From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:
The “mainstream” media is a potent issue this election year, and Donald Trump has surely turned the public’s distrust of the Fourth Estate into electoral gold. Regardless of what one thinks of Trump himself, his ability to turn a media pile-on into an asset has got to make one wonder what is it about the journalistic profession, circa 2015, that inspires such antipathy.
Perhaps it’s what they don’t report that’s responsible for the general disdain in which they are held. Take, for example, this piece in the New York Times on Tashfeen Malik’s previously unreported Facebook postings, by Matt Apuzzo, Michael S. Schmidt, and Julia Preston. The first paragraphs read:
“Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide – that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.
“She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.
“American law enforcement officials said they recently discovered those old – and previously unreported – postings as they pieced together the lives of Ms. Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, trying to understand how they pulled off the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.”
Okay, but what did she actually say – and where did she say it? The Times stays mum on this, but we do get some information on her sister, Fehda Malik, some twenty-three paragraphs later, second from the bottom:
“On social media, Fehda Malik has made provocative comments of her own. In 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, she posted a remark on Facebook beside a photo of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center that could be interpreted as anti-American.”
Everything must be viewed through the peculiar prism of a New York Times reporter: no direct quotes allowed – unless it’s from an anonymous government official pushing his or her agenda. The rest of the article cites government officials offering lame excuses for why they didn’t bother checking Tashfeen Malik’s social media postings– essentially, it’s too much bother.
Yes, the Old Grey Lady has become quite insufferable of late, what with its front page editorials – although one could argue quite reasonably they’ve been doing that in their “news” department since the 1960s and before.
To continue reading: The Decline and Fall of ‘Mainstream’ Media
