We at AgendaWise spend time and effort pointing out that the mainstream media is manipulative and corrupt, and often acts more like the departments of propaganda we associate with nazi or communist regimes than the old American “fourth estate”.
This morning provided a jarring example.
There was a virtual blackout in major Texas political media on what should be one of the investigative reporting stories of the year – the Obama Administration’s ObamaCare “Navigators” caught on camera encouraging people to defraud the government, and apparently sharing information with Battleground Texas. Battleground Texas is Obama’s organizers from the left here to try to rot out Texas as they’ve rotted out Chicago and other places. Notably, The Texas Tribune and Quorum Report were mum.
The Navigators are the 50,000 people paid by the Obama Administration, dispersed throughout the country to sign people up for ObamaCare.
One Navigator advised an undercover reporter who claimed to be a smoker, “You lie because your premiums will be higher.” Another Navigator advised a low-income university worker not to declare unreported income, saying, “Don’t get yourself in trouble by declaring it now,” while another Navigator chimes in, “Yeah, it didn’t happen. Never report it.”
James O’Keefe, who made his name exposing ACORN, is the investigative reporter who caught this and more. He also visited Enroll America, a group started with federal grants to sign people up. Daniel Clayton of Enroll America claimed that Enroll America is “purely non-profit. It’s non-partisan, non-political.” Then, when Clayton is introduced at a speaking engagement, Enroll America is described as “the official group for the DNC (Democratic National Committee).”
What’s more, O’Keefe reports that Enroll America seems to be sharing information with Battleground Texas, whose stated goal it is to “turn Texas blue”.
It goes without saying that not reporting something as newsworthy as this is a cardinal sin against any pretension to doing journalism, much less journalistic integrity. It goes against the ethics taught in journalism school, and supposedly held to at places like The Texas Tribune and the major Texas newspapers.
The question is, do members of the mainstream Texas media admit to themselves that they live on the end of a leash held by the very power they pretend to be checking, or is this just another delusion they maintain by silent agreement, like the one about unborn children not being human beings? Only they know.
The Texas Tribune even did a roundup of important stories this morning, purporting to give the newsworthy highlights for readers on the go; trust them, they’ve got you covered. They put in their "must-read" section a link to an article about how Harris County isn’t rushing to figure out what to do with the Astrodome, but they left out the Navigator bombshell.
Chances are good they’ll eventually say something about this story – it’s simply too big not to (though we shouldn’t put it past them). But we can bet they won’t open their mouths about it until the left’s machine distills the talking points designed to defuse this debacle. And what does this say about these “newspapers” – are they journalists or bona fide stooges? It's a national embarrassment.
Journalism happens when accurate witness is borne to something newsworthy, and as soon as possible. Such obvious sycophancy as the Texas political media engaged in this morning with its virtual blackout of the Navigators story shows the true nature of these organizations, and it’s about looking like journalists, not being journalists. Theirs is a socially defined group, not a group defined by standards, as it once was.
-National Review story on Navigators