New Media Spurs Fast and Furious Contempt Vote

Were it not for a multitude of “just bloggers”–the new media vanguard like our own Mary Chastain, the Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle, Townhall’s Katie Pavlich, J. Christian Adams, and the new-media user Sharyl Attkisson at CBS–most households wouldn’t be learning about Fast and Furious this week. Forget Watergate, forget Lewinsky; Fast and Furious is one of the biggest political scandals in American history, and new media helped drive it above the fold. 

New media has for well over a year detailed the wrongdoings of the Obama administration as it relates to Fast and Furious. The gunwalking program wasn’t a “botched” operation; “botched” signifies that there was some representation of responsibility from the outset. President Obama and Eric Holder modeled their gun walking program in the vein of Wide Receiver–except they replaced oversight with sheer apathy and let it run wild. Instead of working with the Mexican government, the Obama admin didn’t notify them; when officials were notified that the operation lost track of the firearms, they ignored it, whereas the Bush admin ended Wide Receiver when notified of the same. 

Of course, most of us wouldn’t know any of this had it not been for the intrepid reporters of new media.

When questioned by these reporters, Eric Holder lashed out, stuck his finger in their faces, and accused them of cooking up the entire scandal. 

Since the House committee found Holder in contempt, legacy media now spins that the story is a “witch hunt” conducted by the “fringe,” which doesn’t explain Attkisson’s reporting, or Jake Tapper’s, a member of the White House Press Corps. Are they also “fringe”? Is it “fringe” because Holder attempted to dodge the legal process and was found in error, or because new media kept the pressure on the AG? Is legacy media so partisan that they’re willing to publicly abandon news gathering altogether for the sake of joining Obama circling the wagons around his corrupt AG? 

Legacy media used to fear new media because of competition. Now they fear them because their inability to report the news is never more apparent when compared to the work of new media.