The next time someone claims that the media isn’t biased, recall this story:
Reuters reported late on Friday night that their reporter who broke the story about Democrat Beto O’Rourke belonging to a hacker group had the story for two years and agreed to sit on it until after O’Rourke’s Senate race against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
The report, published early on Friday, documented O’Rourke’s involvement in a hacker group named “Cult of the Dead Cow,” and included multiple past writings from O’Rourke, some of which were described as “disturbing.”
“After more than a year of reporting, [Joseph] Menn persuaded O’Rourke to talk on the record,” Reuters reported. “In an interview in late 2017, O’Rourke acknowledged that he was a member of the group, on the understanding that the information would not be made public until after his Senate race against Ted Cruz in November 2018.”
Menn says that he learned about O’Rourke’s involvement in the group after he decided to write about the hacking group, which he called “the most interesting and influential hacking group in history.”
“While I was looking into the Cult of the Dead Cow, I found out that they had a member who was sitting in Congress. I didn’t know which one,” Menn said. “And then I figured out which one it was. And the members of the group wouldn’t talk to me about who it was. They wouldn’t confirm that it was this person unless I promised that I wouldn’t write about it until after the November election.”
Go here to read the rest. Covering for Robert Francis O’Rourke is par for the course for a media that always has its greasy thumb on the scales for Democrats.
Cover and promotion….
Trump benefited from democratic fawning over his candidacy when they thought he was a joke.. but the democrats and media (I repeat myself) quickly turned on him once he was the nominee.
The difference here is this fake Hispanic, in reality Welsh Irish man, has never really done anything!
Not true! Not true! He’s gotten away with drunk driving and married an heiress. The Kennedys call that a good start.
Never underestimate the power of Kennedy necrophilia on the party of the jackass.
“…for a media that always has its greasy thumb on the scales for Democrats.”
I really don’t see this changing anytime soon
Don, I remember way back when I lived in Massachusetts in the ’70’s Teddy was campaigning for the Senate seat again and they had a ‘man on the street’ segment on WBZ TV in Boston where people at random were asked for whom they would vote and one man summed up the mentality in the Bay State, especially in Boston; “Well he’s a Kennedy and this is Boston, who else would we vote for?” Massachusetts is in dire need of another Tea Party.
I think Trump has helped show how to neutralize the thumb to a certain extent. Call them on it every chance, and never be deluded enough to think that you can make friends in the media. John McCain was the media’s favorite Republican, except in the general election of 2008 when he received the usual press treatment of a Republican. Any Republican who does not run against the media, at least on the national level, is too stupid for the office he is running for.
One problem is that almost 30% of Americans believe the media’s lies.
Ninety-percent of Post-modern American journalism is all about determining what not to report because it poorly reflects on the Dems/left; and covering those stories with pillows until they stop breathing.
Another of O’Rourke’s “pillow/DOA stories” is his writing about deliberately running down with his car little children.
Mr. McClarey, You perfectly summarize the McCain and Romney candidacies, and the establishment-GOP, in general.
I think during the Newseum era (1955-95), reporters favored the Democrats but were generally reserved about getting too enmeshed. Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter were treated skeptically by the media. More insidious was the framing of stories and the presentation of options (something you can in our own time see in spades 5 nights a week on Judy Woodruff’s NewsHour). In 1998, Brent Bozell was reporting that the content analyses done by his agency indicated the broadcast networks were extensions of the Clinton press office, but the written press retained some critical distance. By 2008, that was gone, and only talk radio and Fox looked at Barack Obama skeptically. The New York Times was a serious and commonly engaging paper up until the retirement of A.M. Rosenthal in 1986. By 2001 it was a joke. (The thirty-odd news stories on the membership policies of the Augusta National golf club being an egregious example).
Ever since the Watergate story broke and the media broke Nixon, the media has been feeling their oats and it has been getting worse since.
Ever since the Watergate story broke and the media broke Nixon, the media has been feeling their oats and it has been getting worse since.
Larry Sabato did say a while back that 1973 was a watershed here in the relations between the press and the political class. Nicholas von Hoffman agreed, though he had a different take on how those relations had evolved.
The media doesn’t have nearly the prestige it did 40 years ago. If you’re a person of a certain vintage, you’ll remember the TV series Lou Grant. I don’t think the program would be credible to broadstream audience today, and I’m not seeing it’s like in today’s entertainment landscape.
I watched Lou Grant when I was an undergrad. I think most people under 40 would view it as a tribute to a dead industry. Most twenty somethings probably grew up in households where daily paper delivery would have been as quaint, and as unknown, as buggywhips.
“Ever since breaking Nixon the media has been feeling their oats.”
So true. And that’s why they hate Trump so much, they realize that their power over narratives is being broken.
Because as Rush is want to say, the media didn’t make Trump and so they cannot destroy him.
“We are not the the reservoir of objectivity that I think we were.”
– Ted Koppel on March 7 during a discussion with Marvin Kalb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2019/03/18/ted-koppel-trump-not-mistaken-about-biased-liberal-media