Doesn't fit the narrative

Editing out inconvenient events. [Link]

So, imagine yourself as an NYT editor for a moment, if you can withstand the nausea. Why would you specifically take out the part about the Islamic terrorist proselytizing for Islam in the middle of the terrorist attack? Why delete this woman’s account of being threatened at gunpoint and being told to convert to Islam?

That’s easy. Because you’re one of America’s moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, and you don’t want it to be true. Your reporter hastily left that inconvenient truth in her story by accident, so you airbrushed it out, without any acknowledgment, to preserve the narrative. You turned it into, “Hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. They didn’t kill the women, right? Let’s not be too hasty.”

Because that’s your job.

The New York Times is garbage.

Update: In case you’re still confused…

@jtLOL Right on cue, other media outlets are distributing the sanitized, de-Islamized NYT version of the quote. http://t.co/UuA08UMToo

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 8, 2015

Update: From Radio France Internationale, translated into English.

This is why people think there is media bias.

Why you never see the 'D' when there is a scandal. [Link]

It is such common sense as to be undeniable that basic journalism requires a party label to be affixed to a story about an elected public official, the president excepted. It is the DNA of the “who” in a news report. “Senator Robert Byrd, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, died today.” Take out “Democratic” and try that sentence. It doesn’t work. “Mike Lee, GOP senator from Utah and God’s gift to mankind, coasted to reelection last night.” Ditto.

It follows that the rule applies to stories about political scandal, precisely because it’s just that — politics. But what happens when that cardinal rule is applied to one party but ignored for the other? Favoritism? Bias? No, it’s far worse than just that. It is a commitment to abide by the rules of journalism with one party and then a deliberate attempt to protect the other, even if it means violating the most basic rules of news reporting.

Now wait a minute, Bozell. What about another possibility? Why can’t it be an honest mistake? Cannot we believe that even if such an egregious violation is committed it might not just be an accident, a reckless, sloppy oversight? If it happened once, fine. Stunning but fine. Twice? I don’t believe in coincidences. The record, however, shows it is much worse than that.

On Friday, September 29, 2006, Representative Mark Foley of Florida resigned after ABC News exposed him for having sent explicit e-mails to male House pages. That evening and on the next day’s morning news shows, ABC, CBS, and NBC all tied Foley to the GOP. “This is more than just one man’s downfall,” Today co-host Matt Lauer solemnly declared on NBC. “It could be a major blow to the Republican party.”

On March 10, 2008, news broke that New York governor Eliot Spitzer had been linked to a prostitution ring. It took NBC News four nights to acknowledge Spitzer’s party affiliation. In its first two days of coverage, Matt Lauer’s Todayshow ran 18 segments on the scandal and never once identified him as a Democrat.

But what happens when a Republican elected official is linked to a prostitute? In July 2007, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was revealed as a client in the phone records of the so-called D.C. Madam. Every broadcast network ran stories on the scandal and every story underscored that Vitter was a Republican.

The previous month, Senator Larry Craig of Idaho had been arrested at the airport in Minneapolis for the infamous toe-tapping men’s-room solicitation. When the news became public in August, the networks jumped on the story. Every morning and evening news show pointed out he was a Republican. On NBC’s Today, Lauer drilled further, tying him ideologically to conservatives. “Can the right wing withstand yet another scandal involving one of its own?”

On June 16, 2009, Senator John Ensign of Nevada admitted to an extramarital affair. In the following day’s reports, all three broadcast networks covered the scandal and all three reported that he was a member of the GOP. One week later they were back in action, this time giving major attention to the story that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford also had admitted to cheating on his wife. Again the perfunctory declaration that he was a Republican.

Four years later, after weeks of tumultuous scandal involving allegations of multiple cases of sexual harassment involving numerous women, on August 22, 2013, San Diego’s Democratic mayor (and former congressman), Bob Filner, finally resigned. All three networks covered the story in both their morning and evening broadcasts, but only CBS mentioned his party affiliation.

Still not convinced? Okay, so we’ll continue.

Journalistic malpractice.

Compare and contrast

Watergate vs IRS scandal. [Link]

Yes, the IRS scandal differs from Watergate. In Watergate, the president appointed an independent-minded special prosecutor to investigate. It was considered a scandal when the president fired that special counsel, Archibald Cox, even though Cox was succeeded within less than two weeks by an equally ferocious prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.

