In yet another slap in the face to the 4th estate, the supposedly media guardians of freedom of information and truth, the Obama White House actually staged a question for the president during his news conference today, June 23.
The White House Press Office has already made a joke of the Washington Press Corp by only calling on a limited number of reporters for questions during his news conferences. But today they crossed the line of journalistic integrity by bringing their own news plant to the conference.
You see, until today nobody knew the Huffington blog site was a major national media outlet as it has always been a cheerleading squad for Obama and many liberal causes but thanks to the president the Huffington gang has joined the elite.
At the news conference guards escorted a Huffington reporter into the midst of the White House press corps to ask a question on behalf of the people of Iran. Now does that mean the White House is not capable of getting a question from anyone in Iran without going through a news censorship source?
It was staged and in a clumsy way at best. The venerated old press corps should have been insulted by this grandstanding at the news conference but they sat there like the mindless fools they must be, for only fools could be ignoring all the standards of journalistic integrity like our Washington media.
What ever happened to objective reporting? What ever happened to seeking the truth? Ever since CBS and the New York Times started inventing anonymous sources we have been on a fast track toward the destruction of media credibility. What happened in the last election was the press demonstrated that there is no such thing as journalistic integrity as they tossed "fair and unbiased" reporting out the window.
Character assassination became in vogue, slanted articles became standard, lies and innuendo became fact and advertising dollars became the guiding force for news coverage in the past year of politics in America and the result is as expected. The people lose out.
At least all the public was not fooled as polls on the credibility of media plummeted to the same depths as Congress which is about as low as you can go. The pattern is clear that people do not believe the press corps anymore and they should not believe them if they have any brain waves still left functioning.
News media, like reality television, is mindless entertainment. People know it. Every year ratings for network news drops, newspaper subscriptions are cancelled, newspapers go broke and television stations will be the next to fade into the history books.
Ever since corporate America decided to buy up all the media the goal of the news media has shifted from one of journalistic integrity to one of satisfying the stockholders and advertisers. Make no mistake, it matters not whether you are a raging MSNBC liberal or a staunch Fox conservative, manufacturing news is okay and leading the readers through editorial slants on stories is even better.
For a couple of hundred years the 4th estate earned the protection of the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, the freedom of the press, but that was passed long before the news media became bought and paid for just like our politicians. There is nothing left that is free about the press.
As more newspapers go broke, TV ratings continue to drop and news staffs get cut back throughout our great nation one can only hope that fewer biased articles and lies will be propagated by the media. That might be one benefit from the self-destruction of the news media. Perhaps it is long overdue.
