Sometimes, actually many times, I'm not sure journalism exists any more. This is especially true when it comes to this vast medium known as the internet. I mean lets face it, anyone can set up a web site with a lot of razzle dazzle and claim to have sources and inside dope on anything ranging from politics to entertainment. And while that all looks and sounds great he might in truth be some 40 year old crank living in the basement of his mother's home who spends most of his time watching reruns of "Ghost Hunters" on TV. I mean that poor schmuck at Notre Dame fell in love with a woman who didn't even exist, for God's sake. Every now and then even I have the mad urge to run some absolutely foul and ridiculous scam. Something along the lines of posting a picture of the late NBC correspondent Frank McGee to my profile. That is right, here I am world, the same guy who reported to you on live TV that John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas nearly 50 years ago. Haven't I aged well?
Yes, there are the scams and then there is the blatant political propaganda that passes for fair and balanced reporting. Everyone has an agenda and sometimes the truth has to be hedged a tad in order to justify and promote The Grand Plan. The flip side of that coin is that if something presents itself that is so tantalizing, so juicy-good that it will take down a person who has opposing views the urge is overwhelming to get it out there to an audience without confirming any of it.
Here is how that works. Barak H. Obama nominated former republican senator Chuck Hagel to be the new Secretary of Defense. On the surface it sounds pretty gosh darn bipartisan doesn't it? When he was running for president in 2008 John McCain said of Hagel, "he'd make a great Secretary of State," and that "I'd be happy to have him in any senior cabinet position."
Well things went a little south in that whole relationship. Hagel you see figured out the war in Iraq was basically a Bush/Cheney con job. He, in fact, likened the whole affair to Vietnam, a subject he knows something about since he was an infantry squad leader there and twice awarded the purple heart. His falling out with his party and McCain, who he ultimately refused to endorse in 2008, was bitter and ugly. Hagel didn't help soothe the bad feelings back when Dubya was in office. He was quoted as saying, "I took an oath of office to the constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party, or my president."
To make a long story short Mr. Chuck Hagel landed squarely on the GOP hit list. McCain now claims he isn't qualified to be Secretary of Defense and republican senators have filibustered to prevent a straight up vote on his confirmation.
Early this month there were rumors circulating that Hagel was hostile toward Israel and that he'd taken speaker's fees from controversial foreign groups. Enter one Dan Friedman of the Daily News. On February 6th Friedman says he called up an unnamed republican senate aide and asked if any of Hagel's critics knew who the controversial groups he had supposedly addressed might be. Friedman, who apparently considers himself a dry wit, went all Saturday Night Live during the conversation and asked the aide if Hagel had spoken to, you know, "The Junior League of Hezbollah in France? And what about Friends of Hamas?" Obviously neither group exists. It was Friedman trying to be funny.
Dan, you silly boy. The aide told Friedman he'd get back to him. He didn't. However someone did get back to someone else.
On February 7th the right wing news site, Breitbart News ran a story with the breathless and overextended lead, "Senate sources have told Breitbart News, exclusively, they have been informed one of the reasons that President Barak Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is purportedly a group called Friends of Hamas." In the story the author, Ben Shapiro wrote that when contacted the White House "didn't deny the claim." Well they didn't because they hung up on the goof instead of addressing something so over the top stupid that it wasn't worth their time.
Shapiro quickly tweeted a link to the story to his 40,000 followers and according to Friedman, the conservative blogs, RedState.com and The Corner.com immediately linked to it. Hot damn, they had gone big game hunting and bagged a colossal beast. Even the rube from Arkansas, Mike Huckabee bit. He said that if the story was true it should disqualify Hagel from landing the job. The whole thing fell apart, of course, when Friedman went public with the admission he'd made "Friends of Hamas" up as a joke.
Shapiro, however is having none of it. Friedman quoted him as saying, "The story as reported is correct. Whether the information I was given by the source is correct, I'm not sure." Well there is certainly a standard Edward R. Murrow would be proud of. The old, "Its not my fault, he told me so," theory of reporting.
The country is divided deeply, perhaps mortally so. The media, which should be interested in the truth, for good, or ill, has become part of that dividing process. When you start to pass off propaganda and rumors as investigative reporting and the truth you've entered the shadowy realm of Herr Goebbels and company. At the very least you'd get your ass a rock solid "F" in Mrs. Ward's John Marshall High School Journalism II class.
Unfortunately many people will never unread Ben Shapiro. The image of Chuck Hagel cashing a Friends of Hamas check will be with them always. It will be just another confirmation of the leftist/socialist/Muslim threat found on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Most news sources are now saying, despite this nonsense, Hagel will likely be confirmed next week.
sic vita est
2-22-13
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