THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Byron York: New York Times profile of Bruce Ohr looks a lot like a well timed defense brief.

It’s like in The Verdict, where James Mason’s “Prince of Darkness” character arranges favorable newspaper and TV profiles for the doctors who basically killed Paul Newman’s client, just before the case goes to trial.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: The Liberal Media Narrative Is Immune to Facts.

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Nancy Pelosi on MSNBC: One of NBC’s Priorities Is to ‘Undermine My Prospects as Speaker.’

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and the subtext of her statement — that because she’s a Democrat, NBC should be acting as her PR agents — makes perfect sense.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Media glosses over Dianne Feinstein’s Chinese spy.

THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF ASKING CATS NOT TO BE OBSESSED WITH LASER POINTERS: Please, Please, Please Stop Reporting on Viral Receipt Stories.

Readers of these stories aren’t looking for evidence that some guy is an open bigot. They’re looking for evidence that millions of people are secret bigots, people who live in places like Texas, Kansas, Tennessee, small-town New Jersey, etc.

Media outlets that fall for receipt stories don’t just misinform their audience, they do so in a way that damages our nation’s social cohesion.

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll understand why they view this as a feature, not a bug. As Fred Siegel wrote in his 2014 history of the American left, The Revolt Against the Masses: 

The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. “Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,” Parrington insisted, referring to both democracy and capitalism, “and the artist and the scientist will erect in America a civilization that may become, what civilization was in earlier days, a thing to be respected.” Alienated from middle-class American life, liberalism drew on an idealized image of “organic” pre-modern folkways and rhapsodized about a future harmony that would reestablish the proper hierarchy of virtue in a post-bourgeois, post-democratic world.

And with the exception of a few brief time-outs in the culture war for pesky interludes such as WWII and 9/11, it has been ever thus.

SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” STUMBLES: The future of the Democratic Party has no idea what “occupation of Palestine” means, but certainly likes using it.

That puts Democrats who are rushing to get behind [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez in a bind, however. Will the news media start asking them about the “occupation of Palestine” in places like Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio? Or how about even in New York, where Kirsten Gillibrand practically sprained an ankle attempting to embrace Democratic Socialism after Ocasio-Cortez’ surprise win? Does the Akin Rule apply to anyone else other than Republicans?

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll know the answer is, “No. Next question?”

IF YOU THINK OF THE PRESS AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES THIS STRANGE NEW CONCERN MAKES EMINENT SENSE:  The myth of ‘skyrocketing’ gas prices.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Freaked Out Americans Desperately Seek to Escape the News.

Just think of the news as being produced by desperate freaked out Democratic operatives with bylines, and the above headline from Bloomberg Media makes perfect sense.

(Classical reference in headline.)

CALEB HOWE: AP Deliberately Manipulates—Then Stealth Updates—Immigration Horror Story to Tie Obama-Era Abuse Case to Trump.

I do think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it does all make sense.

LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT HYSTERIA: A Census Bureau memo warns that the inclusion of a citizenship question will hurt the “quality” of the 2020 count.

Just think of the media as being Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT CAMPAIGN AD: After 9/11 The Greatest Threat To America Lived In A Cave. Now He Lives In The White House. “If the party roles were reversed here, this is a three-day firestorm. As it is, it’s more of a curio for the media. Which makes sense, since many of them doubtless agree with Dan Helmer’s point.”

You know what? I do think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it does all make sense.

DAVID HARSANYI: The Media’s Defense Of Obama Administration Spying Defies Logic: You don’t have to be a Donald Trump fan to be concerned about the abuses of intelligence agencies.”

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and the logic is plain.

THE SHAMEFUL, UNETHICAL SMEARING OF JORDAN PETERSON: The psychologist and intellectual might be controversial, but he’s not ‘enabling Jew hatred.’

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Astonishingly, Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is still #1 most read on Amazon.

STEPHANOPOULOS GOTTA STEPHANOPOULOS. Stephanopoulos to Brokaw Accuser: You ‘Angered’ a Colleague I ‘Admired.’

George Stephanopoulos is still working hard to defend powerful men accused of sexually harassing women. The former Bill Clinton operative turned Good Morning America co-host on Thursday interrogated Linda Vester, the woman who accused Brokaw of unwanted sexual advances and groping. Stephanopoulos, who stood by Clinton as numerous women accused him, lectured Vester: “Tom Brokaw is pretty angry.”

He then questioned her honesty in relating the accusations: “[Brokaw] describes you as a colleague who has trouble with the truth. Are you absolutely convinced that everything you remember about that incident, those incidents with Tom Brokaw are what happened?”