President Obama? He hasn’t even appointed a special prosecutor in the first place. That’s far worse.

In Watergate, we were outraged that President Richard Nixon ordered the IRS to go after political foes — even though the IRS refused to do his bidding. A Nixon ally was forced to whine that the IRS was controlled by Democrats.

There was evidently little or no evidence that IRS power was abused, because the second Article of Impeachment against Nixon charged merely that he “endeavored” to sic the IRS on enemies.

In the Obama administration, on the other hand, we know that the IRS went after political foes. We don’t know whether the president was involved, but if Nixon’s IRS had targeted liberals because it believed it had an implicit go-ahead from the boss, wouldn’t that be fairly disturbing also? Would a breezy dismissal from Nixon make you feel better?

Obama’s assertion that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in the IRS’ attacks on right-wing groups does not reassure. Obama cannot have known there was no corruption given the mountain of evidence that has yet to be produced and now appears to have been destroyed. He could believe there was no corruption because he has faith in everyone who works under him, or he could know there was corruption and be lying about it, but he can’t know there was no corruption. It’s impossible.

For all he knows, there’s a Lois Lerner email that says, “I want you to go after these Tea Party bastards with everything you got. Use every trick you can to keep them on the sidelines for this election cycle. Nuke those fascists.”

Modal Trigger

Lerner wouldn’t have pleaded the Fifth unless she had reason to believe that there was potential illegality and it could be tied to her.

A likely explanation for Obama’s bizarre “smidgeon” remark is that his well-known fondness for left-wing opinion writers led him to simply parrot their dismissal of the scandal: If it’s good enough for Jonathan Chait, our president thinks, it’s good enough for me!

And here we come to a third major difference between the IRS’ apparent gross abuse of power and criminal coverup and Watergate: Watergate was a much bigger deal simply because the press was relentless about following up on every detail.

Today the media’s reasoning is roughly as follows: The IRS went after some conservative groups and is engaged in an illegal coverup. We also don’t like these groups, also believe they deserve special scrutiny, and also think there’s something inherently shady about conservatives (but not liberals) who try to buy political influence. If White House staff says they weren’t involved, we’ll take their word for it. Pardon us if we’d rather cover something more relevant to American lives today. Like the 82-year-old name of the football team that plays in DC.

Out of the frying pan

Wow, everyone blames the President for the VA scandal.

How can we divert attention and get this off the front page?

I know! We'll trade terrorists for a POW! That will work great!

Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.

But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)

I actually believe that Ms. Rice was kind of sincere, in her spectacularly oblivious way. In the best Manchurian Candidate manner, she said what she had been programmed to say by her political culture, then she was blindsided by the firestorm she ignited by scratching two flinty words together. At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.

The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.

Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.

But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite — where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform — instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”

Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.

This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)

President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?

A party of criminals

Accused criminals, that is. [Link]

Please, try not to let what I’m about to tell you destroy your faith in the integrity of the national Democratic Party.

Right now, a crime wave is sweeping the nation, and everyone in this out-of-control mob has a D after their names, even if most of the media are loath to report it.

If you are a low-information voter, a Globe subscriber, say, you have been told endlessly that the root of all evil in American politics is the Tea Party, better known in your moonbat media as “teabaggers.” Oddly, however, the hacks rounded up over the last few days, well, let’s put it this way. They voted for Obama 100 percent. They think Obamacare’s great. How could they possibly be guilty as charged?

Last Friday, it was the speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, Gordon Fox, who is (technically) black and who is definitely gay. Astonishingly, given the open racial-preference policies of the Obama regime, Fox’s Providence home and his State House offices were raided Friday by the FBI. He resigned Saturday. We still don’t know what the G-men have on him.

Next, the mayor of Charlotte, Patrick Cannon, another Democrat. He allegedly accepted $48,000 in bribes, some of which he took at the same Capitol Grill where payoffs were earlier accepted by jailbird ex-Speaker Jim Black. Black is not to be confused with ex-Speaker Jimmy Green, who likewise went to prison, for torching his tobacco burns.

Then there’s state Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco. He used to go on Piers Morgan’s now-canceled CNN moonbat-fest and denounce the Second Amendment. He sent out tweets on the first anniversary of the Newtown massacre saying, “I’m still shocked & prepared to take steps to stop gun violence.”

