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<>MSM Fooled by
GOPaganda - Again
by Gene Lyons
Link
See, I go back a long way on these
politicized hoaxes. Courtesy of the Clinton
administration, Arkansas journalists got an early introduction into the
creepy
methods of conservative political operatives and their ability to
hoodwink the
national press. The local version of the Shirley Sherrod story was an
equally
admirable public servant named Beverly Bassett Schaffer.
As long ago as 1992, Schaffer found herself implicitly accused of
"Whitewater"
corruption in The New York Times. Although she'd provided the reporter
with
documented evidence that she'd done everything in her power as Arkansas
savings-and-loan regulator to close Jim McDougal's Madison Guaranty
S&L years before
federal regulators got around to it, once the Times committed its
prestige to a
bogus narrative there was no turning back. Schaffer soon found herself
hounded
through the streets of Fayetteville by "mainstream" TV crews with GOP
oppo
researchers openly riding shotgun.
Most surprising to me then was the national media's pack behavior. Even
incontestable, dispositive facts could be ignored for years if it meant
keeping the
longest political shaggy-dog story in recent American history going. It
wasn't that
reporters were stupid, mainly cowardly and career-driven. Indeed, they
always
understood precisely which facts couldn't be admitted into the
narrative if they
wanted to keep feeding out of Kenneth Starr's hand. By the time
Schaffer's
vindication came, they'd lost interest in her.
Back then, moreover, there was no Fox News channel, no YouTube, no
Andrew Brietbart,
and fewer right-wing provocateurs generally. So it's heartening to see
a polite
liberal columnist like the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne finally
catching on. The
lesson of the Sherrod episode, he writes, is that "the mainstream media and
the Obama administration must
stop cowering before a right wing that has
persistently forced its own
propaganda to be accepted as news." He chides
his colleagues for being "so petrified of being called 'liberal' that
they are prepared
to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment
editors."
Some of us have been saying things like that for years.
But our cowardly Democrats don't
have the ability to learn.
They keep making the sames mistakes, over and over.
And our whore media?
They know they're lying, of course, but whores follow the most money.
If they could get $25 for blowing Clooney or $26 for
blowing the vulgar Pigboy,
they'll go for that extra dollar every damn time.
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