Journalism is all about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.

Part of Trump's interview with the NY Times

But there is tremendous collusion with the Russians and with the Democratic Party. Including all of the stuff with the — and then whatever happened to the Pakistani guy, that had the two, you know, whatever happened to this Pakistani guy who worked with the D.N.C.?

Whatever happened to them? With the two servers that they broke up into a million pieces? Whatever happened to him? That was a big story. Now all of sudden [inaudible].

Nets Refuse to Acknowledge Revelation Dem Primary Was ‘Rigged’ for Clinton

AS IOWAHAWK SAYS, JOURNALISM IS ABOUT COVERING STORIES. WITH A PILLOW. UNTIL THEY STOP MOVING

In an essay for Politico on Thursday, former interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile dropped a bombshell on the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. In the piece, which was an excerpt from her upcoming book, Brazile exposed how “the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary” through a shady and ethically questionable financial arrangement. Even though it seemed like a plot in House of Cards, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had a complete blackout of any mention of the news during their evening broadcasts.

The reason the networks wanted to keep Brazile’s findings secret was simple: They didn’t want to ruin their narrative that Clinton was a pure angel who was a victim of Donald Trump and Russian collusion. But in recent weeks, it had come out that Clinton had the DNC in her pocket and they both were funneling money to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele so they could work with Russian agents to get dirt on Donald Trump.

For the Spanish-language networks, NBC-owned Telemundo followed the example and omitted Brazile from their broadcast. In stark contrast, Univision was the only one to mention the Brazile revelation and dedicated two minutes and 30 seconds to it.

It makes sense if you realize that the press are Democrat operatives with bylines.

Middle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair

In today's Virginian Pilot, Dick Meyer does a cut-and-paste job on an article printed in the Atlantic about increased mortality among "uneducated" white Americans dying of alcohol and drug abuse.

He ends with this:

Politics makes for an especially depressing subplot of the current mystery. In the last election, Donald Trump preyed on losses experienced by the white working class, offered no honest prescriptions and no realistic course of treatment. Instead, Trump and his party exploited the pain of the white working class — and some better educated, wealthier whites that feel and remember their pain — and channeled into resentment and anger at blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants as well as the “establishment” elite who rig the system.

That is a prescription that ensures no one will get better.

The new word for acknowledging people's issues is "PREYING" if those issues affect the low-skilled white working class and if the one who is paying attention is Donald Trump.

Bill Clinton was hailed by clowns like Meyer when he famously used and re-used the phrase "I feel your pain." But let Trump feel the pain of the people like Meyer despises - white men without a college degree - and it's "preying." And since Donald Trump, a few months into his Presidency has not solved this problem he's "preying."

Let me buy Dick Meyer a hint: the despair of white men without a college degree is caused by joblessness because factories that once employed them have closed and moved their jobs to Mexico and to China. This was done by the Establishment to fatten the bottom lines of corporations and promoted by the Washington Establishment who made trade deals that erased the jobs of millions of American men without a college degree.

So when Donald Trump made speech after speech promising to bring those jobs back he gave hope to the hopeless and reduced their despair. We have, mere months into the Trump administration, seen large corporations like Ford announce major investments in factories in this country.

People like Meyer are sightless because they will not see; they are blinded by their own political biases. Like Meyer and the rest of the press, they are Democrat operatives with bylines.  These are the people who wear elitist, bigoted and racist blinders. Thank God, they are going to be left in the dustpan of history.

When will the Virginian Pilot stop lying about voter fraud?

The Virginian Pilot says that voter fraud doesn't happen. They lie.

People know that people cheat if given the chance.  That's why they support voter ID laws.  People care about their vote, and don't want it cancelled out by fraudsters.  

Here is a story from Colorado about dead people voting.  

[this is a link to the video which has an auto start that's too irritating to keep on this blog]

The truth is that the Virginia Pilot approves of voter fraud, just as it approves of giving convicted felons the right to vote.  

