Record 19 Reporters, Media Execs Join Team Obama

February 17, 2012 12:52pm

The Examiner- Washington

by- Paul Bedard

For some Washington reporters and media execs, cheering their team from the sidelines just isn’t good enough: Tugging on a red, white and blue Team Obama jersey is the answer.

That’s the case for a whopping 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, who’ve gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president.

Those inside the administration hit 14 this month when the Post’s Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department. That’s a record, say some revolving door watchers, and could even be much higher: The Post reports that “dozens” of former journalists have joined the administration, although Washington Secrets couldn’t verify that tally.

Many are in communications and speech writing offices, most prominently Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman who ran Time’s Washington bureau, and husband to ABC’s Claire Shipman. Some joined as the news business collapsed, many to finally voice their politics, and others, notably former Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman, because she liked her future boss, Secretary Ray LaHood, a rare Republican in the administration. That relationship rocked: LaHood broke through the lower-tier Cabinet P.R. ceiling to become one of the most well-known Transportation secretaries ever. She had worked for the Chicago Tribune.

The revolving door isn’t a surprise to critics of the media and Obama. “The number of reporters going into the Obama administration merely confirms what I knew and what most conservatives long believed,” said Noam Neusner, himself one of the few reporters hired as a Bush speech writer. “There is a vast supply of liberals in newsrooms, they are very happy to support Obama administration policies if they can get hired and they barely hide their ideology in the way they cover the news.” Neusner, who I worked with at U.S. News, said that he too might have been guilty of a pro-Bush bias, but said correctly: “My editors and colleagues were surprised to hear that I was a Republican.”

A former GOP Capitol Hill and cabinet spokesman added, “It’s frustrating to see so many reporters that had relationships with trusted sources give up their ‘impartiality’ and start playing for the other side. It does show that the game is stacked in favor of the other side when most reporters still working in their profession remain silent.”

Stephen Hess, a presidential and journalism scholar at the Brookings Institution, said reporters can be “conflicted” when they trade places. “On the other hand,” he added, “reporters going back to journalism after a stint in government are always better reporters in that they now understand how government really works.”

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Media Black Out: Ray McGovern Assaulted for Silent Protest at Hillary Clinton Speech

Hmm, does this look like a non news item? Well, it is for the main stream media. Take a look at this google search for…. Ray McGovern dragged out of Hillary Clinton “Freedom Speech”

Here’s an excellent post on this from BradBlog

By Brad Friedman on 2/17/2011 2:03pm
Ray McGovern, Former Sr. CIA Analyst, ‘Bruised, Bloodied’ While Dragged From Room During Hillary Clinton Speech on ‘Freedom of Expression’
We’ve interviewed former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, on the air and off, many times over the years. We’ve come to consider him not just a source, but a friend and a national hero for his tirelessly non-partisan fight for truth and justice.

The man who once briefed Presidents directly, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, had long ago earned our great respect — from his courageousness in famously confronting then-SecDef Don Rumsfeld in 2006 about lying about Saddam and WMD (watch the classic confrontation on video here) to his calling out CNN on air for their abysmal failures in accurately reporting on WikiLeaks (video here) last December to his arrest weeks later at the White House with other vets and national heroes for “refusal to obey a lawful order” while protesting against the Obama Administration’s wars around the world — all while overcoming some enormous personal health issues at the same time.

More on this from the BradBlog

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AOL To Buy Huffington Post For $315 Million

Arianna Huffington will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will integrate all Huffington Post and AOL content.

AFP/AlterNet

February 6, 2011 |

WASHINGTON — US Internet provider AOL will buy The Huffington Post, a rapidly growing news website with nearly 25 million monthly visitors, for $315 million, the company announced Monday.

Approximately $300 million will be paid in cash, it said.

The Huffington Post is privately owned, but the proposed transaction is subject to government approvals.

The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction, expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter of 2011, the announcement said.