Stephanopoulos seriously wondered why Vester didn’t trust NBC to investigate what NBC new about Brokaw.

The guild always protects its own, just as Brokaw and the later Peter Jennings defended Dan Rather in October of 2004. Just think of the media as Democratic operatives* with bylines, and it all makes sense.

* To be fair, Stephanopoulos makes that comparison extremely easy.

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: AP Shamed Into Naming One Dem’s Party in DC Anti-Semitism Controversy.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Magazine editors turn blind eye to Melania.

Flashback: Why Women’s Magazines Only “Get Political” When a Republican is in the White House.

Spin Sisters gotta spin, even if it means bias by omission.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Newspapers Care Much More About Bashing Sinclair Than Criticizing an Unconstitutional Attack on Free Speech.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Scott Pruitt Is Trump’s Biggest Asset. That’s Why The Left Wants Him Gone.

Mollie Hemingway:

There are poor ways, average ways, and shrewd ways to tackle the constitutional problems that arise from the administrative state. Many Republicans either don’t realize the problems of an unelected bureaucracy’s power, or fail to combat those problems effectively. Pruitt is in the final category, demonstrating competency and a devotion to rule of law. And he has the courage that so many of his GOP peers lack, not being intimidated by the normal media frenzy that intimidates other Republican appointees.

Recently, a coordinated attempt to oust him has taken shape, as this liberal TV producer notes:

Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and… you know the rest.

The most charming of which might have been Bill Kristol, about whom Hemingway notes, “this week tweeted his desire for Michelle Obama to run and defeat Donald Trump, said Pruitt was a parody of sycophancy for supporting a conservative deregulatory agenda.”

SARAH HOYT: CNN is a Trump-hate-aholic and it’s Time for an Intervention.

Just think of CNN as Democratic operatives with bylines and it..nahh, they’re waaay too crazy for it to all make sense.

UPDATE: As appropriate for anything CNN-related, the link was initially an epic fail. It should be working now.

HEY, IF THE DNC-MSM CAN REHAB DAN RATHER, WHY NOT KATIE? Katie Couric’s Return to Broadcasting Proves that Lying Is Okay If You’re Lying About the Right Thing:

I want to believe this one-off appearance for the Olympics is the last time we’ll see Couric, but that would make little sense. To me, this feels like more of a trial run to see how well she’s received by the public. I refuse to believe they couldn’t find anyone else to report on the Olympics. Someone with a much cleaner record.

Either way, it would appear journalistic integrity means little to the mainstream media. If you touch a woman inappropriately you’re gone — at least that’s how it is now that it’s a hot issue — but flat out lie about innocent people in order to push your agenda, and you’re still camera-worthy.

Just think of the media as Democratic party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

THINK OF THE PRESS AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: The Sudden Hazing of Lindsey Graham: The media loved him when he rebuked Trump. Not so much now, when he questions the DOJ’s and FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation.

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: CNN Host Ignores Democrat’s Misconduct Settlement For Entire Interview [VIDEO].

BOB CORKER ON THE MEDIA: I Have Empathy for Trump Now.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Thursday he has a “newfound empathy” for President Trump’s criticism of the media after a report that he’d benefit from a provision in the final GOP tax bill went viral.

“I told (Trump) that I’d had a healthy respect for the media and I deal with them all the time, and, you know, to attack the media has not been something I’ve done,” Corker said on Fox News.

“I’ve never ever in my life used the work ‘fake news’ until today. I actually understand what it is the president has been dealing with,” he continued.

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Deceitful Bias in The New York Times.

John Stossel’s latest video for Reason TV:

Just think of the Times as being almost entirely staffed by Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

QUESTIONS THAT NOBODY* IS ASKING: Why Have Liberals Been Such Horrendous Hypocrites on Women’s Rights?, asks Roger Simon.

* Well, at least nobody at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among numerous others. Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and their omertàs all make sense.

MEDIA STOPS EMBARGOING COVERAGE OF MENENDEZ CORRUPTION TRIAL JUST LONG ENOUGH TO SAY THE JURY IS HUNG.

Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.™

2017, MAN: Media Freaks Out Because Rick Perry Said that Fossil Fuels Provide Energy to Poor Countries, Which Allows Them to Light the Streets, Which Reduces Crime.

Just think of the media as DNC operatives with bylines and lithium, and it all makes sense.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Tim Carney: The Hill’s stupid coverage of Rick Perry’s sexual assault comment is why nobody trusts the media.

