New Special Report on Shameless Network Avoidance of Obama Scandals: 'The Media's Obama Miracle'

Newsbusters ^ | August 8, 2012 | Tim Graham

[grundle]

Today the Media Research Center is releasing a new Special Report entitled "The Media's Obama Miracle: How Journalists Pretend There Aren't Any White House Scandals." It reveals just how dramatically the networks have avoided Fast and Furious, Solyndra, and other Obama scandals.

On October 27, 2011, former Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter wrote a column for Bloomberg News headlined “Obama Miracle is White House Free of Scandal.” Alter began: “President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 [race] with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.”

Alter even bragged: “According to a metric created by political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Obama set a record earlier this month for most days without a scandal of any president since 1977.” Nyhan’s methodology insisted that a president doesn’t have a scandal until The Washington Post calls it a “scandal” by using that precise word.

This grants nearly all the power in defining what is or is not a scandal to the Washington media elite. Congress can launch investigations, hold hearings, or otherwise make real news, but journalists have repeatedly ignored or dismissed the Obama scandals. (This also helps to keep the Obama scandals from entering the satire stream of late-night comedy shows.)

To study the media “miracle” of scandal denial, MRC analysts reviewed the coverage – or more precisely, the stunning lack of coverage – of just a few Obama scandals and allegations, large and small, on the morning and evening news shows of ABC, CBS, and NBC, and found:

– Fast and Furious: The Obama Justice Department’s “Operation Fast and Furious” encouraged American gun shops to sell weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which backfired as Mexican gangs shot and killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010 (as well as many Mexican citizens) with guns they allowed to “walk.” While CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson filed 29 stories unspooling the scandal, ABC and NBC stayed almost perfectly silent for many months, even as Attorney General Eric Holder admitted he had misled Congress about when he learned of “Fast and Furious.” Only when Congress voted to hold Holder in contempt did they discover the story, and then it was dismissed on NBC as “vicious” and “another example of our broken politics.”

– Solyndra: In the first two months of 2002, the Big Three networks reported a stunning 198 stories on the Enron bankruptcy, often tying the fiasco to President Bush. By comparison, since declaring bankruptcy on August 31, 2011, despite a half-billion dollars in federal loans from the Energy Department through Obama donor connections, ABC, CBS, and NBC filed a grand total of 24 stories on Solyndra, and barely connected it to Obama -- even as Obama told ABC he had no regrets, and even as the promise of “green jobs” demonstrably collapsed.

– MF Global: An investment company run by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (a major Obama fundraiser) declared bankruptcy on Halloween 2011 and admitted they lost more than a billion dollars of customer money that was supposed to be kept separately from risky investment schemes. This scandal garnered only six full stories and 16 briefs. Only NBC once mentioned Corzine was a Democrat. None even whispered any connection to Obama.

– Gibson Guitar: Some scandals are less weighty, but more interesting to viewers. Federal agents twice raided the plants of Gibson Guitar in Tennessee to investigate whether they improperly imported wood from Madagascar and India, but waited for almost a year before settling with the guitar maker for a $300,000 fine. No one found it newsworthy that Gibson’s CEO is a Republican donor, while other guitar makers who weren’t Republicans were not raided by the government over wood imports.

– Reverend Wright: After a long silence after the inauguration, as the networks pretended Obama’s longtime reverend Jeremiah Wright didn’t exist, network stories erupted in mid-May at the whisper of an idea that Republicans might exploit him in an ad. But the networks offered nothing on an interview in Ed Klein’s book The Amateur, where Reverend Wright claimed in a taped interview that Obama friends offered money for silence.

A recent Gallup survey concluded that only 21 percent of those surveyed had confidence in television news. As the nonpartisan Tyndall Report found, broadcast networks racked up 171 minutes of royal-wedding coverage and 111 minutes on the Michael Jackson wrongful-death trial on the evening news in 2011. But Obama scandal news – and hence, any notion the media act as a watchdog or a check on government – was almost nonexistent.

