Today's Journalism Needs A Serious Examination Of Conscience

The economy is so bad, MSNBC had to lay off 300 Obama spokesman...Jay Leno 

• MSNBC is just one of many poster children for the failures of journalism today {Refer to my 3/24/14 post  "MSNBC Remains A Haven For Lunatics."}. 
• Journalism has only two main functions: To tell the truth and to be a government watchdog. It's clear that journalism today has failed on both counts. For the last six years and more, we've witnessed so-called journalists protecting the progressive political class highlighted in their rah-rah reporting about Pres. Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton.  In addition, and perhaps even more disturbing, are journalism's sins of omission. The most recent example of this was the release of  IRS documents by Judicial Watch last week. The documents clearly show the IRS wanted to shut down conservative organizations. Yet, the three largest alphabet networks spent a whopping zero amount of air time reporting that news. And even though the countless scandals of this administration as unveiled and tracked by the alternative media, the main stream media continues to refer to them as "so-called" scandals. In fact, Newsbusters reported yesterday that most of the reporting by the major networks on the Boko Haram kidnapping failed to report that it was Hillary Clinton who refused to label them as terrorists. Yet, when it came to the remarks made by Karl Rover regarding Hillary Clinton's heath, the major networks spent almost 30 minutes---one two separate days---defending Clinton from Rove's remarks (which, in my opinion, were stupid anyway). On the other hand, Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC couldn't wait to go to Clinton's defense. She said alerting the public to Clinton's not labeling Boko Haram as a terror group was simply a tactic to go after Hillary Clinton's record as Secretary of State. Again, protecting progressives trumps reporting the truth.
• Mistakes and errors are made in every profession. But modern day journalism's reporting is more about collusion and intent to misrepresent the facts. In many cases, they've even been complicit in promoting deceit. And the reporting on Benghazi, Obamacare, the IRS and more are just recent examples. It wasn't too long ago when the dean of CBS News, Dan Rather, tried to promote an outright false report regarding George W. Bush's National Guard service. In my opinion, his intent and the intent of the network (it was on a 60 Minutes investigation) was to undermine Bush's chances for re-election. As a result of this bogus story, Rather and several CBS executives resigned.
• The malfeasance was even more conspicuous in the reporting of the Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case in 2012. Throughout the entire episode, the media kept posting photos of Trayvon when he was about 12 years old when he was really about 17 and 6 feet tall.  Even the AP had to admit the photos showing a younger Trayvon may have negatively shaped public opinion in the shooting case. But the misconduct and deceit by the media didn't end there. It was later found out that NBC edited Zimmerman's 9/11 call. NBC later apologized referring to it as an "error." NBC's wrongdoing should surprise no one. Many of us recall the 1992 Dateline piece on trying to prove how GM's new line of pick-up trucks could easily explode. It was later discovered that NBC staged the collision and used remote devices to have the trucks explode. After an investigation by GM, the president of NBC News resigned in disgrace.
• Just two days ago, it took the Washington Times (a conservative publication) to report 36,000 immigrants were released from U.S. custody, 116 of whom were convicted for homicide, drunk driving and a variety of sex offenses. The big three alphabet networks neglected to report this disturbing news.
• And need I remind anyone that the lies surrounding Obamacare were so conspicuous, someone with a hearing disability would have picked up on them. Yet, it took the main stream media over 3 years to alert the public of the lies.
• It's becoming increasingly clear that journalism needs a serious examination of conscience---unless it's just too damn late for that.

Postscript: And now George Stephanopoulos admission he donated $75 grand to the Clinton Foundation over 3 years.