe what they write, I just don't.

Bike Bubba said...

For reference, see my blog and "Shot in the Dark" for a number of what should have been Obama scandals that have gone largely uncovered by the press.

Now Brian may be correct that there is a huge danger in persuading one (or both for that matter) sides that the media are strongly biased against them, but reality is that if any of the 13 Obama scandals I listed had occurred during the Bush administration, we'd never have heard the end of it.

In other words, danger or no danger, it certainly is a reality. And if we believe Brian is right--and he is to a degree--the way to rescue our society can only start as the media realize that they've been putting their fingers on the scales of fact.

RW said...

Since there is nothing at all ever possibly wrong with our logic, our worldview, and our philosophy, the only way anyone can be against us is that they are either malign to begin with or they have been misinformed and misled by some covert influence that has found a way to manipulate minds by blank-space communication and subtlety. Because if people really knew what was going on they would never allow themselves or their children to be exposed to the misrepresentations of the truth that have been foisted onto the American mindset longer than you know.

The media isn't composed of many various points of power and independent sources of information that are competing with one another for accuracy. There is either only one point of decision-making power, probably in Boston, or a small handful of only a few decision makers - whose primary purpose is to subvert the constitution, make people feel bad about their country, take away our guns, and put all sorts of minorities and weirdos into positions of power. They do this by under-reporting some things and over-reporting others, giving people the wrong idea about what's actually happening in the world.

Considering the value and ultimate truth of our arguments, how can there be any other answer but that our opponents are mere sheep, manipulated into believing the opposite of what we all know to be true.

You scoff, Brian, but one day you'll see the ultimate error of your ways.