Warning! A profane rant is below, hide the kids.
The media has collectively lost their fucking minds. Since when is it the role of the media to obsess over mistakes and blow them completely out of proportion, while ignoring everything else that is happening in the world? They have totally embraced the hyperventilating loons on the right and adopted their moronic thinking.
So a website contractor, hired to design and build the website for healthcare.gov, screwed up. Great, I got it. Now move on to doing your fucking jobs again.
And by the way, Chuck Todd, your job is to present the truth to your viewers, not just deliver the “message” that one side or the other feeds to you through Mike Allen, just before you go on Morning Joe to set the meme of the fucking day. In case you aren’t aware, the Society of Professional Journalists has a code of ethics and the first item in the list is pasted below. Read it, internalize it…there will be a quiz.
Seek Truth and Report It (heading)
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. (sub-heading)Journalists should: — Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
Now let’s look at Chuck Todd’s full quote from his now infamous appearance on Morning Joe and see how well it fits with the above.
Chuck Todd (on Morning Joe):
“But more importantly, it would be stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against it,” Todd told Rendell. “They don’t repeat the other stuff because they haven’t even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, ‘Well, it’s you folks’ fault in the media.’ No, it’s the President of the United States’ fault for not selling it.”
In effect, he’s saying that he just delivers the message, it’s not his job to “test the accuracy of information from all sources”. He admits that Republicans have successfully “messaged against it” but he apparently doesn’t care at all whether that “message” is truthful or not. That is some serious bubble think. I keep telling Chuck to get the hell out of Washington and breathe some fresh air, talk to some real people, empathize with folks who actually are influenced by what happens inside your comfy little bubble.
Prior to the “glitch” story, the media was clinging to the idiotic idea that President Obama should negotiate with Republicans who were holding a gun to the head of our economy, demanding the defunding of a law that took 18 months to pass through the legislative process, was signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in exchange for the Congress doing their jobs. The media acted like complete morons repeating the Republican talking point of “he won’t even sit down with us and talk”, as if that is what you do when one party completely circumvents the legislative process and acts like a 4-year-old kicking and screaming on the floor.
Going back a little further, the media was freaking out about Syria and the “red line”, once again repeating the Republican talking points verbatim, as if Frank Luntz was behind them pulling their fucking puppet strings and lip syncing his focus group tested phrases. President Obama didn’t invent our position on Syria’s chemical weapons. The treaty that we are enforcing was signed by President Nixon in 1972 and can be found here. But the media wanted to pin it all on President Obama because the brain-dead GOP plucked the “red line” phrase out of a speech and proceeded to bastardize the context and history of the international treaty against the use of chemical weapons.
I could go on and on…I’m thinking back to the “momentum” days of Mitt Romney’s bid for King of the Village Idiots (The GOP & their compliant media)!
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As a high school junior, I was appointed editor of our school paper and sent to Indiana U for a week’s seminar at the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism. Not patting myself on the back but think I learned more than many of today’s so-called “journalists”. Often wished I had pursued it as a career. Where are the Cronkites, Murrows, Hershes, Lippmans, etc.?
Media Matters has an article on so-called “liberal” journalists like David Gregory (and most over at CNN who try so hard to be Fox Lite) who like to practice “gotcha” journalism. Gregory pressed his guests about when Obama would finally “demonstrate he can bring along converts to his side and actually get something meaningful accomplished.” Gregory was convinced the president had to shoulder “a big part of the responsibility” for the shutdown crisis, due to the president’s failed leadership. New York Times columnist David Brooks agreed Obama is at fault, stressing “The question he’s never answered in all these years is, ‘How do I build a governing majority in this circumstance?'”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/22/obama-the-press-and-the-leadership-charade/196529
a most righteous rant. tweeting.
Interesting squabble between liberal pundits….Walsh vs Klein.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/chris-hayes-referees-brutal-takedown-of-ezra-klein-by-joan-walsh/
What we haven’t heard enough of is that there have always been glitches with new programs of great magnitude. Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said that when George W. Bush rolled out his Medicare Part D program in 2006, it was full of glitches but said that she and the other ten Democrats who voted for it just rolled up their sleeves and cooperated with Republicans to fix them. Today’s GOP is more hell-bent on sabotage! The cost of Bush’s unfunded Medicare Part D as projected to 2018 will be $776.6 BILLION. http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf
The events of the past year which the Republicans have blown out of proportion, exploited and most often embellished have revealed the sorry state of “journalism” in America. Can’t just blame Fox either as many in the Mainstream Media have been just as lazy and irresponsible.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-debunked-20131030,0,6010994.story#axzz2jHn2eIOt
And why are some talking heads who are notorious for spreading lies and propaganda given any air time at all?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/the-myth-of-the-634-million-obamacare-website/196585
I saw this segment on The View and wondered why in the hell did Barbara Walters showcase the same nut job that most often peddles her lies on Fox and Glenn Beck.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/29/the-view-mainstreams-serial-misinformer-betsy-m/196649
Barbara, who gave us a decade of Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s daily regurgitation of GOP “talking points” also likes Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly and has them on her show frequently, when they have a new book to pimp like Coulter’s recent visit there to advertise her latest waste of time…”Never Trust a Liberal Over 3“
In an era where people stand in front of their microwaves and yell “Faster, faster, you useless piece of shit!”, an era where every single insignificant thought & detail about themselves has to be instantly communicated to everyone…a “controversial” bill that requires using a faulty website ACTUALLY IS about the biggest fuckup you can make in modern America. Sad but true. People have absolutely NO patience anymore. If it takes longer than a Tweet, you’re already in big trouble.
The Affordable Care Act was passed -what- about 5 years ago? The US government has been able to record and snoop through everybody’s electronic communication for at least a decade because it considers all humanity potentially dangerous Enemies of the State…but it can’t get a simple website to work in 5 years, even when it’s the single most important thing the President has accomplished??? That’s a really hard pill to swallow.
Yes, I know it’s not important in the grand scheme of things and will quickly be forgotten, but it’s the worst possible kick-off you could have for such a wrongly maligned program…and you couldn’t serve the drooling Republican masses a juicier steak to chew on. It just makes one want to give up altogether.