“POLITICO’S OUTKICK [THE COVERAGE] FABRICATION SPEAKS VOLUMES:”

I did what I could to answer Ben Strauss’ questions as well as I could, while still producing, occasionally popping on air when Clay asked me a question, and handling the phone calls. This was by no means me sitting in front of an interviewer, but Strauss relentlessly grilled me on all aspects of Outkick, my politics, and Clay’s brand of entertainment.

If you read the Politico article, you’ll notice he quoted me several times in the roughly 4500 word piece. I probably spoke over ten thousand to him myself, but he picked about six sentences. Before I discuss those, let me explain how the interview went down. I can’t accurately describe how many times I was asked some variation of this question:

So, did Clay Travis make a conscious decision to appeal to the right for monetary and celebrity purposes?

It wouldn’t just come as a question, as it would also include something like, “I mean you guys know what you’re doing, and it’s clearly working for you, but this was intentional, right?” That’s paraphrasing, but he felt the need to make up quotes and insinuations from me, so I’ll do the same to him. But, I’ll be courteous enough to admit it, and also won’t take him out of context, as he did to me.

I refused to give him the answer he walked in the door craving. This guy had an agenda, he had his title picked out, he had his “gotcha” piece scripted out in his head before he ever shook hands with either one of us this past Monday morning. To call this article biased and littered with manipulation would be a massive understatement.

Strauss would then ask the same question again, but with variance in the selected words, hoping I wasn’t educated enough to see what he was doing.

Didn’t you record your own copy of the interview? As Glenn wrote in the New York Post in 2008 after ABC edited a mashed-up video ransom note version of Sarah Palin being “interviewed” by Charlie Gibson, always bring your own video camera (or at least a digital audio recorder) to an interview. Just ask the folks who Katie Couric tried to gotcha last year.

And speaking of blasts from the past, Outkick’s Jason Martin writes:

Clay Travis isn’t alt-right in the least. I suggested to Strauss that I felt Donald Trump gave that incredibly small fringe movement a “wink and a gun” because he needed their support, and because he has no principles, merely interests. Correction, he has one interest, and it has five letters in its last name. The last four are “RUMP.”

Clay didn’t vote for Trump, and despite our many disagreements, he and I shared that in common. Never for a second did I consider Trump, and in fact as soon as he was the clear nominee, I officially registered as an Independent and removed the “R” from my name permanently. None of that matters to “journalists” like Ben Strauss, however. I’m alt-right because he and I wouldn’t necessarily vote the same way. I’m convinced most of the people that toss out “alt-right” like it’s a bodily function have no clue what it actually means.

Alt-right – for the media, it’s this decade’s version of calling everyone on the right “neocons,” ironically enough.

Exit quote:

Clay and I gave this man access, we answered his questions, we tried to ensure he had all the information he needed to write an article worthy of his time. He interviewed me, he interviewed Clay’s wife (and asked her some RIDICULOUS, uncomfortable questions about the family now being on the wrong side of history), and he even spoke to Bobby freaking Bones about Clay.

This is the behind the scenes account of how one writer came in not to learn anything, not to be objective, and not to write an intriguing portrait of a controversial public figure, but to try and find a punchline for his bad joke.

After reading the article, the punchline is actually the byline. Go figure.

Just think of Politico as being largely staffed by Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

JUST NBC THE HYPOCRISY:

● Shot: “Former FEMA head Michael Brown remembers Hurricane Katrina ten years later, calling President George W. Bush’s decision to flyover New Orleans to view the aftermath and not land was a huge mistake.”

—Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 28, 2015.

● Chaser: “The hosts of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ mocked President Trump on Tuesday over a video of him helping load disaster relief supplies in Houston for Hurricane Harvey victims.”

—The Hill, today.

Related:

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is ‘identity liberalism’ killing the Democratic party?

Humanities professor Mark Lilla has a new book out titled “The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics”… If you want a sense of how the left is responding to this thesis, you can turn to this contentious interview at Slate. Author Isaac Chotiner seems to be doing his best to undermine Lilla’s argument and, more specifically, to make the case that everything comes down to racism. Lilla’s position is that this assumption is blinding Democrats to seeing a more nuanced view of the problem:

John Sexton of Hot Air goes on to quote a wide swatch of Lilla’s interview, but I want to drill down to this moment, which sums up just how unreceptive Lilla’s intended audience of fellow leftists will be to his message:

[Lilla:] When you ask them about identity issues, the people who are not voting for us, and ask them about what they perceive as political correctness, they respond. You only have to look at polls about this, and it’s a great recruiting tool for the right. Now, unless you assume that all of white America is racist and lost and cannot be saved—

Chotiner: Only about half, yeah.

