Dereliction of Duty

A recent statement by ABC News reporter and host George Stephanopoulos illustrates in a sentence the extent of liberal bias in the American media. Mr Stephanopoulos was interviewing James O’Keefe, the independent filmmaker who exposed the corruption of the ACORN organization in 2009. During the course of the June 1st interview, Mr Stephanopoulos, apparently with a straight face, said to Mr O’Keefe, “Some of your critics say that you’re more of a political activist than a journalist.”

(http://www.mrc.org/notablequotables/nq/2010/20100611043920.aspx)

The incident is reported in the “Notable Quotables” section of the Media Research Center’s website in a segment titled “Pot, Meet Kettle,” is laughable on its face. Mr Stephanopoulos, who now poses as a “journalist” as the ABC network’s Chief Political Correspondent, was the Senior Political Advisor to the Clinton campaign in 1992 and later became the chief spokesman for the Clinton Administration. Mr Stephanopoulos made a seamless move from the Clinton White House to become a political “journalist” at ABC. No one thought to inquire whether Mr Stephanopoulos’ obvious political biases would be a factor in his performance as a “journalist” at the time.

The reason, of course, is that a liberal political bias is the norm in the American media. It is what is expected. No one refers to Mr Stephanopoulos as “Liberal political correspondent George Stephanopoulos. It’s just George Stephanopoulos. In an article on him in Wikipedia, he is described as ”an American television journalist and a former political advisor.” The fact that he is a liberal is not mentioned. It’s just normal. Everyone with a brain is liberal, right?

Interestingly, a similar Wikipedia article on James O’Keefe describes him as “an American conservative activist videographer.” Conservatives always require the modifier so that we all know they are not quite right. The American media is hopelessly biased and totally unable to perform its constitutionally protected function of informing the American people, and keeping the government honest by exposing malfeasance. Their view, of course, is that no malfeasance could be happening in a democrat administration. Only those awful republican felons, who seek to starve old people and deny medical care for the poor require the scrutiny of the “watchdog” press to keep them honest.

Because they are so ideologically identical to the current political administration in Washington, they see no evil in a government that nationalizes the automobile industry, takes over equity positions in financial institutions, grabs control of the entire health care industry, shuts down deep water oil production in response to one accident, and threatens to add crushing tax burdens on job-producing industries in the middle of a deep recession. Not one of them is asking, “Where is the constitutional authority for the president to do this?” They all just assume that Mr Obama is a liberal democrat, he must mean well. How could he do anything wrong?

The problem is that once a government begins to disregard the restraints placed upon it by its constitution, it becomes a law unto itself. There are no restrictions on its actions and it can exert its power where ever it desires. It may now be a benign oppression, a soft tyranny, but it will not always be so if there is no respect for the rule of law. History overflows with examples of governments that have behaved badly when unrestrained by the rule of law. It’s time for the bankrupt, derelict, lapdog media to realize that if the Obama Administration can ignore the U.S. Constitution with regard to the powers entrusted to the Executive Branch by the document, it can also ignore the Amendments to that Constitution, especially the First Amendment.