Freedom Line Blog

In the wake of the outrageous and still-unfolding Twittergate revelations, one can’t intelligently contend that they haven’t earned their unpopularity, but according to a new I&I/TIPP survey that’s worth reading in its entirety, public trust in media has plummeted to a new record low:

Trust in Media Hits New Low

Here’s something that ought to terrify the self-appointed gatekeepers of our national discourse in the mainstream media.  Amid their widespread campaign of censorship, especially conservative and libertarian voices, trust in media overall has plummeted to a new low, falling below 50% for the first time ever:

From Forbes, our image of the day captures nicely the mainstream media’s credibility problem, as their cries of “Wolf!” accumulate.  Simultaneously, it captures how three institutions most intertwined with conservative values – the military, small business and police – remain atop the list of public esteem.

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Media’s Evaporating Credibility

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Writing for Human Events, gun advocate Neil W. McCabe documents how the Washington Post was aware of ATF’s “gun walking” program before the operation led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on December 14, 2010.

The AK-47 that killed Terry was sold by Lone Wolf Trading.

That means that the reporters working on the Dec. 13 story for months were completely aware that the bureau was getting its statistics from the undercover operations that allowed the guns to pass through the normal controls.

What they should have also known is that this ill-conceived project was a completely irresponsible abrogation by sworn law enforcement officers and their leaders.

They should have known that it was a dangerous contamination of public servants and members of the free press working together toward the political goals shared by both the platform of the Democratic National Committee and the paper’s editorial board.

Finally, they should have known that they were sitting on top of one of the biggest stories of anyone’s career, titled, “As Mexico drug violence runs rampant, U.S. government agents clear, and expedite to crime gangs, guns tied to crime south of border.”

McCabe also shows how the Post continued to report ATF’s scandal as though the deliberate “walking” of guns across the border wasn’t verified, even though the Post had been given detailed statistics by ATF about the numbers of guns flowing across into Mexico.  (How would ATF know unless it was green-lighting the transfers?)

How ironic it is that the newspaper most identified with bringing down a president for abusing the public’s trust acted as the PR firm for an administration whose actions actually killed an American citizen.

No wonder the Post couldn’t be bothered to pick up the story until after CBS and Fox News took it mainstream.

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has compiled the findings of two different analyses on Sarah Palin’s recently released emails from her time as Alaska’s governor.   Key finding: Palin’s emails indicate she has writing skills equal to an 8^th grader.

If that doesn’t sound necessarily impressive, consider that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is scored as 9^th grade level, while Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is between 8^th and 9^th grade level.

And let’s not forget Palin’s sample came from emails she was dashing off to staff.  According to the analysts, Palin’s writing abilities exceed those of most Americans and most American CEOs.

Not bad for a Grizzly Mama unilaterally disdained for her lack of intellect.

Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times continues his excellent political commentary with an hilariously accurate take on the effect Sarah Palin’s bus tour is having on the “lamestream” media:

The media on campaigns is accustomed to being courted, even catered to with assigned airplane seats, meals, transportation to events, seats waiting, transcripts, the upcoming advance schedule, self-serving secrets confided.

But now they want/need Palin more than vice versa. They know the ratings when she’s on. And they know bosses love ratings. So, they follow along in the exhaust.

“I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media,” Palin said on Fox. “I think that it would be a mistake for me to become some kind of conventional politician and doing things the way it’s always been done with the media, in terms of relationships with them.”

Leave it to liberals like Arianna Huffington to treat the little people she champions exactly like a corporate stooge.  Debra Saunders highlights the hypocrisy fueling this week’s announced merger of AOL News with The Huffington Post:

Remember HuffPo’s big scoop during the 2008 presidential election? Writer Mayhill Fowler recorded then-presidential candidate Barack Obama as he told swells at a San Francisco fundraiser that blue-collar voters “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

Last year, Fowler quit writing for HuffPo because the website refused to pay her. “Citizen journalist,” Mayhill Fowler discovered, has a very specific meaning: Free.

The savings Arianna realizes from not paying many of her contributors undoubtedly helps make her website more profitable.  It also lets her hide her lust for money behind the guise of anti-corporate rhetoric.  Saunders continues:

Fowler keeps waiting for the moment when high-profile Democrats realize “that they cannot say one thing and do another: to talk sympathy for working people and yet blog at a site that treats its writers badly.” Fowler should not hold her breath.

Huffington is an entrepreneurial genius at self-promotion. She fiercely surfed the left’s discontent with mainstream – read: corporate – journalism by promising to keep mainstream – read: paid – news media “honest.”

So, on the one hand Huffington lets ‘citizen journalists’ like Fowler do the heavy lifting of reporting breaking news while leveraging the resulting readership into a $315 million payday.  Not a bad day’s work for the divorced wife of a multi-millionaire.  Maybe now folks like Fowler will remember that liberals like Arianna are just as eager to make a buck as anyone else – they just aren’t as up front about it as the rest.

H/T: San Francisco Chronicle