The reason's simple.  They believe that people who commit voter fraud and convicted felons are probably Democrats.  And they want Democrats to win elections, preferably honestly, but by fraud if necessary.  The writers, editors and management of the Virginian Pilot are Democrat operatives with a printing press.

When ABC News Hired George Stephanopolous in 1996, It Promised He Would be an "Analyst Like William Kristol," Not Reporting Any News. Within A Couple of Years They Were Reneging

Why of course they lied.  It's what they do.

George Stephanopoulos discloses $50,000 contribution to Clinton Foundation

Dem operatives with bylines.


Says he "regrets" not disclosing it until it was going to get out.  Can you say "CONFLICT OF INTEREST?" 

I knew you could. 

Democrat operatives with bylines start to worry.

The New, Scary Question Facing Democrats: If Not Hillary Clinton, Then Who?

Modern media and the destructive representation of conservativism

Although rightfully excoriated for his comments comparing public unions to ISIS, Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-Wis.) treatment by the media continues to highlight the gross disparity in the way with which conservative candidates are analyzed and represented, when compared to their liberal counterparts. Whereas Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton are all hailed for their various policy proposals, as well as their personal and professional achievements, individuals like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are ruthlessly assailed for every quip or comment, be they contextual or otherwise.

This was patently evident in 2008 as well as 2012, and will most assuredly be applicable once again in 2016. From tales of Mitt Romney’s elementary school bullying, to reports about Paul’s “Aqua Buddha” college days, the depths to which modern media apparatuses will dredge in order to invalidate a Republican’s candidacy, surpasses even those explored by the Trieste. This is highly problematic, as it only takes an anonymous comment, erroneous claim, or an unverified accusation, in order to destroy the legitimacy of a right leaning contender. This same approach however, would be understandable if it were equally applied to both sides of the political aisle, but seldom is that ever the case.

Each of the aforementioned Democratic heavyweights has more baggage than a gypsy caravan, but what few stories do make it to print regarding their issues are typically brief, excused, and quickly forgotten. It may not seem like much, but such a handicap with relation to past misdeeds or suspected skullduggery can (quite effectively and easily mind you), tilt and distort the public’s perception of a given individual. When this happens predominantly to GOP candidates, the hazards become quite clear.

Tea Partiers are dismissed outright, while socialist fringes on the left are never acknowledged nor addressed. Adjectives such as “wacko, crazy, radical, extremist, fundamentalist, and myopic” have become synonymous with the Republican Party, whilst Democrats are only reported to be pragmatic or “slightly more progressive”. Even thoroughly debunked claims have been routinely utilized to attack conservative hopefuls.

Two weeks before the Iowa caucus, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) surged to a comfortable and timely lead, although immediately upon attaining said position; questions regarding racist newsletters bearing his name were suddenly raised. Given the nature of the accusations, such inquiries could have been viewed as reasonable, if only the articles hadn’t been penned some 25 years earlier, and discredited no fewer than 10 times since.

Unlike Paul however, the discourse surrounding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has already pivoted from questionable associations, to his plans for statewide reforms. This has all transpired less than two weeks after it was revealed that the speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon Silver, had been taking millions in bribes in exchange for various kickbacks. Cuomo, although not charged, had been accused of interfering with the Moreland Commission, a body he started (and eventually disbanded) in order to root out said instances of corruption. Yet now, rather than looking deeper, journalistic lap dogs, content with warming the thighs of a high profile Democrat, have moved on to more important issues, like raising the state’s minimum wage.

Predictably, this is just one of many such instances, but while Democrats can sleep off their scandals like Ted Kennedy nursing a hangover following a dalliance with a certain bridge, journalists are all too willing to hit 88 mph in the doctor’s Delorian in order to uncover (or retread) alleged GOP misconduct. Whereas evaluations of John Kerry’s service record were equated to blasphemy in 2004, coverage of the investigation into George W. Bush’s National Guard activities, were reported nightly until it was revealed that the story was completely fabricated. While the latter example did result in Dan Rather’s unceremonious dismissal from CBS, it unquestionably re-directed the national dialogue for weeks on end.

