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

Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here.

It is common wisdom that those who are quick to recognise the sins of others do so because they are themselves subject to those same weaknesses. And this, I think, might explain the curious charge that Fox News is following Republican talking points: because the Democrats have just this kind of a relationship with the Major Media, and cannot conceive that the Republicans aren't doing it too.

And this is born out, I think, by the political battles of the last few years. The Major Media has always been sympathetic to the Democrats political agenda, but 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. It is not my function to go into such matters, but I would submit that a thorough review of the massive help the Major Media gave John Kerry's Presidential campaign alone would convince any reasonable person w/ an open mind. I will mention one well known example: The infamous charge by Dan Rather that Bush had received special treatment in his natioal Guard service. It has been a mystery to some as to why a news man of the stature of Dan Rather would involve himself w/ such an obviously fraudulent report. Well if we assume that he (or more likely his staff) were actively coordinating an 'October Surprise' against Bush, then it all seems to make more sense. The damning 'news' report was integral to the Kerry campaign and had to be rushed onto the evening news asap. And both the timing and the substance of this 'news'report could not have been more beneficial for the Kerry campaign if it had been produced by his own campaign staff.

I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media commonicate 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.

Talking Points and the Major Media

I note a charge against Fox News leveled by Democrats recently: that it routinely regurgitates Republican talking points as news.

Now this is curious on 2 levels:

(1) Republicans don't use talking points. Talking points are memos issued by the Democrats to the troops so that whenever an issue comes up the main Democratic points will be repeated almost verbatim by every Democrat who can get themselves quoted in the Major Media. The idea is that if the public keeps hearing the same thing over and over from many different media sources, then through sheer volume and repetition, it will come to be believed as true (e.g. the phrase 'Bush lied us into war,' a patently and demonstrably false accusation that is believed by large segments of the public simply because the Democrats have repeated the phrase over and over and over and over ... ).

The disarray of the Republican party the last few years by itself shows that the Republicans do not use this talking points tactic. But further, it is just a fact that there is no concerted effort among the GOP to dictate what all Republicans must say on any given issue. At most, there are conservative think tanks, magazines and commentators promulgating position papers, articles and opinions on any given issue, and some of these can be quite influential among Republicans. But there is certainly nothing like a single mandated script that every Republican must follow.

(2) If there is no script for the party faithful to follow, it is beyond silly to suppose that Fox News is taking its marching orders from Republicans.

Now if all this is true, then why would the Democrats make such a charge?

To be continued

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Talking Points and the Major Media

All posts in this series may be found here.

This story has everyone up in arms at the ethics (or lack thereof) displayed by The Washington Post in attempting to sell (for $25,000.00 a pop!) private dinners with the publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth, and her top-flight, inside the beltway, powerful-doesn't-begin-to-describe-it journalists. See, for instance, this bludgeoning of the Post by Roger Kimball of PajamasMedia.com.

I dunno. Katharine Weymouth is pretty big stuff, and her average dinner parties are undoubtedly quite exclusive things, but $25,000.00 for the privilege? As for the A-lister journalists in attendance, my outside-the-beltway feeling is that such journalists would tend to dumb down the event, social status wise.

What is not emphasized in all the outrage I've been reading is the fact that the Post promised contact with high-level Administration officials. How high-level? Well, as high as $25,000.00 worth of level, at least. Is Joe Biden worth that to your average lobbyist? Probably not. Rahm Emmanuel? Undoubtedly, if not more.

How does a private company like the Post get the ability to sell, for cash, intimate dinners with the likes of Rahm Emmanuel? And would any of that $25,000.00 have flowed back to the Administration? If not in actual cash, then in favorable headlines? I think these questions answer themselves.

This is Washington back-scratching at its most outrageous. Or to put it another way (as I have in this series of posts), what we have here is evidence of one more "major tributary of Washington politics," this time involving the Administration and The Washington Post.