Well, up to a point …

He, too, was arrested on Wednesday, for allegedly arranging deals to procure M16s and rocket launchers to be smuggled into California after being purchased from Muslim terrorists in the Philippines. Sen. Yee was working with a Chinese gangster named “Shrimp Boy.”

Apparently, Yee was much less concerned about the spread of weapons of mass destruction when he was talking to his fellow hoods than when he was pontificating on CNN: “People want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care. People need certain things.”

Like, rocket launchers.

Two-gun Yee is the third Democrat state senator to be arrested in California this week. Earlier it was state Sen. Rod Wright (perjury) and then Ron Calderon (bribery).

What a crime wave, in less than one week. So guess what most of the networks led with on their newscasts last night? The 5-month-old story of Gov. Chris Christie’s Bridgegate. Because it has one thing going for it that none of these other stories had, the only thing that matters to the corrupt American media.

Christie is a Republican.

A paywall comes down. Again.

Newspapers continue to act as if their commodity product is a scarce good. There are only a couple of news organizations that can do a paywall and the SF Chronicle is not one of them. [Link]

After less than four months, the San Francisco Chronicle has torn down its paywall, saying little about what led to the decision. I presume that the signup numbers were very very low, and that the drop in ad-views was sufficiently alarming that it made management reconsider.

Staffers were informed of the move during a meeting Monday afternoon at the newspaper's downtown San Francisco office, according to the SFWeekly. Oddly, SFChronicle.com subscribers will still have the option of paying for access to the premium-content Web site even though it will all now be freely available at SFGate.com, the free weekly alternative newspaper reported. 

Chronicle representatives declined to comment on whether it had dismantled the paywall, saying that it was now publishing San Francisco Chronicle content to both Web sites.

Heads I win, Tails you lose

Media portrayals of Republicans and Democrats. [Link]

When a Republican targets Democrats, the story is how the Republicans took advantage and the Democrats have been victimized. When a Democrat targets Republicans or conservatives, the story is how the Republicans will take advantage politically and how the Democrats will thereby be victimized.

And that is how we get I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On:

Is the Press turning on the One?

Maybe, if he keeps making speeches like the one in Ohio. [Link]

In the speech, President Obama outlined his view that this election is a choice between “two fundamentally different views of which  direction America should take.” He characterized Mitt Romney’s vision as being the same as the “policies of the last decade,” specifically deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy while he described his own “vision for America” as boiling down to five things: “Education.  Energy.  Innovation.  Infrastructure.  And a tax code focused on American job creation and balanced deficit reduction.” President Obama also stressed that the economic crisis began during the Bush administration and that is “started growing again” after he took office and has since “continued to grow.”

All of these points have already been featured in the president’s other recent speeches. Between the pre-speech hype from the campaign, the lack of new material and the overall length of the speech reporters were clearly dissatisfied with end result. Read on for a sampling of Tweets from the political press slamming the president’s speech.

Why you should vote Republican if you value civil liberties

Because the media can ask tough questions, but only if the target is Republican. [Link]

Now, of course, with a Democrat in the White House, we’re seeing many people who screamed about the Patriot Act having little-to-nothing to say about either this story or this one.

I’ve said it before and will say it again — it’s not good for the country when its press becomes selective about what it feels is worth examining, or not. But if the press will not do due diligence, it’s up to the rest of us to inform ourselves.

To be fair, CBS News does seem to be Curious about “Fast and Furious” but otherwise, it’s a non-story to the press.

Odd. Remember when they all chimed in that George W. Bush was “incurious”? You could have made a montage of them all using the word.

You can read my whole column, here

UPDATE:
Ed Morrissey has an excellent piece and video on the “Fast and Furious” story, to bring us all up to speed.

Glenn Reynolds: links (thanks, Glenn!) and also makes a seriously cogent observation:

. . .fans of civil liberties should always vote for Republican presidents, since they’re the only ones that get press scrutiny.

I’ve never looked at it that way, but he is very right: if the press will only critically examine vitally important policies when a Republican is in charge, then that alone might be reason enough to vote one in. I’d said repeatedly that I’d rather have a critical press questioning everything, than a complacent one playing advocate or Sgt. Schultz!

Ace has more Fast and Furious