“Attkisson’s Willingness to Investigate Obama Earns Washington Post Profile,” John Nolte writes at Big Journalism:
The Washington Post found CBS News investigative reporter worthy of a profile Tuesday. Why? Well, her willingness to actually investigate the Obama White House makes her unique outside of Fox News and right-leaning media. A sad commentary on the overall media to be sure, but the Post points this fact out without irony in a piece titled: “Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, a persistent voice of media skepticism on Benghazi.”
Believe it or not, Children, there was a time when a “persistent voice of media skepticism” towards those in power regarding an incident that involved something like the death of four Americans wasn’t unique. In fact, a long, long time ago, The Washington Post itself was pretty famous for its willingness to hold power accountable.
But all that changed over the last couple of decades, which means we have arrived at a dangerous time in our country when a reporter actually doing her job is enough of an outlier to become news itself.
But not entirely surprising, when this is the attitude that the Post itself takes in regards to today’s hearings:
To understand how the Post transformed itself from a journalistic powerhouse to its current feeble state as Obama’s palace guard, here’s a timeline of events from 2004 through 2010: Through a Gimlet Eye: Studying the Washington Post Kremlinologist-Style.
And to understand why Attkisson’s current employers are getting a bit uncomfortable that she’s actually doing her job — or at least, the job we like to think that journalists used to do — check out this post by Allahpundit at Hot Air:
For the same reason, the left takes greater exception to the Koch brothers’ interest in buying the LA Times than it would to the Kochs setting out to build their own right-wing paper from the ground up. They can’t stop conservative media from existing, but they can ghettoize it as illegitimate and “partisan” in a way that their own partisan garbage isn’t. The problem with the Kochs buying the Times is that the paper already has a reputation among wider media for being respectable and impartial (giggle). That reputation can and will be retracted by the rest of the press if/when the Kochs take it over, but it’ll take more work to delegitimize it than it would some new Koch start-up. Same with Attkisson: Skepticism about Benghazi is fine for the wingnuts at Fox, but bringing such unhelpful nonsense into an “impartial,” i.e. pro-Obama, outlet like CBS risks lending credence to the GOP’s accusations. The proper line to take on Benghazi is to dismiss the new hearings with a sneer, a la Joe Klein, or, in the case of “impartial” news coverage, to dismiss them more lightly by referencing Hillary’s long-ago whining about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to discredit the Clintons. “Going where the story leads” is unhelpful to liberalism in this case, ergo it’s advocacy by definition.
As Allahpundit quips, “CBS’s loss will, undoubtedly, eventually be Fox News’s gain.” And if Roger Ailes calls offering freedom to go wherever the news is and a fat paycheck, I can’t blame her for taking it, but it will be unfortunate to see old media continue to defenestrate itself.
But it does answer “Why consumers are fleeing the media” — a topic explored by Howard Kurtz(!) at CNN(!!) in March.
Update: “Greg Gutfeld wins quote of the day: ‘The media is Obama’s scandal condom.’” Heh.™
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