More Media Malpractice

Michael Tomasky on some in the "mainstream media" rooting for the failure of Obamacare, or for anything Obama-related:

... [T]here’s a certain type of political journalism that so exists in the moment that numerous such moments have been declared to be disasters for Obama, going back to Jeremiah Wright. This kind of hyperventilating approach always turns out to be wrong and overheated. It turned out that all those things were pretty bad, but it also turned out that Obama survived them. And he’ll survive this, too.

He mentions some of the usual suspects =cough=Politico=cough=.  We'd like to offer a few more journamalists who're getting the story all wrong.

Like Chuck Todd and his never-ending false equivalencies, this time on opposition to privatizing Social Security in the Dumbya years vs. Republican hostage-taking on every possible issue today:

No one on the Democratic side of the aisle was willing to burn the place down when we didn't get everything we wanted as we've seen the Republicans, who were more than willing to do just that with taking the country on the edge of an economic collapse -- and the pundits in the media like Todd and his ilk have been doing their best to erase that hostage taking and the economic damage it did to our country from our memory banks from the moment it finally ended.

Like Lara Logan and her bosses at CBS News (we're going to have to start putting quotation marks around News pretty soon) playing to a certain audience in their botched Benghazi!  Benghazi!! BENGHAZI!!! 60 Minutes debacle:

"My concern is that the story was done very pointedly to appeal to a more conservative audience's beliefs about what happened at Benghazi," Mary Mapes told Media Matters. "They appear to have done that story to appeal specifically to a politically conservative audience that is obsessed with Benghazi and believes that Benghazi was much more than a tragedy."

We can make out the whirring sound of Edward R. Murrow spinning -- heck, even Chet Huntley's getting some revolutions.   (Look 'em up, kids.)

Just remember what the biggest political story of the past 25 years has been (the radicalization of the Republican Party) and who's been covering it in the "mainstream media" (crickets chirping).

CBS and Benghazi! BENGHAZI!!

Ever since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged as the odds-on favorite to be the next Dem nominee for President (and very possibly the next President), Rethugs have been frantic to amplify their specious allegations over the terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012.  If Clinton can be severely tarnished by the episode which occurred on her watch, they reasoned, we can gain a political advantage over her.  They were aided not only by the Wingnut Wurlitzer (Fux, hate radio, etc.) in their attempts, but by some in the Beltway media, including most recently CBS.

CBS's "60 Minutes" segment on October 27 was a textbook case of a false story planted for political purposes.  The source for the story -- using a false name -- had already been outed as a liar to his own employer.  Some cursory digging by home-wrecking reporter Lara "Lara Croft" Logan might have saved her this humiliating mea culpa on CBS This Morning today for her false reporting.  A number of veteran journalists smelled a fraud within a few days of the "60 Minutes" report. Even the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle was on to the fraud.  Sad that the network of Edward R. Murrow, Eric Severeid, and Walter Cronkite is becoming a sewer pipe for right-wing disinformation, thanks to the "reporting" of types like Lara Croft Logan.

BONUS:  Of course, Logan seems to have had an ax to grind  isn't a neutral observer (h/t Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly)

(photo: We See B.S., too)