“So Lilla is saying people on the right are responding to the left’s obvious contempt for them and Chotiner’s reply is to label half of them are racist, which is sort of making Lilla’s point,”  Sexton adds after quoting more of the interview.

Slate is the last journalistic redoubt of the Graham family, who owned the Washington Post and Newsweek for decades, before offloading, in recent years, the latter for $1 and the former in return for Jeff Bezos’ pocket change. One of the reasons why their publications managed to turn a large investment into a smaller one is the smugness of their journalists, one of whom wore a “Yeah, I’m in the Media, Screw You!” button to the GOP’s 1992 convention.

And if anything, the smug cloud over both the DNC and its operatives with bylines has grown much, much larger. As William Voegeli concludes in his review of Lilla’s book at City Journal (titled “Liberals, Shipwrecked,” which is also well worth your time to read in full), “Lilla’s hope for a future liberalism that will forge ahead and surmount identity politics seems naïve.”

And how.

JOURNALISM AS NARRATIVE CONTROL: James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

We’ve been hearing a lot about “right-wing violence” lately. If we’re to believe our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, there’s a Klansman on every street corner and a Nazi under every bed. There’s nothing more terrifying than a “white nationalist” who lives in his mom’s basement, which is why it’s okay for feral Antifa children to beat these guys up and drench them with balloons filled with piss. It’s “self-defense.”

But what happens when an act of violence is irrefutably motivated by left-wing ideology? What happens if, for example, a Bernie Bro named James T. Hodgkinson shoots at a bunch of congressmen for the explicit reason that he hates Republicans and wants them dead? How do we fit that into the preferred narrative?

We can’t. There’s no way. So we just leave it out entirely.

Well, for certain values of “we.” But it’s sad to see this even from the WSJ. Plus:

If James T. Hodgkinson had been a Trump supporter who shot and almost killed a Democratic congressman for political reasons, he’d be the most infamous man in America. But now, just two months after his attempt to murder a group of Republican lawmakers, he’s not even worth mentioning.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think the press is sad that Hodgkinson didn’t succeed.

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong. Even at the WSJ, it seems.

TRUMP AND THE MEDIA LOVE MUD WRESTLING:

Trump is right to complain about how he never gets any credit for doing the right thing because the media and the rest of his critics are always waiting to pounce on him for doing the wrong thing.

All I could think was: The media have lost their collective mind. They used to be content to just tell us what to think. Now, in the era of Trump, they go further and tell us not to trust what we see with our own eyes or hear with our own ears.

Trump does a superb job of getting in his own way, and turning every policy disagreement into a junior high school fistfight.

Still, the last few days have been excruciating for me. Not because I have any affection for Trump or neo-Nazis or white supremacists. I don’t. The country would be better off without the lot of them. However, I have become quite fond of journalism.

I sure miss it.

Me too. Note that this syndicated column by Ruben Navarrette, Jr. is running in the San Francisco Chronicle, which buried its editors’ videotaped interview with Obama in January of 2008 in which he vowed to bankrupt the coal industry, instead of putting his words in giant 72 point type on its front page the next day. A serious presidential candidate vowing to wipe a major industry should be major news no matter what your political leanings or your views on environmentalism. Its omission by the Chronicle served as a stark reminder that long ago, old media morphed into Democratic operatives with bylines, who merely produce content as a side function of their main goal of keeping their team in power and accumulating more of it.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Emails show Washington Post, New York Times reporters unenthusiastic about covering Clinton-Lynch meeting.

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: The Media’s Shameful Refusal To Report On Putin’s Ties To The American Left.

Earlier: Fusion GPS Illuminates the Brave New World of Manufactured News for Hire.

A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY: Imran Awan Scandal Shows Just How Much Dirt Dems Wanted to Hide By Focusing on Trump-Russia.

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and their efforts to sweep DWS’s scandal under the rug all makes sense.

TAKE A BOW, DNC-MSM: Last night, the Boy Scouts became the Hitler Youth. Today, Sean T. Collins, a freelancer who has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, and the New York Observer among other publications, declares “The world would be a better place if McCain died in Vietnam,” in a since-deleted tweet, as he and other Democrat operatives with bylines attack McCain for wanting to “kill” people by repealing Obamacare, as NewsBusters notes.

