Article by Derek Hunter in "Townhall":
Journalists have long held their audiences in contempt. Not
active contempt of the hatred variety, but condescending contempt – the
belief that we’re all so far beneath them as to be insignificant and
unworthy of their genius. They’re better than us, just ask them. That
attitude was on full display over the weekend on Meet the Press and the
ironically named “Reliable Sources,” when the personalities that host
those shows committed arrogant and hypocritical frauds on their
audiences that can only happen when you’re marinated in the ignorance of
your own body odor.
Brian
Stelter, the talentless Democratic Party mouthpiece with a face for
radio and a voice for print, started his show with a lecture about
priorities and “news judgement.” Stelter’s show, “Reliable Sources,”
usually contains more clips of Fox News than original content or
independent thought, and this week was no different. Where he usually
whines about what was said, this monologue was about what wasn’t, or at
least what wasn’t said soon enough.
Choking back tears
less sincere than OJ shed over Nicole’s murder, Stelter was angry that
Fox & Friends dared ask President Donald Trump Friday about the
Department of Justice moving to dismiss the case against retired Lt.
Gen. Michael Flynn before asking him about the coronavirus pandemic. The
Flynn news had just broken the day before, along with the release of
transcripts Democrats kept hidden from the public showing Obama
administration officials were telling Congress the exact opposite of
what they were saying on cable news because one venue offered large
paychecks for bombast and narrative-feeding and the other charges of
perjury.
“It's so disappointing to look at what we're seeing
from right-wing media these days, where there's such an obsession with
the deep state and these revelations about the Russia probe and the
decision about Michael Flynn,” the human Weeble groused. “They're treating the Michael Flynn story like it a bigger deal than the deaths of 2,000 Americans a day.”
Continuing his sermon, Stelter chastised Fox for asking the President about a developing story “for 20 minutes before he was asked about the pandemic.”
Curiously,
Brian never did talk about the Flynn case in any meaningful way on his
own show, nor did he mention the talking heads, many of whom are
colleagues on the payroll at CNN, who spent the last 3 years knowingly
lying to their audience while testifying to the exact opposite in
private. You’d think a guy who rests the homemade crown journalistic
sanctimony on his pointy head would be interested in the news that his
profession and employer have been soiling their audience with falsehoods
would rate a segment on a show about the media, maybe even wrestle with
the concept of accountability for those who lied. You’d be wrong.
So what did the Potato dedicate limited and
precious air time to instead? He did an interview segment with a mother
who, along with her 2 daughters, discovered how use WordPress and
started a blog during quarantine. I kid you not.
After starting his show lamenting how anyone in media would ask the
President about major developments in a story that has dominated his
entire administration while people are dying, Stelter did a puff piece
about people blogging about their families.
Did no one on staff, and there are a lot of people, notice the disconnect?
Down
the dial, and a couple of hours earlier, Meet the Press ran another
dishonest smear against Attorney General Bill Barr. Host Chuck Todd
showed a clip of Barr speaking Friday with CBS News saying, “history is
written by the winners so it largely depends on who's writing the
history,” when asked how the DoJ’s decision to drop the Flynn case would
be viewed by history.
The Ginger Avenger was indignant
“by the cynicism of the answer,” telling the MtP audience, “He didn't
make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. It was almost
admitting that, ‘Yeah, this is a political job.’”
The only problem is if Chucky has played another 10
seconds of the Barr clip he would’ve heard exactly what he claimed
wasn’t said. “But I think a fair history would say it was a good
decision because it upheld the rule of law. It upheld the standards of
the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice,” Barr
continued in the whole clip.
The clip of Barr wasn’t
tossed on the cutting room floor, it was broadcast in its entirety on
CBS News. You had to stop the tape in order not to see it.
So
why did Todd stop the cut he used where he did? There are only 2
options: he’s either lazy or a liar. If he’s lazy, a producer brought
him the cut and he expressed no curiosity about what Barr said
immediately after and had no interest in the context. The other option
is he knew and didn’t care, his narrative was fed with the partial clip,
the whole story was just an inconvenience.
Meet the Press, not Chuck Todd, offered something
masquerading as an apology…10 hours later. “Earlier today, we
inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview
with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis. The remaining clip
included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed,
and we regret the error,” they said on the show’s Twitter feed.
Chuck, the “political director” at all of NBC News,
has remained mum on the subject, not even bothering to retweet his own
show’s tepid mea culpa.
There was a time when people
like this could get away with the hypocrisy and lying, before the
internet and DVRs, even before VCRs. Back when if you didn’t see it
live, you pretty much missed it forever. That’s not today; that’s not
even the world Chuck and Brian grew up in. The Internet exists, they
both got their starts writing on it.
That leaves their
audiences wondering between 2 choices when it comes to why they and
their colleagues would so blatantly engage in such dishonest and
hypocritical actions: they’re either genuinely stupid people, or they
think their audience is. I have my suspicions that it’s the former. Then
again, if their audience is looking for truth for either one of these
two, or their networks, maybe it’s both.