Barack Obama ain’t closing Gitmo and the media is there to make excuses for him. Shocking.
There are as many examples of this as there are members of the activist old media, but let’s take this brilliant note from Good Morning America on Monday. Juju Chang, Emmy Award winning journalist for ABC News, gave us this gem:
“We begin with a legal turnaround for the Obama administration. It’s giving up the fight to try 9-11 suspects in civilian court here in New York, instead, self-proclaimed 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad and 4 other suspects will be tried before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. The President will have to break his campaign promise to shut down that prison.”
Oh, where do I begin? First, let me say, I’m not sure who wrote this, Juju, or a news writer or whether they cut-and-pasted from the AP. Doesn’t matter, Juju is still responsible. I’ve had many a spirited conversation with writers and producers who wrote scripts that would make any anchor look foolish or flat-out wrong. This makes Juju look foolish and partisan at the same time and I do not believe she is the former. I thought for a moment Robert Gibbs had taken a job as a news writer at ABC. He hasn’t, has he?
The media celebrated Dear Leader’s first official act as President, the signing of the document that would close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Whoops. Didn’t quite happen that way, the prison is still open for business and the media is making excuses for the Brilliant One who told us all he would close down Gitmo as the world hated America because of its existence. Forget the fact that radical Muslims declared jihad on the free world more than 30 years ago, they don’t like us because of Gitmo.
Let’s take this paragraph of “news” read by Chang and dissect it. Imagine with me for a moment this same scenario happening with a Republican in the White House. She first calls it a “legal turnaround” for the Obama administration. Can you say, “flip flop,” activist old media? We know you can, but would you dare say Obama would be a flip flopper on anything? Since he is Dear Leader, you cannot take him down from that perch and think for a moment that he would “flip flop.” Only Evil Republicans do that.
Then there’s this brilliant line: “The President will have to break his campaign promise.” Have to? Why does he have to? Please, send George to the “Smart Screen” and tell us why the President will have to break this campaign promise. Did Evil Republicans make him do it? I’m guessing that’s what the Smart Screen would tell us.
If any Republican were President this story would’ve gone something like this:
“With his poll numbers dropping, we begin with a flip flop from the Bla Bla Bla White House….The President lied to the American people and will keep the prison open that is endangering the lives of soldiers and Americans around the world.”
Hey, don’t doubt me; I was asked/told to read similar stories on air, and you heard somebody deliver them. I would either put the scripts in context or I changed them on the fly while on air, but newsrooms don’t appreciate stories being put in context, so that’s probably why I’m writing these columns right now and not anchoring a newscast. Fine—at some point you grow some.
ABC can hide behind the facts and say this paragraph is “factually correct” and they may be right, but you can be flat-out deceptive, dishonest, misleading and deceitful, while saying you have all the facts right. Politicians do it all the time—so does the activist old media. Maybe Gibbs should get into the news business, he would fit right in.