Of course the media are really Democrat operative with bylines.  They are not biased, they consider the Right as the enemy to be destroyed.

Read the whole thing.

Dear Media: This Elizabeth Lauten Nonsense Is Why Everybody Hates You

Last week, President Barack Obama pardoned a turkey prior to Thanksgiving Day, as is tradition. And as in previous years, his teenage daughters Malia and Sasha stood by his side. The daughters are cute as can be — and Malia is growing into an absolutely beautiful young woman.

They are, however, teenagers. And they were, I guess, engaged in some mild teenage behavior — eye-rolling and smirking and what not. I watched a video of the event and didn’t really notice anything worth commenting on (apart from the interesting annual practice of Obama signing the cross over the turkey). But one minor Capitol Hill staffer thought the girls were dressed inappropriately and acted a bit churlish. And then, for some reason, she wrote about it on Facebook.

At which point some people lost their everliving minds. Her comments were posted on Twitter where the social media mob fed their hankering for constant outrage. There were petitions calling for her to be punished. And worst of all the media wrote and broadcast story after story after story about the matter. Elizabeth Lauten lost her job for saying mean things about President Obama’s children.

Now, Lauten is in communications and her job presumably included an assumption that she wouldn’t embarrass her boss. Besides, in a city where you can keep your job even if you’re involved in serious scandals at the IRS, State Department, Veterans Affairs or the Department of Justice, an actual job loss is refreshing, in its own way. She even gave a full-throated apology — within hours of the initial post — for being mean, not one of these “I’m sorry if” constructions that politicians frequently use.

Still, what in the world was the media doing reporting on this non-story and firing up the mob? The Washington Free Beacon reported that “major media outlets are pouring resources into tracking her moves and digging into her past.” This included two network news vans camping outside of her parents’ home in North Carolina and a search of Lauten’s leaked juvenile records and college writings.

This is insanity and each and every person involved should be ashamed of himself or herself. If you were involved, you are a big part of what’s wrong with journalism and you need to check yourself.

There's more, much more and it's worth every second it takes to read.

SHAHEEN TEAMED WITH DEBATE MODERATOR STEPHANOPOULOS ON BILL CLINTON CAMPAIGN

Why must the moderator of a political debate be a member of the press?  In Glenn Reynold's words, they are Democrat operative with bylines.  Candy Crawley, call your office.

Candy Crowley yearns for the days when the USSR and the US threatened the world with nuclear destruction. Times were much simpler then.

Candy Crowley is a pluperfect example of the in-the-tank MSM figure for Barack Obama. She not only ran interference for his during the Presidential debates when she interrupted Mitt Romney and falsely stated that Obama called the Benghazi attack “terrorism” from the beginning. She got her wish and Obama is serving a second term.

Now that the world is spinning out of control, Russians are invading their neighbors, Obama is managing to lose Iraq retroactively, Obama’s Libyan adventure turned a neutral nation into a training ground for jihadists, war between Israel and the Arabs has begun, Syria has managed to become the abattoir of the Middle East, passenger planes are being shot out of the air and the feckless John Kerry is wasting his time and our money while the leader of Egypt makes him pass through a metal detector before a meeting.

On the domestic front, ObamaCare is destroying the best medical system in the world and the border between the US and Mexico has disappeared as hundreds of thousands swarm across the former border applying for food stamps, housing and the right to vote in the next election.

All of which makes the ultimate Obama bootlicker, Candy Crowley, running interference for Obama again by clearly implying that it’s not his fault; it’s the fault of "changing times."

Here’s how she begins her interview with Lindsey Graham, expressing nostalgia for the days when the USSR and USA stood poised to end humanity via a nuclear holocaust. She’s positively nostalgic for those heady days of “duck and cover.”

I want to talk to you first about this notion of leadership and the idea that the world really has changed. It’s not as simple as the bad guys are in the soviet bloc and behind the iron curtain and the good guys are in the west. It is now a very complicated world which kind of defies the title of “leader of the Western world” [makes quote signs with her fingers]. How much of this do you ascribe to changing times?