Lest you think this is entirely a new attitude amongst the left, recall this New Yorker flashback to the Vietnam War era. “Punch” Sulzberger, who had published the Times from 1963 through 1992, and whose family has controlled the New York Times since the late 19th century, served with distinction as a Marine in the Pacific Theater in WWII and as an officer during the Korean War. His son on the other hand…

[Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr.] had been something of a political activist in high school—he had been suspended briefly from Browning for trying to organize a shutdown of the school following the National Guard’s shooting of students at Kent State—and at Tufts he eagerly embraced the antiwar movement. His first arrest for civil disobedience took place outside the Raytheon Company, a defense and space contractor: there, dressed in an old Marine jacket of Punch’s, he joined other demonstrators who were blocking the entrance to the company’s gates. He was soon arrested again, in an antiwar sit-in at the J.F.K. Federal Building in Boston.

Punch had showed little reaction after the first arrest, but when he got word of the second one he flew to Boston. Over dinner, he asked his son why he was involved in the protests and what kind of behavior the family might expect from him in the future. Arthur assured his father that he was not planning on a career of getting himself arrested. After dinner, as the two men walked in the Boston Common, Punch asked what his son later characterized as “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my life”: “If a young American soldier comes upon a young North Vietnamese soldier, which one do you want to see get shot?” Arthur answered, “I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country; we shouldn’t be there.” To the elder Sulzberger, this bordered on traitor’s talk. “How can you say that?” he yelled. Years later, Arthur said of the incident, “It’s the closest he’s ever come to hitting me.”

Pinch and the rest of the MSM haven’t exactly matured much since the Woodstock era. As Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon wrote of the Times in a 2014 piece titled “Fast Times at Eighth Avenue High,” “The next time our reporters and producers and anchors and bloggers affect an air of moral or social superiority, the next time they pretend to know the answers to every political and economic and cultural question, remember this: They are basically teenagers.”

And regarding their adolescent rage, and that of the non-media wing of the Democrat Party, as Glenn has written, “Trump, as I keep saying, is a symptom of how rottenly dysfunctional our sorry political class is. Take away Trump and they’re just as awful and destructive. He just brings their awfulness to the fore, where it’s no longer ignorable. Now they’re willing to play with fire, risking the future of the polity over little more than hurt feelings, in a way that would have been unthinkable not long ago.”

Related: “And now, in sports news, Deadspin preparing victory lap in event of Sen. John McCain’s death,” tweeting, “I don’t want to hear another [f***ing] word about John McCain unless he dies or does something useful for once.”

I’m so old, I can remember when the left pretended to condemn eliminationist rhetoric.

UPDATE: Liberals Stop Pretending to Care About John McCain After His Health Care Vote.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS. ABC’s Outrageous Anti-Christian Smear: “Jeff Sessions addresses ‘anti-LGBT hate group,’ but DOJ won’t release his remarks,” ran an ABC headline yesterday, screencapped by Rod Dreher, who writes:

This is genuinely shocking to read. I went to the same annual ADF meeting last summer. It was a normal gathering of religious conservative lawyers and others, who talked about various challenges to religious liberty. Yet those scamming trolls at the Southern Poverty Law Center tagged them a “hate group,” and ABC News repeats that slur. What ABC says is technically true. SPLC does in fact call ADF a “hate group.” The shocking thing is that ABC News takes that incredible charge for granted, and uses it to trash both ADF and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Here’s a link to a PDF file from ADF that gives you the basic facts about the organization. Does this look like the moral equivalent of a neo-Nazi outfit to you?

Here’s the link to the SPLC page explaining why they labeled ADF a “hate group.”  You should be aware that if they say this about ADF, they must also say it about any church that upholds orthodox Christian teaching on sexuality. SPLC calls it “hate” — and again, ABC News repeats that vicious smear, because no doubt they think it’s true.

Just think of ABC News as Democrat operatives with bylines (and in some cases booster seats), and it all makes sense.

Related: The Insidious Influence of the SPLC.

JOURNALISM HISTORIAN: CNN’S MALPRACTICE IS ‘A GIFT FROM HEAVEN FOR’ TRUMP.

In Reason’s newest podcast, W. Joseph Campbell says, “It makes you wonder why these news organizations are not doing a more thorough job of…fact-checking…and being a bit wary of anonymous sources.”

Just think of them as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

And don’t miss his puncturing of the media’s overinflated, self-serving myths regarding their role in Watergate.

JUST THINK OF THE AP AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE:

Hodgkinson also visited the office of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign he had worked on as a volunteer, and was in email contact with the two Democratic senators from his home state.

As conservative journalist and video maker John Tabin tweets, “Amazing how a simple switch in party affiliation can turn a headline into a minor detail” that was buried 11 paragraphs into an article astonishingly headlined, “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.”

