Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here and here.

Well, well, well, well. In some previous posts I stated that " ... the level of congruence b/t the editorial decisions of the Media and the Dems political strategies since 2000 can only be described as active coordination." I then went on to note that "I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media communicate and coordinate their actions but I submit that if evidence is found about this relationship that it will be a scandal of major proportion. The Major Media are entitled to support any candidate they want, but to use their media power surreptitiously for a candidate while pretending to be a standard news outlet is at a minimum a violation of campaign contribution laws, and at the maximum a betrayal of a fundamental public trust." Apparently, we are now getting some information on how this Democrat Media coordination is done. At the end of January Politico published a story that ABC's George Stephanopoulos has had morning strategy chats with various Democrats for more than 10 years, including the President's current Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. WorldNetDaily has a nice summary of the article and the controversy it has generated. Exhibiting the ability to compose under pressure a talking point coming to a media outlet near you, an ABC spokesman told WorldNetDaily that " ... George speaks to Rahm, but he speaks to plenty of conservatives and Republicans every single day – that's part of his job. The idea that there is some daily conference call that he hops on is just nonsense and not true." But talking points alone just won't do. As I said in my previous posts, it has been clear that active coordination has been going on between the Democrats and the Major Media for at least eight years and probably longer. The only question is how they do it, and the Politico has given us the evidence " ... of at least one major tributary of Washington politics." But only one such tributary. Georgie is only the tip of the iceberg. Where and how are the political consultants posing as reporters at CBS, NBC and MSNBC meeting and coordinating with their clients? And what about the print media; how deeply are they involved in all of this? The net of this scandal could get very large indeed. My previous thoughts were that such active coordination by the Media with a political party could possibly be serious breaches of federal campaign laws (haven't some people gone to jail for such things?). Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center thinks the issue is one of journalistic ethics. I can go either way; I just want the degenerating distortion of the American political culture by partisans masquerading as objective news reporters to stop. via email