Media: Willing Accomplices or Victims of Stockholm Syndrome?
The depth that this White House takes to control its message and perpetuate their truth knows no bounds. Truth, as this administration sees it, is as follows:
All proponents of Islam are victims of American imperialism. Their acts must be absolved at all costs – even at the expense of innocent life.
All conservatives are evil. They are villainous 2nd Amendment bitter clingers who suffer from the mental illness of constitutionalism.
Each news cycle brings an onslaught of newspeak and doublethink.
The Sandy Hook story: Within the narrative, among the abundance of misinformation reported to the public, were conflicting stories about Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy. WUSA-TV CBS reporter Andrea McCarren interviewed Sandy Hook school nurse, Sally Cox, who said she knew the killer’s mother and that Mrs. Lanza was a kindergarten teacher at the school. That information was quickly scrubbed once other Sandy Hook staff was questioned. Suddenly the narrative changed to “no one had heard of her” and “teachers don’t know her.” Why? Because the story the media chose to feed the public was that Nancy Lanza was a “doomsday prepper” who taught her son how to become a killing machine. Simply put, that storyline did not stick when it was reported that Nancy Lanza was an affluent, Connecticut, single mom who feared her son’s mental illness.
The Boston bombing story: News organizations around the nation were swiftly rebuked and admonished by authorities for reporting that a suspect was arrested after the raid on a Revere, Massachusetts’s apartment.
On April 15, 2013 the New York Post reported “Authorities ID person of interest as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital.”
Days following, the newspeak and doublethink commenced. Bobby Olivier of The Star-Ledger reported on April 17, 2013:
“As news organizations around the nation reported, an arrest has been made in connection to the attacks. But in the past half hour, most of the news agencies including, the Associated Press, CNN and CBS that reported the arrest have rescinded their claims and are now reporting that no suspects are in custody.
While a source told the Boston Globe earlier this afternoon that a person had been taken into custody and other news organizations reported the same, based on their own sources, the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and Boston police said no one had been arrested.”
The “person of interest” headline became a mere phrase of insinuation as spun by Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. Davidson, playing devil’s advocate, inquired into this “faceless” Saudi suspect dismissively asked the question, “What made them suspect him? He was running—so was everyone.”
Let us not forget the Benghazi attack, how it was spun as stemming from a spontaneous protest that erupted out of an incendiary anti-Muslim video.
Now John Cassidy of the New Yorker is leading the public to believe that the alleged AP phone seizure scandal is a negligible threat to President Obama’s reputation mocking those forwarding the story as scandalmongers who believe in the “spectre of Big Brother.”
We now understand with this administration, if you don’t play, you don’t stay. As journalists, if you don’t print the Party line, your news organization will be ostracized and excommunicated from the White House. Furthermore your news organization and/or personal character will be vilified, as is the case with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and conservative bloggers. Their relationship with the administration is adversarial if not hostile. They are being ostracized for holding the administration to account. As Greg Gutfeld of The Five put it, “the relationship with the press should be adversarial.”
In a free society, the freedom of the press is important in reporting the truth regardless of administration matters. As former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, compellingly states, “Can someone within that society walk into the town square and say what they want without fear of being punished for his or her views? If so, then that society is a free society. If not, it is a fear society.”
Those in the press, who Vice President Joe Biden refers to as “legitimate media”, think that good behavior is rewarded when the White House grants access to them can be likened to victims who mistakenly link a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.
This Hearst-like jingoist protection of Obamanation with their lineage of Stockholm syndrome can only be cured with a dose of dissent from alternative news sources who heed the call for the enforcement of the system of checks and balances.