TRUE: Trump Didn’t Ruin the Media, Obama Did. “Obama was the first indicator that the media would simply refuse to cover stories they didn’t like about a politician they did. The media covered Clinton’s Chinagate and Travelgate. But they refused to cover the IRS scandal with the same level of vim as they would have under Bush; they downplayed the Obama administration’s involvement in the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation scandal; and members of the mainstream media openly mocked the right’s anger over the administration’s manipulation of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack. Obama had to be protected at all costs, including the cost of the media’s credibility. Meanwhile, the media savaged 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.”

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong. The thing is, nobody much cares what party operatives have to say.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Shot:

Back in February, I was riding on the New York to DC shuttle and CNN’s own Jeff Zucker was seated in the row behind me with a woman I took to be a colleague or personal assistant. She was yelling loudly into her phone, loudly enough that the other passengers took note of it, at one point escalating her voice to say: “If they want war with CNN, they got it.” When we landed, I noted the likely inspiration for the call: the administration had offered Mike Pence to every network except for CNN.

—Ben Domenech, “CNN’s War On Trump Is Going Swimmingly,” yesterday.

Chaser:

The media brag that they now more or less run the Democratic agenda. Univision’s Jorge Ramos (whose daughter worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign) recently thundered:

Our position, I think, has to be much more aggressive. And we should not expect the Democrats to do that job. It is our job. If we don’t question the president, if we don’t question his lies, if we don’t do it, who is going to do it? It’s an uncomfortable position.

In other words, Ramos confessed that the Democratic party apparently has neither new ideas nor a political agenda that would win over the public, and thus self-appointed journalistic grandees like him would have to step forward and lead the anti-Trump opposition as they shape the news.

Fellow panelist and CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter answered Ramos, “You’re almost saying we’re a stand-in for the Democrats.” Thereby, Stelter inadvertently confirmed Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s widely criticized but prescient assertion that the media are in fact “the opposition party” — and should be treated as such.

—Victor Davis Hanson, “Progressive Media & Democrats Form New Anti-Trump Party,” May 30th.

Hangover: Proud Sponsor of President Trump’s Nightly ‘Assassination’ — CNN’s Parent Company Time Warner:

In the next scene the Trumpian Caesar is attacked by the Senators and stabbed to death as an American flag hovers overhead, according to Sheaffer. “They had the full murder scene onstage, and blood was spewing everywhere out of his body.”

Among others, guess who proudly sponsors this nightly wish-fulfillment in the bloody, live and in person! assassination of the President of the United States of America?

Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

“And keep in mind that this is the same CNN that led the charge to destroy the career of a rodeo clown for the sin of wearing an Obama mask,” John Nolte adds at the Daily Wire.

CNN’S JOHN KING ADMITS MEDIA WILL BURY COMEY’S ‘DAMNING ACCOUNT’ OF LYNCH’S BEHAVIOR ON HILLARY:

While the Comey hearing into Russia was and remains a big story, CNN’s John King admitted Thursday afternoon that the media will not give much (if any) attention to Jim Comey stating that he was disturbed by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch telling him in the midst of the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal that he should refer to it as “a matter,” not “an investigation.”

“A number of significant things. One, this won’t get much attention because it’s in the rearview mirror but a pretty damming account from Jim Comey there about Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General in the Obama administration and her handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. It won’t get much attention, but that was pretty damning,” King admitted.

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Dylan Byers admits on CNN that reporters tell a progressive story defined by Obama and Hillary.

Earlier: “Why would you trust a campaign?”

OF COURSE NOT. THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES. Eddie Scarry: Trump Can’t Win The Press.

The mania over James Comey’s firing would carry more weight if the press didn’t behave this way every time President Trump signed an order, wrote a tweet or flushed a toilet.

Political commentators, news organizations and lawmakers on both sides had been calling for Comey’s ousting for months for his bizarre, inconstant approach in conducting the sensitive investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and then Trump’s election campaign.

But now that he’s gone, the media act like America just lost its favorite uncle.

Everyone is now used to the simple fact that no matter what he does, Trump cannot win the press. And that’s why no one should look to it for an indication of whether he’s doing anything right.

Depending on what mood the Washington media wake up in on any given day, Trump is either dumb and expected to screw up (i.e. Charles Blow wittily referring to Trump in every column as “president” in quotes) or it’s, Hey, why isn’t he doing everything like a normal president? Constitutional crisis!