It seems that Fate and Changing Times are going to get tossed under the bus by Obama's enablers. Or, as Glenn Reynolds calls them "Democrat operatives with by-lines."

US journalists less satisfied, see negative trend

American journalists have become increasingly dissatisfied with their work and see the industry moving in the wrong direction, a new survey shows.

Their victims readers agree.

Term limits for Democrat operative with bylines?  Could help, can't hurt.

CURL: We completely overhauled American health care — to insure 4.2 million people?

The number bounced around for years — 46 million.

President Obama said it in August 2009: “I don’t have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage.”

He said it dozens more times, including in June 2013: “We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women and children.”

The Obama administration pumped the number with official reports. The White House Council of Economic Advisers said, “Perhaps the most visible sign of the need for health care reform is the 46 million Americans currently without health insurance.” The Census Bureau got in on the act, too, saying some 48 million Americans lacked health insurance.

It was official: Nearly 15 percent of America’s 313 million citizens had no coverage and were, as Mr. Obama loved to say over and over to hype the fear, “one illness away from financial ruin.”

So, he created Obamacare. The crux of the biscuit: The United States would completely change its entire health care system to make sure those 46 million got insured. Well, at least that’s what every rational American thought. If there are 46 million uninsured, and the president and Congress are overhauling the system, it must be to solve the whole problem — not just part of it.

But last week came word that with just 15 days left for people to enroll for federal coverage, just 4.2 million had. The math is simple: That’s just 9 percent of the supposedly 46 million uninsured.

“It will be a larger number than that by the end of March,” Mr. Obama promised in an interview with WebMD. “At this point, enough people are signing up that the Affordable Care Act is going to work.”

Still, the obvious question is: We changed the $2.7 trillion health care system to sign up 4.2 million people?

...

What’s surprising is how little the mainstream media cares. The White House now says it was hoping to enroll 8 million in the first year — but does anyone remember that being a big selling point as the president crisscrossed the country scaring Americans? And no one in the MSM blinked an eye when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that in 2023, Obamacare will still have left 31 million people without health insurance while adding more than $1.7 trillion in federal spending.

"How little the mainstream media cares."  And that's the real point. The people who have nothing to do all day but try to figure out what's happening became cheerleaders for ObamaCare. They dismissed everyone who said that this was going to be a disaster.  And it is a disaster.  And now that "you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor, you'll save $2500 per year" has been shown to be perhaps the biggest lie of this young century, the media doesn't care. It turns out that they really don't care about those 46 million uninsured either. If they did they would be asking questions about why ObamaCare has only signed up less than 10% of the people Obama said his program was going to insure. But they don't care. They care of about increasing the power of the ruling class. They care about changing the culture. They care that they get to set the agenda for the "little people." They revel in the fact that they are part of the Ruling Class.

Virginian Beach Woman Sentenced to Death By ObamaCare; Virginian Pilot Silent

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article about a woman's fight with cancer and how ObamaCare is depriving her of her treatment. Stephen Blackwood: ObamaCare and My Mother's Cancer Medicine.

When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked....

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

As with most cancers, one thing led to another. There have been several more surgeries, metastases, bone deterioration, a terrible bout of thyroiditis (an inflammation of the thyroid gland), and much more. But my mother has kept fighting, determined to make the most of life, no matter what it brings. She has an indomitable will and is by far the toughest person I've ever met. But she wouldn't still be here without that semimonthly Sandostatin shot that slows the onslaught of her disease.

And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

Because the exchange website in her state (Virginia) was not working, she went directly to insurers' websites and telephoned them, one by one, over dozens of hours. As a medical-office manager, she had decades of experience navigating the enormous problems of even our pre-ObamaCare system. But nothing could have prepared her for the bureaucratic morass she now had to traverse.

The repeated and prolonged phone waits were Sisyphean, the competence and customer service abysmal. When finally she found a plan that looked like it would cover her Sandostatin and other cancer treatments, she called the insurer, Humana, HUM +5.62% to confirm that it would do so. The enrollment agent said that after she met her deductible, all treatments and medications—including those for her cancer—would be covered at 100%. Because, however, the enrollment agents did not—unbelievable though this may seem—have access to the "coverage formularies" for the plans they were selling, they said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable....

