The tea party has apparently set up a news site which is about to go live on election day in the US:
The Tea Party News Network, self-described as “the only trusted news source and the antidote to mainstream media bias,” is already live but will announce its launch tomorrow morning, with plans to start live video on election day. TPNN claims to have a “war room of 40-plus volunteers” who will operate out of the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, and has established partnerships with the Talk Radio Network and radio host Rusty Humphries, who will be co-anchoring the election night coverage.
Well there will be a news world with a difference irrespective of the result of the election. And one of the main reasons will be the disastrous outcome that is surrounding the media in the US over Benghazi. The no-news-but-good-news industry that accompanies Obama has taken on a very large enemy, in this case the entire foreign service which is infuriated by the president’s active refusal to lift a finger to assist some of their comrades in mortal danger who then tried to cast the blame on the service itself. This story tells of that anger, and the exposure of the media that is now following the refusal of the media to tell the truth. Here is the conclusion but the story in full is part of what may be the most important question being settled in this election: to what extent can media lies, distortions and suppression allow the worst president in history to be re-elected.
Spooks and diplomats are angry at the attempt to make them scapegoats; furious that the president didn’t lift a finger to help their comrades in the consulate during the seven-hour siege. More leaks may be on the way. If they fail to follow up, journalists could lose more credibility than the president. They haven’t much credibility left to lose.
Worse than Watergate, but this time it is not the media who are exposing the cover up but are being exposed as part of that cover up themselves.
The American public are indeed receiving a lesson in lying by omission: that is, major media like the Washington Post and the New York Times not only refusing to investigate the Benghazi story in order to protect Obama, but last week refusing to publish available newsagency stories by Reuters and others disputing key elements of the White House’s version of events in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012. In the world of media, moral corruption doesn’t come any more evil and the WP and NYT will pay a heavy price as they have destroyed public trust. This will spread like a cancer through circulation and readership figures in the next year.
Tom
1 Nov 12 at 9:26 am
Not the MainStreamMediaMainStreamMediaMainStreamMedia again?
Nanuestaler
1 Nov 12 at 9:26 am
Not the MainStreamMediaMainStreamMediaMainStreamMedia again?
As the great philosopher Forrest Gump said “Stupid is as Stupid does”.
Nanuestalker
1 Nov 12 at 9:30 am
Facebook has been doing its bit by pulling down memes holding Obama to account for Libya – see here at Breitbart.
Google has been running leftist interference for years, particularly in search results on touchy topics (Climategate, anyone?) and a strong left lean on its news feeds.
Seems like the smart class bo-bos in Silicon Valley absorbed everything at college except the value of impartial institutions.
Jasbo
1 Nov 12 at 9:31 am
“Seems like the smart class bo-bos in Silicon Valley absorbed everything at college except the value of impartial institutions.”
Google is an institution?
Jarrah
1 Nov 12 at 9:38 am
Google has created a world speed record for transforming itself from the best of the online search engines into a monopoly with all the worst of monopoly behaviours, cloaked in the zero-customer-service model.
Tom
1 Nov 12 at 9:45 am
Fox News Australia. You know you want it.
blogstrop
1 Nov 12 at 9:46 am
Well either Socialism’s long game is the gradual taking over of institutions – the media and education two conspicuous successes – or it just happens naturally, but either way the internet should be comparatively more resilient.
Ooh Honey Honey
1 Nov 12 at 9:51 am
“Institutions” here simply being the means by which you can brainwash lots of morons.
Ooh Honey Honey
1 Nov 12 at 9:52 am
You can bet the useful idiots at Sky News would believe they actually peform that function…as they toady up to Labor.
There is a gap in the market that will be filled by someone using a cheap technology like internet TV if Newscorp does not act.
Token
1 Nov 12 at 10:04 am
Here’s a best practice example…
Rabz
1 Nov 12 at 10:08 am
Oh, fair call all on ambiguous use of ‘institution’.
Facebook is not an institution; it is a private provider governed by contract. However, users have a legitimate right to expect:
-FB to enforce its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities impartially, considering only relevant matters, and not in a way to further partisan political interests
-FB to declare conflicts of interest in decision making, particularly as FB is a communication platform with only limited and specific restrictions on freedom of speech.
Google search results are a different matter. If you view, as most do, the privately-owned Fourth Estate as an institution, then the search/find/present information offering from Google is very close to media activity. Google is the quintessence of a media information filter. Search engines just haven’t been around long enough to be considered institutions yet, as newspapers are.I believe they should be held to the same or higher standards as legacy media precisely because their algorithms are either opaque or manipulable on particular topics.