MORE HERE

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Brave Woman Who Grabbed Clip from Shooter Blames Right-Wing Media and Rhetoric … In Fox News Interview

Brave Woman Who Grabbed Clip from Shooter Blames Right-Wing Media and Rhetoric … In Fox News Interview

AlterNet / By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

In an interview on Fox, the brave woman who helped stop Loughner calls out right-wing media for creating an environment that encourages violent impulses.

 

January 10, 2011  |

Patricia Maisch, 61, was the brave woman who kept alleged shooter Jared Loughner from unloading a second clip into a Tuscon crowd on Saturday. Wounded herself from a bullet, she saw him attempting to equip his gun with another magazine, grabbed him and knelt on his ankle, delaying the reload and potentially saving many more lives. 

So when Fox News interviewed her on Sunday, they clearly wanted to know if her strength could translate to psychic healing as Americans grappled with the tragedy. “We’ve all noted the calmness with which all of you, who helped save the day, conducted yourself,” said Fox anchor Shepard Smith. “I just want to know now, a day later… if there’s anything you can think of… that you might be able to turn into a positive. Is there anything that you can leave us with that will make us all feel better?”

“I think Sheriff Dupnik said it best that the extreme right reporters in radio and TV have added to this problem,” she responded. “And I’m just hoping that’ll change because of this.” She then specifically calls out Republicans for characterizing the health care bill as “job-killing.” “I think they’ve just gone over the top,” she added. “I think that the extreme right has gone too far.”

It probably wasn’t the response Smith was looking for, but the irony of her comment on Fox — which employs Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and many others accused of inflammatory rhetoric — was not lost. Watch:

SOURCE

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U.S. and Israel are threatening Iran

By Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch, July 20,  2009

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japan did not spend years preparing her public case and demonstrating her deployment of forces for the attack.  Japan did not make a world issue out of her view that the US was denying Japan her role in the Pacific by hindering Japan’s access to raw materials and energy.

Similarly, when Hitler attacked Russia, he did not preface his invasion with endless threats and a public case that blamed the war on England.

These events happened before the PSYOPS era.  Today, America and Israel’s wars of aggression are preceded by years of propaganda and international meetings, so that by the time the attack comes it is an expected event, not a monstrous surprise attack with its connotation of naked aggression.

The US, which has been threatening Iran with attack for years, has passed the job to Israel.  During the third week of July, the American vice president and secretary of state gave Israel the go-ahead.  Israel has made great public disclosure of its warships passing through the Suez Canal on their way to Iran.  “Muslim” Egypt is complicit, offering no objection to Israel’s naval forces on their way to a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US imposed on the world.

Full article

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Special Report: Iran Falls to US PSYOPS
• Confronting Fear and Saving the NPT (In Reply to Mary Riddell)
• Will Iran’s Democratic Upsurge Pass Over to Revolution?

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Pundits Blame Americans for Bush and Cheney’s Torture Policies??

Hey Americans, the Pundits Blame You for Bush and Cheney’s Torture Policies

By Rory O’Connor, MediaChannel.org. Posted May 13, 2009.

In their mad dash to ensure that no one in the Bush administration is held accountable for torture, the media are putting the blame on all Americans.

What is it about torture that is so seductive to our mainstream media?

First, our leading (and often “liberal”) commentators and analysts, writing in supposedly respectable publications such as Newsweek and The Atlantic, tried to appear as tough-minded believers in realpolitik by siding with such REALLY tough-minded believers as Dick Cheney when he led our country over to “the dark side.”

Then multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Friedman — ever consistent and persistent in his excuse making for the powerful — hailed, in a recent column, Barack (“Split the baby“) Obama’s “torturous compromise” to expose, but not prosecute, those responsible for violating our Constitution and international law by torturing in our names. This despite the fact that, as Friedman accurately noted, “more than 100 detainees died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with up to 27 of those declared homicides by the military. They were allegedly kicked to death, shot, suffocated or drowned. Look, our people killed detainees, and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials.”

Then Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, agreed with Friedman’s contention that there should be no torture prosecutions because we had all “acquiesced” in the Bush-Cheney Torture Agenda; we were all “the President’s accomplices,” and thus “pursuing criminal charges would be too hard legally and politically and too easy morally.’ According to Weisberg’s twisted morality and logic, “Prosecuting Bush and his men won’t absolve the rest of us for what we let them do.”