Or to put it still another way, without metaphor, this is further evidence of the rank corruption of both the Major Media and the Obama Administration.

Talking Points and the Major Media

Secret dinners with White House high level people? Media elites? Who would have guessed? Well, we would and did. See all posts in this long running series here.

Let's see, in "regular attendance" at these dinners are the New York Times (David Brooks and Maureen Dowd), The Washington Post (Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus), NBC News (David Gregory), ABC news (George Stephanopoulos), PBS (Gwen Ifill), the New Yorker (Jane Mayer), Vanity Fair (Todd Purdum), Time (Walter Isaacson), the Atlantic and National Journal (Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch).

The Washington Times? Fox News? The Wall Street Journal? Those invitations must have gotten lost in the mail. But not even George Will, an ABC insider, has been invited? Hrmmmm.

It's worth comparing these dinners with the breakfasts described in the article that were conducted by Godfrey Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor for some 35 years. Mr. Sperling opened the breakfasts to all journalists and the proceedings were public and on-the-record. We are told that David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic who runs these elite dinners, was "intrigued" by the Sperling breakfasts. I think that is "intrigued" in the sense that a felon is intrigued with the inner workings of the corner liquor store. It is not because he wants to run a store just like it.

Methinks our political tributaries runneth over.

Justice Takes a Holiday

Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave us the raison d'etre of his term as AG the other day. Here it is in pertinent part.

While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations … I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action …

Lots of people have responded with the egregious list of actions taken by General Sessions' own special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, not least of which was stacking his staff with some top-tier members of the Friends of Hillary Fan Club. But what does he make of the more recent actions of his attorneys in the Southern District of New York?  They obtained a guilty plea from one Michael Cohen, taxi cab magnate and general incorrigible, that he had violated the most sacred laws of this Republic, the federal election laws. And he did so with a script written verbatim by Jeff Sessions' Department of Justice (SDNY branch). And, wonder of wonders, Mr. Cohen's words contain information extraneous to his guilt, and those words just happen to repeat verbatim Democrat and Major Media talking points that Donald Trump violated election laws, too.

In the words of Bloomberg's Noah Feldman, 

In essence, by making Cohen say he acted at Trump’s direction, the Southern District declared war on the president.

In a normal case like this, in what context would the prosecution require that the defendant implicate others in his crime? Obviously, when they had further principals they wanted to prosecute. But in the first place, Mueller and others in the Sessions Justice Department have repeatedly assured the President that he is not a target in any of these investigations.  In the second place, the President cannot be a target of the Justice Department because, you know, the Constitution.

Impeachment is the method provided for any criminal conduct by the President, and as the indispensable Andy McCarthy has repeatedly told us, Impeachment is a political process, not legal.  If the Justice Department does not indulge in 'political considerations' as insisted by Jeff Sessions, then it has no role whatsoever in Impeachment.

But manifestly, the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York are engaged in laying the groundwork via forcing a particular plea out of Michael Cohen for an Impeachment of the President. And now, apparently, they are taking up with the New York AG an investigation into the Trump organization. What a coincidence! The Trump organization has been in business for more than 50 years, during which it has been very high-profile in the most high-profile city in the world, and our Justice Department decides it needs a little investigating - within a couple of years after its principal becomes President. Could this possibly be … a political decision? You decide.

So, what action is General Sessions prepared to take?

Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here, here and here.

Ah, another "tributary of Washington politics" splashes out of the shadows into the light of day. Politico again has the story, this time about an "off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList" where only left leaning media participate. Note the referrence to some participants as "policy wonks." Where policy wonks appear, can administration or Democrat officials be far behind?

For the record, Ezra Klein (no relation) breaks the formal Code of Silence of list-participants to insist,"Government employees have never been, and are not now, allowed on the list." Immediately thereafter hushed Silence became the rule again. Perhaps Mr. Klein suddenly became aware of a government threat to impose a 90% tax rate on his earnings? We'll probably never know.

See previous posts in this long-running series here.