Most of them don’t actually seem to know what a “constitutional crisis” is, but then, most of them couldn’t pass a simple quiz on the Constitution.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Cruelty of Blue:

Years of false promises, years of “compassionate government”, years of ignoring arithmetic, comes to this: Puerto Rico in the grip of a massive, man-made disaster. . . .

This could have been avoided by sensible and timely cuts, by turning a deaf ear to public sector union demands for wages and salaries, by a series of small but definite steps away from the blue model, welfare state governance. But the press, certainly including the NYT which is now reporting the disaster, would have attacked any politicians taking these steps as “harsh”, or “cruel to the poor”.

Now Puerto Rico is in a deeper hole, with much more suffering than any of the moderate cuts would have imposed.

Unfortunately, a number of cities and states on the mainland are walking down the Puerto Rican highway toward bankruptcy and disruptive adjustment. There, the liberal press is still hailing the politicians who are willing to plunge their cities and states into chaos for the sake of popularity: the press often calls them bold, innovative and visionary. They have a lot of ideas about the things they want to do with other peoples’ money, while people who insist that budgets must be cut, and that pension obligations be met, are still being attacked for everything from racism to sadism.

It’s as if the press is just a bunch of Democratic operatives with bylines, who care nothing for truth or the greater good of society if it threatens Democratic priorities.

FAKE NEWS? Old-school journalists ‘pissed’ about Gayle King’s vacation with Obamas:

Gayle King’s serious CBS colleagues had a lot to say about her recent yacht jaunt with former first couple Barack and Michelle Obama in Tahiti, and it wasn’t positive.

“The ‘Capital J’ journalists are pissed and raving mad that she was on a yacht with the Obamas over the weekend. The old-school people were talking about it. She shouldn’t be doing that. She’s an anchor of a news program that covers the White House. You’re held to a different standard. It’s one thing to be friendly. It’s another thing to go vacationing on a yacht,” a source told us of the backlash at CBS.

CBS is denying that there’s any rancor internally directed at King, which makes sense, considering that her colleague Charlie Rose pretended to have no clue about candidate Obama’s foreign policy stance on the eve of the 2008 presidential election, and last year sat with two of Obama’s speechwriters while all three laughed on air about the Big Lie of Obamacare — the over 36 times Obama told Americans, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

CBS Nightly News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley once compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers, and admitted recently to accepting at face value the Hillary campaign’s story and not investigating further the cause of her infamous collapse on September 11th last year.

John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.” This was followed last year by his asking Obama, ‘Is honesty overrated as a presidential quality?’

And the boss of CBS’s news division is David Rhodes, the brother of Obama’s infamous former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.

Just think of them all as Democrat operatives with bylines and lavaliere microphones, and it all makes sense.

CBS’S SCOTT PELLEY LOSES A FIGHT RIGGED IN HIS FAVOR: Ever since it was created by Don Hewitt in 1968, CBS’s Sixty Minutes has functioned as a sort of ritual kabuki for its audiences: it made stars of its left-leaning investigative journalists, who would grill the offending conservative politician or businessman of the week. By the mid-’80s, the show’s formula was summed up brilliantly in the classic parodies by Martin Short’s Nathan Thurm character on Saturday Night Live, who would be drenched in sweat and chain-smoking Marlboro 100s by the time he was done attempting to survive the hammering from the crusading journalist on the other side of the desk.

But CBS made its bones during the days when, as Rob Long wrote of NBC’s Johnny Carson, “There were three big channels—and maybe an old movie on one of those fuzzy UHF stations—so if you didn’t like what was on, you were out of luck. Network television didn’t compete with cable channels or Hulu or Amazon Prime. It competed with silence.”

And such lack of competition allowed the networks’ news divisions to create self-contained worlds where they could absolutely control the dialogue, as Walter Cronkite did throughout his career at CBS, while signing off each night “And that’s the way it is.” His successor’s career at CBS ended there with a Sixty Minutes segment…well, we all know how it ended there, right?

Which brings us to CBS’s Scott Pelley and his recent interview with Mike Cernovich, whom Breitbart.com’s Ezra Dulis describes as “a lawyer, independent blogger/author/filmmaker, and a dominant voice on Twitter,” and whom BuzzFeed describes as “a troll.” The latter Website of course is home of the infamous Trump golden showers with Russian hookers story and an editor who believes covering Trump “sometimes…means publishing unverified information in a transparent way that informs our users of its provenance, its impact and why we trust or distrust it.”

Whatever Cernovich’s excesses, assuming this transcript of the full unedited interview is accurate, it’s fascinating much more for what it reveals about Pelley, watched by six and a half million viewers on the CBS Evening News, than for Cernovich. Here’s how the transcript begins:

Scott Pelley: How would you describe what you do?