The "Affordable" Care Act is a brutal, Procrustean disaster. In principle, it violates the irreducible particularity of human life, and in practice it will cause many individuals to suffer and die. We can do better, and we must.

Once I finished reading this article, I was outraged ... for two reasons.

 

First, ObamaCare is barely off the ground and already we are learning that the infamous Death Panels are a reality.

The second reason is that the woman with cancer is a resident of Virginia Beach, but this is the first I've heard about it. America’s news media are as much to blame for this fiasco as the Democrats in office. Why do I have to read about this in the Wall Street Journal, published in New York? I reside in the Virginia Beach area and the leading area newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, has long been a vigorous advocate of ObamaCare. Not a word about this woman’s situation has appeared in the local press. In fact, the Virginian Pilot has not bothered to do any stories about the way ObamaCare has affected local residents even though thousands of stories like this have appeared nationally and on the Internet. It just doesn’t fit their narrative.

 

As Glenn Reynolds says, the MSM are Democrat Operatives with Bylines.

UPDATE: The American media, by acting as unpaid propagandists for the Obama regime has its counterpart in Ukraine as John Fund explains. There, the Inter network is the main TV organ. When protests broke out in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, Inter gave the people government propaganda. And finally things took a turn on a live broadcast that could not be edited when a brave reporter told the truth.

Reporter Halya Coynash points to the Yanukovych regime’s record of media control and censorship: “It proved unnervingly easy within a matter of months of Yanukovych’s [2010] election to remove most critical analysis, negative reports about those in power, and inconvenient information from television.” Whatever new government is formed, that sorry record must not be repeated in a new Ukraine.

It proved unnervingly easy to create a news media in America that is the willing handmaid of the regime. The American media fell in love with the Obama image and has stayed smitten despite economic failure, foreign policy disasters, horrible war losses, and the weaponization of government agencies like the DOJ, IRS, CIA, DHS, and the FBI to destroy or stifle the political opposition. And now they cover up the disaster that is the hallmark of the Liberal dream: ObamaCare.

Must the always be blood in the streets before the truth comes out?

A Friendly Visit From the FCC

It appears, per Bud Norman, that with the exception of FOX News and the editorial pages of the Wall street Journal, the MSM really isn't bothered by the FCC's announcement that they're going to be checking up on what stories are being reported and how they are covered. Well, when your already the organ of the ruling party, that doesn't bother you.

The Fox New Network is on the story, possibly because they’re the ones whose reporters have treated as criminal co-conspirators and excluded from the White House news pool and routinely criticized by every level of the administration, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and the radio talk shows have been paying some attention for obvious reasons of their own, but otherwise the story has gone largely unnoted. In our years of journalism we endured many a journalist’s self-righteous sermon about the obligation of the press to bravely resist any governmental interference, but that was mostly during Republican administrations, when nothing like the FCC’s current curiosity and the nation’s slide down the rankings of press freedom ever occurred, and at this moment of hope and change none of the over-the-air networks seem terribly concerned that their notions of the news consumers’ critical information needs will differ much from the government’s.

If proof is needed that the MSM is composed of Democrats with bylines, this is all the proof you really need. A watchdog doesn't growl at his master.

The Court Reporters

I have been studying the transcript of the recent New York Times interview of President Barack Obama. It is a remarkable document—remarkable not for the facts it contains, but for the way it reveals the mentalities of the participants. Remarkable, too, in so far as the transcript allows a curious reader to see, in detail, how journalism is manufactured. Through a process of extraction, distillation, production, transportation, and marketing no less sophisticated than the global supply chain that brings Southeast Asian textiles to your neighborhood big-box store, a rambling, snobbish, and platitudinous discussion between three well-compensated Washingtonians is transformed into “news” stories such as “Obama Says Income Gap Is Fraying U.S. Social Fabric,” “Obama Says He’ll Evaluate Pipeline Project Depending on Pollution,” and—in a brilliant but assuredly non-ironic instance of begging the question—“Obama Intends to Let Health Care Law Prove Critics Wrong by Succeeding.”

