More Media Malpractice

Here are two good reads on how the media amplifies story lines and faux scandals ginned up by the  right-wing:

Steve Benen at Maddowblog on how the New York Times (!), once great Washington Post Kaplan Daily, and (not surprisingly) Politico uncritically trumpeted the right-wing line on the IRS nothingburger, but were far less interested in trumpeting contrary facts as the "scandal" started to implode.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog notes CNN's Jake "Tippy" Tapper dutifully pushing the latest Rethuglican narrative course correction on BENGHAZI!! 

And you wonder why we can't have nice things in this country?

How The Scandal-Driven Media Blew The IRS Story

This is a small taste, but the whole article is really worth the read;  a case of report first, ask questions later journamalism:

While the initial reports about the IRS targeting looked pretty bad, suggesting that agents singled out tax-exempt applications for Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, the media badly bungled the controversy when supposedly sober journalists like Bob Woodward and Chuck Todd jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst from day one. Instead of doing more reporting to discover the true nature and context of the IRS targeting, or at least waiting for their colleagues to do some, the supposedly liberal mainstream press let their eagerness to show they could be just as tough on a Democratic White House as a Republican one get ahead of the facts. We expect politicians to stretch reality to fit a narrative, but the press should be better.

Unfortunately, the Rethugs know how to play the media like cheap violins.  There's certainly a symbiotic relationship between the "win the morning" types looking to be this generation's Woodward and Bernstein, and the Rethugs who want to keep the Obama Administration on the defensive as much as possible.  Throw into the mix what Seitz-Wald calls the media's eagerness to show they're not the "liberal media" in the tank for Democrats -- a meme that the Rethugs have been eagerly pushing since the 1960's--  and you have the IRS nothingburger (following on the Solyndra nothingburger, following the Benghazi! nothingburger, follow... well, you get the picture, even if the ink-stained wretches out there don't).

The IRS "Scandal" Souffle Collapses

From Jonathan Chait's article in the latest New York Magazine:

"When the IRS first revealed that its Cincinnati office had attempted to enforce its nonprofit laws using a search function that disproportionately impacted conservatives, Republicans were certain it must have come from the White House. They were going to follow the facts. But all of the facts point in the same direction, which is that the Obama administration had nothing to do with it at all. That was the conclusion of the agency’s inspector-general report, as well as the House Oversight Committee’s own interviews, which the Republican majority tried to suppress and which (when the Democrats released them) showed the operation was an independent, well-intentioned effort to enforce the law led by an IRS official who happens to be a conservative Republican."

Over the last three years, when literally thousands of right-wing teabagger groups flooded the IRS claiming to be "social welfare" organizations to claim a tax exemption, by law the IRS had to screen the applications to weed out the clearly political, of which there were thousands.  When the Rethuglicans tried to tie it to the White House, they failed.  To his great credit, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) exposed the charade when he released the complete transcripts of the IRS staff interviews, which had been very selectively quoted by scummy bungler Rep. Darrell "Grand Theft Auto" Issa (R-Conspiracyland) to hint at a White House-IRS connection.

This marks the second "scandal" that Grand Theft Auto Issa has puffed up and watched deflate, the first being Benghazi!  BENGHAZI!! which was a thinly-veiled attempt to damage the political future of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and dirty-up the President at the same time.