How the Mainstream Media Got Bush Re-elected
November 1, 2005
Columnists in today’s Boston Globe, L.A. Times, and Washington Post all have pieces that make it very clear that Patrick Fitzgerald had the goods to indict White House aides for obstructing justice in the CIA leak case as of October of last year. Each one of the columnists notes that the MSM was complicit in preventing Fitzgerald from doing so.
Media giants like the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and others all played the Pre$$titute roll and had they not, John Kerry would most assuredly be President today. These OP/ED’s are all must-read pieces about the White House’s obstruction of justice, how the MSM is complicit in it, and how it impacted the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.
Robert Scheer notes in his column “What Judy forgot: Your right to know,” in the L.A.Times that: “The most intriguing revelation of Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s news conference last week was his assertion that he would have presented his indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby a year ago if not for the intransigence of reporters who refused to testify before the grand jury. Scheer said that without that delay, “we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005.” Had that been the case, John Kerry probably would be president of the United States today.”
It is deeply disturbing that the public was left uninformed about such key information because of the posturing of news organizations that claimed to be upholding the free-press guarantee of the 1st Amendment. As Fitzgerald rightly pointed out, “I was not looking for a 1st Amendment showdown.” Nor was one necessary, if reporters had fulfilled their obligation to inform the public, as well as the grand jury, as to what they knew of a possible crime by a government official.
How odd for the press to invoke the Constitution’s prohibition against governmental abridgement of the rights of a free press in a situation in which a top White House official exploited reporters in an attempt to abridge an individual’s right to free speech.
The spirit of a law is more important than the letter, but the reporters who fought to avoid testifying to the grand jury in the investigation that snared Libby upheld neither. They were acting as knowing accomplices to a top White House official’s attempt to discredit a whistle-blower.
Thomas Oliphant says in his column, “The coverup worked” in the Boston Globe, that Fitzgerald “was in effect showing that the quixotic pursuit of a nonexistent right or privilege by some news organizations is one reason President Bush was reelected last year. . . Imagine last week’s astonishing developments unfolding in the fall of 2004.”
…The obstruction of justice alleged in this case kept us from knowing material things about our leaders at the moment we were deciding whether to keep them in office. In more common speech, obstruction of justice is a coverup, and the coverup worked — just as the Watergate coverup in 1972 kept facts from the public that would have guaranteed Richard Nixon’s defeat.
E.J. Dionne asks the quintessential question in the WaPo, “Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?” …Libby knew that at least some news organizations would resist having reporters testify. The journalistic “shield” was converted into a shield for the Bush administration’s coverup.
Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors, in the special counsel’s apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation.
As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
In late September, Pre$$titutes noted “The Media’s Role In The Maligning Of John Kerry.” Today, one day before the anniversary of that fateful day last November, we all bear the injustice of what might have been. Time and time again last year, we witnessed the maligning of Kerry by MSM. As Pre$$titues notes, “if Kerry were president today, America would be on the road to recovery, recovery of our dignity, recovery of our integrity, recovery of our reputation as the world’s moral leader.”
It’s a sad day for America to wake up to, one year later and know that it was all based on lies and it could have been prevented – had the media done their jobs. Instead we have Russert’s, the Fineman’s, the Blizter’s, the Miller’s, the Cooper’s and so many others, to thank for feeding the Disinformation Society and polluting the minds of Americans at a time when, had the truth prevailed, informed voters would have made a different choice.
Oliphant ends his column today asking could Bush “have survived the surfacing of the truth a year ago?” The answer is categorically - NO.
LINKS -
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1016
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
