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The Statist Media: All the News that’s Fit to Create

Poor George Orwell, spinning in his grave like a gyroscope on steroids; little did he know that what is euphemistically called news reporting would turn, instead, into bold-faced creative writing projects. Two headlines from Monday’s slop bucket (number 1 courtesy of NewsBusters, number 2 from Breitbart), illustrate the point:

1. “Face the Nation’ Edits Out Senator Cruz Condemning Obama’s ‘Abuse of
Power’ ”
2. “Ezra Klein’s New Website Vox Will Tell You What to Think About the News”

Senator Ted Cruz appeared on Face the Nation Sunday. Chief Inquisitor, Bob Schieffer, wanted an admission of responsibility from Senator Cruz for The Lyin’ King’s government shutdown and accused Senator Cruz of fomenting it. According to NewsBusters:

…it also appears that Mr. Cruz was the victim of editing by CBS. Based on video from Senator Cruz’s YouTube page and what aired on (Sunday’s) Face the Nation broadcast, the senator’s comments surrounding President Obama’s “abuse of power” were edited from the program. Instead what aired was a segment that ignored many of the senator’s complaints directed at President Obama.

For those who might be skeptical of the lengths to which an unashamedly partisan CBS went in order to advance their own viewpoint, videos of what was actually said and what was ultimately broadcast are available at NewsBusters: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2014/01/26/face-nation-edits-out-senator-cruz-condemning-obama-s-abuse-power#ixzz2rZ167RcB

The Breitbart piece is even more telling. Ezra Klein, poster boy for progressive dogma, was given the heave-ho from Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post earlier this month on January 2. Klein insisted that the paper fund his-web based pet project, to the tune of eight figures. The Post countered with a pink slip. Klein was summarily handed his hat and told to hurry. Klein has subsequently found a home at Vox Media. Breitbart reports:

Saying he intends to ‘”fix the news” with Vox, Klein bemoaned the failure of the Internet to make the news better at delivering the “crucial context” people need. “Today, we are better than ever at telling people what’s happening…but not nearly good enough at giving them the crucial contextual information necessary to understand what’s happened…” Klein and crew intend to create a site that is as good at “explaining the world as it is at reporting on it.”

The news has always been subject to creative enhancement, and was officially recognized “yellow journalism” during the Spanish American War. Papers, desperate to grab a majority share of readership, created ever-more lurid and fanciful embellishments on the truth. But today’s version is far more insidious. “Reporters” either make up stories out of whole cloth or suppress facts because they aren’t reporting; they are making news in order to fit their opinions of events. And they are bound and determined to shape your opinions by telling you what to think.

Remember the television show The Gillmore Girls? Early in this millennium, Rory Gillmore tells her mother, with fanatical conviction that would do Jean d’Arc proud, that she intends to be a reporter, “like Christiane Amanpour,” because she “want(s) to change the world.” Reporting had morphed into changing the world.

Both stories share a common advisory. Not only are events such as deliberate editing and blatant prevarication becoming more frequent, spinning news is “out of the closet.” The MSM does not feel compelled to offer apologies once they are found out. It has, sadly, become a given that reporters no longer state what has happened; they cut, compose and tell us what to think about events, all at the same time. According to the MSM, we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves.

We no longer have yellow journalism. If color is any indication, analogous to bodily waste, what we have now is brown journalism. Dark brown.

Image: Courtesy of: http://ids3123spring2011.wikispaces.com/1Group6

Marilyn Assenheim

Marilyn Assenheim was born and raised in New York City. She spent a career in healthcare management although she probably should have been a casting director. Or a cowboy. A serious devotee of history and politics, Marilyn currently lives in the NYC metropolitan area.

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