[grundle]

Here's a whole bunch of Obama scandals that the mainstream media has largely ignored:

Here are 56 reasons why Barack Obama is a lying, lawbreaking, warmongering, corrupt cronyist, who loves corporate lobbyists and Wall St., and who has no respect for the Constitution, limited government, rule of law, individual freedom, civil liberties, the taxpayers, or sick people who have prescriptions for medical marijuana

[Nateman]

This is why the media is dying, all they have to offer is convenience. Anybody with Internet access and a willingness to question things learned the lamestream has no credibility .

[canuck_conservative]

Solyndra is interesting because there were ample warnings that it would be a financial fiasco - and reports suggest that Obama may have personally intervened to get them funding. (No comment from the WH)

There’s also another potential scandal brewing - Obama’s refusal to prosecute any of the reckless Wall St. bankers responsible wholly or partly for the financial mess in the fall of 2008 - because, surprise surprise, they’re all major donors to his campaign! Where’s CNN / WashPost / NY Times on this one??

[hosepipe]

Really..... the scandal is that there are virtually NO SCANDALS..

Literally NO ONE in the White Hut or the entire Executive Branch thats a little off center, walking with a limp, a little shady, tongue in cheek, has strange friends, seriously needs toilet paper, is going bald or needs watching closely..

NO ONE.. ZIP,, Nada.. they are all perfect specimens..
IF that is not a conspiracy I don’t know what is or even CAN BE...

Not a small average run of the mill conspiracy mind you BUT a massive almost impossible conspiracy to hold together without rats leaving the ship..

WHOEVER is behind this conspiracy is either very smart -OR-
........ is in control of the FBI, CIA, NSA, secret service, Justice Department and several military security organizations..

WHO CAN THAT BE?.. and not only that but who are the goons.. you know the goons that come to make you an offer you cannot turn down... soon after being elected to federal office.. (and some States)..

[uncommonsense]

Dropping the New Black Panther voter intimidation case that was already won, hiring a NASA director who's primary mission is to make Muslims “feel good” about their contributions, cutting deals and creating exemptions to pass MbaMao care, disclosing super top secrete programs like Stuxnet, outing the Dr who supposedly helped kill OBL, droning American citizens without a trial (I don't think they even got a warrant), bailing out GM to make sure the union's pension is funded (VEBA) and Repub dealerships are punished, Blago, Resko, Rambo, and soooo many more

[hosepipe]

If “someone” convinced me that they would kill some or ALL of the people I love instead of me.. I might do anything they asked and shut up about it.. but thats just me..

[Walrus]

Somewhere -—and I think we all know where -— Josef Goebbels is smiling as the American fascist press perpetuates the Big Lie.

[eggman]

Since no one in the Obama administration told the press to report a scandal, then there were no scandals to be reported. Yep, clean as a whistle. They checked with Obama and reported everything he told them to report.

[devolve]

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Highest IQ ever

HIGHEST IQ EVER:

On Imus in the Morning, the Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss said, “Barack Obama has the highest IQ of any President.”

SOURCE: http://www.theamericanright.com/forums/showthread.php?9985-Highest-IQ-ever

If Obama had gotten acceptance by MENSA - You know he would have bragged about it - except for one little thing -

Barack Hussein Obama (Junior) would have to provide irrefutable documention and numbers to prove it - and MENSA turned down both Bill and Hillary Clinton when they attempted to intimidate MENSA into giving them membership.

(MENSA used to operate out of Brooklyn NY - They are now located in Texas)

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If the Romney haters on this and on other FR threads were/are so brilliant and competent - Why have they not run for office and given the gift of their wonderfulness to America?

Remember - Free Republic once ran a confidential/anonymous sidebar poll asking who their choice for US President is/was

Over 15% picked Hillary Rodham Clinton

Some of that “Hillary 15%” are on FR threads like this every day -

- Some are reading my comment right now.....

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