Google highlights sponsored results for the sake of transparency; equally, it should highlight search results which have been fiddled from a political perspective.
As for the learnings at college, what is really relevant are longstanding cultural conventions long gone from the bobo smart class: declaring conflicts of interest, freedom of speech, minimising perception of bias, fiduciary duty to corporation ahead of one’s political affiliation etc.
Jasbo
1 Nov 12 at 10:39 am
“their algorithms are either opaque or manipulable on particular topics.”
Their algorithms are opaque precisely to prevent manipulation. By others, I mean.
“it should highlight search results which have been fiddled from a political perspective.”
I’m 99% certain they don’t do political fiddling of results, but assuming they want to, how would they even do that? Can’t be done by algorithm, AFAIK.
Jarrah
1 Nov 12 at 10:44 am
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
…if a Democrat had have been in the White House and operatives had have been caught breaking into the RNC headquarters then there’d have been no scandal at all.
Jack Lacton
1 Nov 12 at 10:46 am
Facebook is not an institution; it is a private provider governed by contract.
So is Harvard, and yet it is an institution. So is Facebook and Google.
dover_beach
1 Nov 12 at 10:47 am
Actually, an FNC Australia concept could be market-tested virtually without set-up costs as the signal is already broadcast here on Foxtel. I’m fairly sure FNC shows repeats between 0000 and 0600 US eastern time (1400-2000 AEST in our winter and 1600-2200 AEST in summer). They’re prime-time hours in Aust. Plenty of talent around who don’t work for the zombie media.
Sky News Channel’s parent company Australian News Channel Pty Ltd is owned by British Sky Broadcasting, Seven Media Group and Nine Entertainment Co., each with a 33% stake in the company respectively. So Sky here is essentially a layoff by the major FTA broadcasters. News Ltd is only a minority shareholder in BSkyB, while it owns 100% of FNC, so there is little holding News back from a fully fledged Oz FNC subsidiary.
Tom
1 Nov 12 at 10:51 am
Tom, this guy has a lot of talent, already has a following and is available at the current time.
Token
1 Nov 12 at 11:03 am
@jarrah: it is manipulation by Google-insiders that is the problem at issue, not the various SEO game-players.
Your certainly about the political fiddling of results is admirably trusting; I do not share your faith. If I had more time today I’d dig out links to a sufficient number of iffy behaviours from Google to at least raise a suspicion.
jasbo
1 Nov 12 at 11:17 am
Fox News Australia, last night Jeanine Perret and her guest social Ross Gittins. I actually pay for this crap volutarily, well my wife does anyway.
Perret and Gittins whinging about how unbiased they were, and how ungrateful people were for having such a wonderful economy. They could not figure out why people are complaining about the governments economic performance.
If it wasnt for the Sopranos reruns I would get rid of Foxtel.
Jannie
1 Nov 12 at 11:42 am
‘Spooks and diplomats are angry at the attempt to make them scapegoats’
This may be so but who sez it is. Evidence ? I wish it’s true, but seems like a huge generalisation made without much (any?) support.
henry
1 Nov 12 at 12:09 pm
I’d like to see a clearer picture of what actually happened, but maybe there is no clear picture.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/31/clarity_needed_on_benghazi_115986.html
David Ignatius (not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination) asks clear questions around what happened that night. And his comment about the broader context is an important one, if they attacked a nameless group in Libya, what would stop that from inflaming the tensions in other parts of the mid-east.
And the article linked in Steve’s post has this puzzling line:
His interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, taped the day after the attack, indicates that Mr. Obama has been lying from the get-go.
“My suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in [the attack on the consulate] who were looking to target Americans from the start,” the president told Mr. Kroft.”
If the president told 60 Minutes the day after the attack there were folks who were looking to target Americans, how is that proof he was lying?
I agree that the comments connecting this to a video were lies and likely aimed to buy time and get it out of the news cycle, that was stupid, but where’s the larger cover up and scandal? In the article linked and in Ignatius’ article I just don’t see it.
WadeJ
1 Nov 12 at 1:46 pm
Carl Rove makes a final prediction. Me? I’m not committing as I have no edge in this election.
.
