Barack Obama and Fareed Zakaria: Ethical Journalism?

The Constitution Club ^ | 05-22-11 | The Rat

[TheConservativeCitizen]

CNN’S ‘FAIR AND BALANCED’ ELITIST BUSTED

Following Barack Obama’s speech on the Middle East last week – in which Israel and most of its supporters correctly claim the president threw Israel under the bus – CNN’s Fareed Zakaria heaped praise on the man and the message. Of course he did – he probably wrote half the speech – or at the very least, had a hand in crafting it.

After CNN’s Eliot Spitzer revealed last week that Zakaria has been advising Obama on foreign policy matters, Fareed claimed that he’s simply had “off-the-record conversations” with the president on “foreign issues” and that the whole thing is a misunderstanding. Of course it is Fareed. Accepting, (for a moment) that Zakaria’s explanation is correct, should he still not have disclosed that tidbit when he evaluated Obama’s speech? Of course he should have.

So, who is this guy Fareed Zakaria anyway? In December of last year, I wrote an article entitled CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: The American People are the Problem, in which I commented on Zakaria’s take on America:

“The Chinese are the ones who should be celebrating Thanksgiving and we should be having a big Mardi Gras party, but that’s what ‘we’ pick up, a kind of a culture of over-consumption. The people are the big problem. I mean, Americans – everybody wants to say the American people are so wonderful. You know, I think that when they come to recognize that they have to make sacrifices too, that it’s not just wasteful – they need to have – they need to recognize that some of what’s going to happen here is fewer. They have to consume fewer things. They have to accept higher taxes.”

So goes the worldview of Fareed Zakaria. The “real problem” is the American people; we are spoiled and overindulgent; we must spend less, accept higher taxes, and stop being so selfish. Is this an internationalist marriage made in wealth-redistribution heaven, or what? Barack Obama feels exactly the same way.

The story of Zakaria’s meetings with Obama became a discussion of journalistic credibility early last week. While the New York Times article praised Obama for “sounding out prominent journalists like Zakaria,” (of course it did) more objective and credible sources had a different take:

Should a journalist offer “objective” public analysis on the policies of a president whom he is advising on the very topics he is assessing? On his own television program, no less?”

After several internet outlets reported that Zakaria was advising the president, Zakaria posted on his website Saturday that those reports were “inaccurate” and that he simply had some “off-the-record” conversations with the president, who had never asked him for advice.

While it follows that Obama – Mr. Know-it-all – doesn’t seem to need advice from anyoneon anything, Zakaria and CNN had a journalistic obligation to disclose his “off-the-record” conversations with the president. They would have demanded no less from Fox News, Sean Hannity and George Bush.

At least the Keith Olbermanns and Ed Schultzes of the world are honest – in your face – unabashed apologists for Barack Obama and everything he does. Fareed Zakaria is no such man – choosing instead to pass himself off as an objective enlightened intellectual – the most insidious kind of all.

[Old Retired Army Guy]

For a guy who grew up in the black hole of Calcutta (Now Mumbasa)I guess you could say he has come a long way, but his views still reflect his background.

[SueRae]

Let’s see Fareed interview Natanyahu...he can get the same lesson that Obama did.

So much for orginal thought.

[jospehm20]

So, we have a socialist, third world moron, newsreader advising our socialist, third world moron, teleprompter reader president. Why am I not surporised at the results?