I use quotation marks to surround the word “news” because none of the stories that resulted from the Times interview contained information I did not already know. Income inequality has been the president’s justification for higher taxes and spending since at least 2005, when he spoke at Galesburg, Ill., for the first time as a senator. Earlier this summer, in a ballyhooed speech at Georgetown University, he announced the criteria by which he would decide the fate of the Keystone Pipeline. “Proving the critics wrong by succeeding” is more of an aspiration than a thought or deed: a form of self-assertion, a challenge to opponents, a boast—the mental equivalent of listening to amped-up music before Coach O delivers a motivational speech to the team.

A sort of pep talk to the liberal bourgeoisie, Democrat and Republican, is what the New York Times under Jill Abramson has become. One reads it to confirm rather than challenge one’s perceptions of the world. No mystery what those perceptions are: The Republicans are no good, the president is doing the best he can, equality marches on, America is powerless to influence other countries, illegal immigration has no downside, the government should not be trusted except when it regulates the economy, “institutional” (i.e., invisible) racism plagues contemporary society, traditional religion is a curiosity, etc. Reading the transcript of the president’s interview is valuable because it allows you to see just how self-contained the bobo world is. The paper and its intended audience, in this case the president, form a closed circuit.

Here's the question and the answer: no they are not interested in answers to tough questions; that would assume that Obama is actually responsible for some problems and that's not part of the story line for the Times and its readers.

Aren’t the readers of the New York Times interested in hearing President Obama’s answers to tough questions about the various controversies at home and crises abroad? Perhaps they are not. Perhaps they are far more interested in having their public morality, their view of the world, of who is bad and who is good, of what is important and what is not, confirmed for them in a series of advertisements for President Obama and the Democratic Party. Perhaps they are more interested in sitting back and watching, passively, as the president shifts the public’s attention away from scandal and turmoil, and defines his domestic opponents in preparation for budget and debt fights. Perhaps readers of the Times and writers of the Times and editors of the Times are not interested in information per se. What interests them is affirmation.

“Thanks, guys. Appreciate you,” the president says as the reporters leave the room. Of that I have no doubt.

As Glenn Reynolds has noted many times, the NY Times writers are Dem operatives with bylines.

Journalists for Obama

They’re not the Fourth Estate. They’re the Praetorian Guard.

Headline courtesy of Glenn Reynolds

Government officials and political operatives working for Christie, for weird and petty reasons, chose to make traffic worse. That’s the takeaway. When they are reminded of the fact that people working on Christie’s behalf thought it was a good political game to mire tens of thousands of their fellow Americans in the nightmarish gridlock that is a daily dreaded prospect for tens of millions, they will be discomfited by that and by the politician in whose name it was done.

And yet, you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents.

That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.

Scandals are not just about themselves; they are about the media atmosphere that surrounds them. They are perpetuated and deepened by the attention of journalists, whose relentless pursuit of every angle keeps the story going. That is exactly what has been missing from the IRS scandal from its outset; Republicans in Congress have been the dogged pursuers, not the press.

From the article written by  John Podhoretz

To the journalists, the Obamans don’t look like crooks and cheats. Far from it. For them, it’s like looking in a mirror.

In September, Elspeth Reeve of The Atlantic Wire took note of 24 major journalists who have taken posts at senior levels in the Obama administration. All of them have worked for decades in various news organizations, thus creating personal ties and bonds of affection with literally hundreds of working reporters and editors.

The journalists are not covering up for their friends and their spouses. They just believe the people they know could not be responsible for behaving badly, or cravenly, or for crass political advantage —and the tone they strike when such things are discussed is often one of offense, as though it is a sign of low character to believe otherwise. It would be, well, like believing the journalists themselves were crooks.

TV gives 'Bridgegate' 17 times more coverage in 1 day than IRS scandal in 6 months

Why do they do this?  Because they are Democrats and because they can.

Nixon, Obama and the press