JC
1 Nov 12 at 2:08 pm
Yes. But no Fox Extra please.
jupes
1 Nov 12 at 2:16 pm
Henry, read the linked article:
“The journalists went under the bus because the Foreign Service and career intelligence officers the administration tried to scapegoat refused to go there. They’ve leaked emails that reveal the White House was informed while it was still going on that the attack was the work of terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida.
To put this in the context of the Mother of All Scandals, these emails are the equivalent of a transcript of what was on the 181/2 minutes of the secret White House tapes President Nixon’s secretary erased.”
Abu Chowdah
1 Nov 12 at 2:20 pm
And his comment about the broader context is an important one, if they attacked a nameless group in Libya, what would stop that from inflaming the tensions in other parts of the mid-east.
What might happen in the future should play no part in whether or not one defends those who were presently under attack. If the order to “stand down” came from the White House, that is the scandal and everything that has followed was the larger cover-up. It is that simple.
dover_beach
1 Nov 12 at 2:34 pm
Facebook has finally reversed it’s censorship on Navy SEALS, claiming an error “not censorship”.
Cold-Hands
1 Nov 12 at 2:34 pm
The brilliant Michael Ramirez has done a good job on this theme before:-
http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/541499
M Ryutin
1 Nov 12 at 6:18 pm
You have entered an empiricism-free zone (EFZ).
Enjoy your travels.
Lord Tillman
1 Nov 12 at 6:24 pm
I hope they get to the bottom of this Benghazi stuff, but really is it anything so urgent that it can’t wait a week?
Lord Tillman
1 Nov 12 at 6:25 pm
Why couldn’t you stay at the bottom of that pit you crawled back from out of Les?
Alex Pundit
1 Nov 12 at 6:37 pm
But why did Obama withhold assistance?
Viva
1 Nov 12 at 8:21 pm
Rococo Liberal
1 Nov 12 at 8:47 pm
Two reasons:
1). He blundered into the Libya civil war illegally, overthrowing a manageable doofus and installing Al Qaeda in power.
Oopsa daisy!
2). Obama and Joe “Loads” Biden claimed Mission Accomplished in the war against Al Qaeda – which is a hard narrative to sustain when your territory has just been invaded and one of your ambassador’s slaughtered.
By Al Qaeda.
So the decision was made that the embassy staff would be collateral damage to a Democrat campaign theme.
C.L.
1 Nov 12 at 8:53 pm
CL
DOn’t forget that the Ambassador was there to see about running guns to Syrian rebels
Rococo Liberal
1 Nov 12 at 9:41 pm
Oh yes, and CL, don’t forget also that Tillman is a twat
Rococo Liberal
1 Nov 12 at 9:42 pm
Chris Christie, the smiling assassin.
You’d probably have to go back to Stalin’s days to see such a ruthless take-down by one party member of another.
Lord Tillman
1 Nov 12 at 11:09 pm
Not at all. It’s a smart play by the fat slob.
If he was critical of Bam or stand-offish he would have fuelled a “Romney surrogate hates da storm vics” narrative.
He’s disappointed Axelrod’s staff tremendously.
C.L.
1 Nov 12 at 11:23 pm
No you know better than that.
It’s a smart play for him but not because it benefits Romney, which it obviously doesn’t.
He tried to throw Mitt under the bus by setting him up before the first debate but it backfired but this time he is screwing him good.
I reckon Christie will literally sit on Paul Ryan during one of the GOP debates in 2016 which will be hilarious and guarantee Christie gets the nod so it will be him vs either Joe or HRC or – fingers crossed – Michelle.
Lord Tillman
1 Nov 12 at 11:50 pm
Your trolling is ineffectual, unhinged and tries to command the tides, peon.
.
1 Nov 12 at 11:59 pm
If they are trying to keep an ‘arms for Syria’ operation under wraps then that’s neither an unusual strategy for the US nor unusual for it to be kept secret and nor unusual for it go wrong given that it involves alliances of convenience.
Scapula
2 Nov 12 at 12:25 am
I would say that after his Republican convention speech (about himself)f and the recent suckup to Obama, added to his global warming and Islamist weakness, Chris Christie’s time in the sun will be over. 2016 will not be an option
M Ryutin
2 Nov 12 at 8:53 am
And it’s a scam.
Just because someone buys the name “Tea Party News Network” for a website does not mean they represent any significant portion of the huge number of individuals in the wider Tea Party movement – or any of them at all, for that matter.
Lesson learnt?
sdog
3 Nov 12 at 8:27 am