MORE HERE

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Bob Ney: Right-Wing Radio Talk Show Host

Ney’s New Role? Right-Wing Radio Talk Show Host

TPM Muckraker- By Zachary Roth – April 13, 2009, 5:25PM

A second act for our old friend Bob Ney.

Starting today, the former Ohio GOP congressman will be hosting a midday chat show on a right-wing West Virginia radio station, WVLY AM 1370, according to the station’s web site.

In the show, which will air weekdays from 1pm to 3pm and can be heard in the southeastern part of the Buckeye state, Ney will focus on “ethics, earmarks, prison reform and Ohio politics.”

There’s no doubt he’s an expert on those subjects. Ney served 17 months in jail after pleading guilty in 2006 to conspiracy and making false statements in connection to the Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal.

In fact, Ney also has some experience on the wireless. While in the slammer, he reportedly signed on to work with the liberal Washington DC-based Talk Radio News Service.

And Glenn Thrush at Politico notes that another crooked Republican, G. Gordon Liddy has built a successful career as a radio talker.

So perhaps there’s hope for Ney too.

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Fox News Takes It To A New Low; Compares Eric Holder To A Monkey

John Gibson Compares Eric Holder to a Monkey with Certain Bright Blue Parts

Crooks and Liars- By Heather Friday Feb 20, 2009 5:30am

h/t David J at Daily Kos.

Have you had enough of this garbage yet?. While discussing the monkey that escaped from the zoo in Seattle, the Fox News model uses the words “bright blue scrotum” over and over to describe how the monkey that escaped from the zoo looks when it’s angry. She then tosses it to Gibson who manages to get this zinger in there at the end of the clip.

We were talking about Eric Holder today on the radio, and his bright blue scrotum.

Not that I think it will do an ounce of good since Fox obviously does not care how openly racist they are, but if you want to let them know you don’t approve of this behavior here’s their contact page.

Fox News Contact Us

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Lincoln = Republican = Just Like Me, Sean Hannity = Awesome!

Sean Hannity christened the new Colmes-less show with a predictably ridiculous segment in which he claimed that President-elect Obama has been engaged in an on-going attempt to hijack Abraham Lincoln’s legacy from — seriously — the modern Republican Party.

HANNITY: And in Your America tonight, Barack Obama is doing everything he can to convince Americans that he is the rightful inheritor of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. […] First, at the top, I just remember that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

The red flag here? He “just remembers” the part about Lincoln’s party affiliation. This indicates that everything else about Lincoln is therefore processed through the doofwerks of Hannity’s America, inside which reality and universally accepted facts are mercilessly sculpted, oversimplified and kneejerked into bloody submission, and thus ejecting through the ass-end an easy-to-digest-but-insanely-wrong deductive equation: Lincoln = Republican = Just Like Me, Sean Hannity = Awesome!

Lincoln was indeed the first Republican president. Good job, Hannity! Erudite! More about the history of party affiliation presently, but to somehow suggest that President-elect Obama is trying to steal Lincoln all for himself, or for Hannity to imply that Bush Republicanism is the same as Lincoln Republicanism is about as realistic as suggesting that Lincoln survived the assassination as is currently alive and lurching around — top hat and all — through the forests of the upper Midwest like a lanky, undead sasquatch. Then again, Hannity once dedicated an entire segment of his show to the existence of demons walking among us. I’m not suggesting Hannity believes that Lincoln is still alive, but it wouldn’t be shocker given his belief in goblins and the like.

Regardless, he’s clearly unable to fathom why this particular moment in American history calls to mind the spirit and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. This is nothing short of miraculous given the ubiquity of all things Kearns-Goodwin-y. Incidentally, the “Mortal Kombat vs. The Team of Rivals” video game tie-in is pretty sweet. The Seward “Pantaloons of Chaos” move (X, X, Up, Down, B, B, Y) is totally indefensible — especially against that punk Liu Kang.

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