CBSNews Bigs Fret That Sharyl Attkisson is Coming "Dangerously Close to Advocacy"

Allah has something of a Grand Unified Theory on this.

Why is it so important that the Kochs do not buy the LA Times?

Why is it so important for the liberals to push out the only reporter who covered Benghazi?

"Ghettoization." If the "neutral media" -- actually liberal as hell -- can present a unified party line on stories, always supporting one another and never showing a crack in the wall, they can sneer at stories they don't like by saying "Only Fox claims that."

This becomes unhelpful to the liberals for the same reason it's helpful to conservatives. Conservatives always say "Wow, now it's on CBS!" We call that vindication -- that it's gotten out of the ghetto to the liberal media. That even the liberal media was forced to cover that.

But for those in the liberal media who consider the airwaves Their Air -- a valuable property they own and can exploit as any property-owner can, for their own benefit, to their own taste -- this is a problem for exactly the same reasons. Just as we claim victory when we say "Now it's on CBS!," so too do liberals feel failure when a true story that hurts liberals escapes from the conservative news/talk radio ghetto and shows up on Their Air.

And so, while they can't push Sharyl Attkisson out of the profession, they can give up a major reporter to Fox, which reduces the damage she can do.

After all, if she reports over there, "It's just a Fox story." The liberal media remains pristine and unified in its Ideological Wall of Silence.

"Treason never profits," a brave man named Kevin Costner said, "because if it profit, then none dare call it treason."*

Similarly, the media can never be embarrassed by its liberal bias and deliberate suppression of the news for political purposes if no one in the media ever breaches the wall of silence and clues the public in to what it's hiding. Even though CBS is currently pointing at Sharyl Atkkisson as The Only Network Reporter Who Reported on Benghazi, they're resentful about it, because her work stands as a rebuke to their own, and as a rebuke to their politicization of the news for the benefit of a political party.

But what if she was disappeared? What if her respectability and credibility were stripped from her?

Ah, then that would be glorious. Because there would be no troublesome reporter at CBS embarrassing the rest. She would just be a Fox Personality, and hence, neutralized.

* I know it's not Kevin Costner's quote. But I'm too lazy to look it up so I'll cite his mention of it in JFK.

Addendum: I think Sharyl Attkisson might be embarrassing them in this way: when they bury one of her stories, she publicizes itself on Twitter, and thus makes her editors look like... well, like liberal hacks suppressing a story because their job is to suppress information and con the public into voting the way the editors prefer.

I think that's what they might think of as "advocacy:" Promoting her own stories and, by doing so, thwarting their own determination to bury them.

And they might consider that "advocacy." After all, They have decided her stories are unimportant. But then she "advocates" for their importance.

And we can't have that. We can't have differences of opinion in a media which allegedly champions a free and open debate.

Final Word: Here's how the non-ideological, objective LATimes covered today's explosive revelations:

posted by Ace at 06:00 PM

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