The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Story I'd Like Bill Moyers to Cover

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11025

The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Story I'd Like Bill Moyers to Cover
by Andrew Bard Schmookler | Nov 14 2007

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THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK

Suffice it to say that Mr. Moyers could do the nation a great service if he put his considerable journalistic skills, and his priceless reputation for integrity and basic human decency, to work in investigating our malfunctioning alarm system and ask such questions as these:

· Why is it that the corporate media spent vastly more investigative energy reporting to the American people about a sexual indiscretion by an American president than in investigating abundant signs that a sitting president has been conducting a coordinated and comprehensive assault on the rule of law?

· What accounts for the fact that the press treated Nixon’s crimes which, in comparison with today’s, were relatively limited and minor, as a matter of great national importance, but has refused to give to today’s altogether unprecedented presidential assault on the Constitution any such front-and-center attention?

· Did the mainstream American system of journalism fail to grasp the importance of the story or did they choose to ignore or minimize it? And how, and why?

· President Bush just set a record in the history of American polling: fully 50 percent of the American people now “strongly disapprove” of this president, even more than was the case with Nixon during Watergate. In earlier times, the mainstream media would make much more of such a historic development, and would flesh out the story by going out, for example and actually asking people just what it is generates their strong disapproval. But of course there’s been no such coverage. Why is that?

· Just this past week, the number of Americans who think the nation to be on the right track got down to just one in five. One would think that such a plunge in a vital sign of our democracy would be an important piece of news. Shouldn’t the mainstream media be asking the American people just what track they think the nation is on and what there is about it they regard as wrong? Where are they?

“The Dog That Didn’t Bark” is a famous phrase from a Sherlock Holmes tale, where the silence of a guard dog proved the essential clue, for it showed that the dog was on friendly terms with the culprit. Someone with great credibility is needed to find out if the American media have been quiet for the same reason.

So I conclude by saying that by uncovering and presenting this story Bill Moyers would be performing a profound service to the nation!
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I heartily concur.

"It just goes to show the media has a liberal bias. If there really was a story, don't you think they'd be covering it? Thus, (sorry, freepers don't know what "thus" means) it just goes to show that Bush has done nothing wrong."

It's the Jesus/God (or even AA) argument...if you deny us, it only proves we're right, because we always said you'd deny us if we were right. So, we're right.

On edit: proudly sending this to The Greatest.

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is that Bill Clinton was never the primary target to begin with. The media were doing what they could to keep scandal front and center as to make it easier to slander Al Gore. They didn't want the primary political advocate or champion of the Internet; their competition in the White House. Bill Clinton only aided them in this endeavor, the media had been witch hunting Clinton from the beginning regarding alleged sexual escapades and he knew it when he embarked on his relationship with Lewinsky. As if that what wasn't bad enough he handed them the integrity issue ammunition on a silver platter, when he looked the American People in the camera lens and blatantly lied to them, he and certainly Al Gore would've been much better off, had he kept his mouth shut or told the truth up front.

The media then proceeded to morph "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" in to one of many slanders against Al Gore by parroting a Republican lie of "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet". They knew Bush could never beat Al Gore on the issues or qualifications for the most powerful job in the land, so it had to be about integrity. Any mature adult armed with the facts of the interview in March of 99 with Wolf Blitzer; which spawned it all, knows this to be a ludicrous, yet tragic '"bearing of false witness" against Al Gore by the vast majority of the corporate media. As as only six corporations own 90+% of everything you see on television, hear on the radio or read in the papers, this wasn't that difficult to do, they certainly had the motivation.

That same dog didn't bark during the disputed "election" in Florida either.

I agree with the author's high regards for Bill Moyers, I respect him as well.

Thanks for the thread, babylonsister.

GE and etc. The newsrooms in the past did not have to be self-supporting. Now they either cannot afford to do really crucial investigative work or they are prevented by the corporation from doing it.

That dog won't bark even when the Final Soltuions to the Liberal Problem beigin a=in a few years or decades.