Mike Cernovich: I’m a lawyer, author, documenter, filmmaker, and journalist.

Scott Pelley: And how would you describe your website?

Mike Cernovich: Edgy, controversial content that goes against the dominant narrative.

Scott Pelley: What’s the dominant narrative?

Mike Cernovich: The dominant narrative is that there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are liberals. Everybody on the right is a bad guy. Let’s find a way to make everybody look bad. Let’s tie marginal figures who have no actual influence to anybody we cannot overwrite. That’s the narrative.

Scott Pelley: That’s not a narrative I’m familiar with. Who’s narrative is that?

In 2008, Pelley compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Ben Rhodes, who until January was Obama’s deputy national security advisor, is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes. John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.” Katie Couric, whom Pelley succeeded as Evening News host, read a poem on her broadcast to shill for the passing of Obamacare, and after leaving CBS had a Rathergate-like moment of her own, attempting to marginalize gun owners.

But back to the transcript of Pelley and Cernovich, where eventually, the hunter is captured by his prey:  

Scott Pelley: You wrote in August a story about Hillary Clinton’s medical condition the headlines said, “Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease. Position confirms.” That’s quite a headline.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, Dr. Ted Noel had se-sent a story to me anonymously, that I checked out, analyzing her medical condition. And –

Scott Pelley: It isn’t true.

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, she doesn’t seem to have any signs of Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day caught by a citizen journalist.

Scott Pelley: Did you, well, she had pneumonia. I mean –

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, because that’s what was reported.

Mike Cernovich: By whom? Who told you that?

Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.

Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust a campaign?

To ask the question is to answer it. In a post headlined “‘Shamefully Stupid’: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in His Favor,” Breitbart.com’s Ezra Dulis adds in response, “Pelley has no answer for those six words — ‘Why would you trust the campaign’ — as his entire profession goes berserk with literal-minded fact checks for every tweet from President Trump. Pelley also seems to forget the fakery that Clinton World attempted hours before its pneumonia statement — with the candidate smiling and waving outside her daughter’s apartment, greeting a little girl, and assuring reporters everything was a-okay.”

More:

Mike Cernovich: So let’s be, let’s be honest with one another, which is that you are reporting that the Hillary Clinton campaign-

Scott Pelley: I didn’t report that she had Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Cernovich: You just told me she’s healthy though. Based on what was told to you by the campaign. See? That’s what I’m saying about the double standards which is I don’t take anything Hillary Clinton’s going to say at all as true. I’m not going to take her on her word. The media says we’re not going to take Donald Trump on his word. And that’ why we are on these different universes.

Scott Pelley: Why should anyone take you on your word?

Mike Cernovich: Oh, you should always double-check. You should always fact check. And if people don’t agree with me, people express that disagreement, and I’m completely, completely open to criticism.

Insert Glenn Reynolds’ Rathergate-era comments about the positive nature of the Internet being a low-trust environment here. Not to mention Michael Crichton’s Gell-Man Amnesia Effect.

Let’s give Pelley the exit quote: “Well, the benefit of intermediaries is having experienced editors check things out and research people. Check the facts before it goes out to the public. You don’t do any of that.”

Mary Mapes could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: “Was Pelley not around in 2004?” John Hinderaker asks at Power Line. “Has he forgotten how stupid that refrain sounded then? (‘Layers and layers of fact-checkers’) Does he not realize how false it rings today? We have been here before: the liberal media are in a panic because their authority is being challenged. It must be worse now, though, than it was in 2004. Then, Time’s refrain was a relatively benign ‘Who owns the truth?’ Now, they ask, ‘Is truth dead?’ We can translate: ‘Is the liberal news media monopoly dead?’”

TO BE FAIR, HE’LL BE AT LEAST AS OBJECTIVE AS SHARPTON, MADDOW, BRIAN WILLIAMS, CHUCK TODD, AND ANDREA MITCHELL: Josh Earnest Named NBC News, MSNBC Political Analyst.

Just think of NBC News as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

BUT OF COURSE HE DID. Mayor De Blasio Connects Racist Murder to Trump, ‘Atmosphere Of Hate:’ “At some point, it would be nice if the media would notice that the left constantly uses this climate-of-hate argument to indict the right every chance it gets but denies any such climate exists when the target is a conservative or a police officer.”

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and you’ll understand why they never will.

NO, BECAUSE THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Would journalists support congressional investigation of Obama surveillance of … journalists?