Doug Ross @ Journal

The Blanket of Silence

I'll point it out again: nary a peep from the mainstream media regarding CNN executive Eason Jordan's assertion that the U.S. Military deliberately targeted and killed journalists. In fact, the Washington Times is the only old-line media outlet to even mention the incident and it did so only in describing Hugh Hewitt's Weekly Standard column.

In other words, the proverbial blanket of silence has been thrown on the Jordan fire and the MSM is doing their concerted best to stamp out any stray embers. And that's not the only interesting story being scrupulously and carefully ignored by the MSM:

...John Kerry's extraordinary interview with Tim Russert last Sunday. There's a lot to absorb here, including Kerry's assertion that he did indeed run guns and CIA men into Cambodia on secret missions--and to aid the Khmer Rouge no less! What is really remarkable is not Kerry's whoppers--he couldn't have meant the Khmer Rouge, right?--or his almost certain not-to-be-fulfilled pledge to sign the form 180. It is the set of questions Tim Russert posed. Russert is generally regarded as the toughest interview in television, and he did bleed Kerry a bit during the campaign; afterwards Kerry never again came close to Russert's set before November 2. But if the questions posed by Russert on January 30, 2005--on Kerry's fantasy life in Cambodia, on the sequestered records, etc.--were legitimate and useful inquiries after the votes have been cast, why then did no one pose them to candidate Kerry when they might have made a difference in the election? The blogosphere and the center-right media were full of such demands from August 1 forward, but not a single reporter from mainstream media bothered to pose even one of the Russert questions prior to the vote.

Permit me to rephrase the question: if these questions were important enough to have been asked on Meet the Press this week, why couldn't a single journalist ask the same questions of Kerry prior to the presidential election? Or a single debate moderator?

Because the media, to their detriment, is still very much in the pocket of the Democratic party. Hugh calls this skewed landscape a "lunatic imbalance". It is at least that. Activist cranks like Mary Mapes are permitted years to pursue partisan Democratic agendas while nary a reporter can be spared to ask Kerry about deliving weapons to the... Khmer Rouge? Or about his unreleased military dossier?

Russert's questions highlight, in bold relief, old-line media's absurd disconnectedness from its audience. And that is why the blogosphere -- left and right -- continues to ascend, unburdened by myopia, and laying waste to what remains of the old guard.

Weekly Standard: Media Notes