Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have been looking at the media reaction to news that the emperor had no clothes that Bush used terror alerts for political reasons.
Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts ... but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn [Bush] critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence
Marcy and Glenn already eviscerated Ambinder - one of the few traditional media figures to even acknowledge how the media was wrong - so I won't go there. But I can't stop myself from pointing the irony:
My, my.. How interesting! You mean people who exhibit gut hatred aren't to be taken seriously by "serious" journalists ?
You mean exhibition of GUT HATRED for the current President, such as asking for a birth certificate, claiming death panels exist, claiming the President is a secret muslin, is a Nazi, etc... aren't being taken seriously ?
Gut Hatred ?
This is not "gut hatred ?" ?
Do you think that it is fine if a family member of the president defiles the White House with voodoo? Don’t you know what fate could befall our nation as a result of allowing Satanic forces to gather over the White House?
How about this ? Does this qualify as "gut hatred" ?
Obama "has a deep seated hatred for white people"
Or this ?
Last week in Phoenix, cable television broadcast the image of a man toting an assault-style rifle standing outside a health care "town hall" event featuring President Barack Obama. He was one of a dozen people openly carrying firearms in what was apparently a staged demonstration.
No fact checking
Finally, as Greenwald and emptywheel pointed out, the press should have never assumed "gut hatred" was the case, they should have done their homework and verify the validity of the claims regardless. Even Ambinder eventually agrees with that
Somehow, Ambinder read the minds of "activists" across the country and confirmed that "these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush....
[then] Ambinder says that short of having the raw intelligence, journalists have no way of independently assessing whether the terror alerts were a big political game...
God forbid a journalist use simple empiricism--retrospectively matching terror alerts with reports on which they were based--to assess the terror alerts.
But on the current "gut hatred" based claims, there are ample facts discrediting their claims. As a matter of fact, very few can deny the claims are pure bunk. Yet we are still being told we have to listen to the haters because "their anger is genuine"
This has been another episode of IIOKIYAAR...
PS: I hate being hard on Ambinder, one of the only traditional media pundits to even admit there - might - have been a problem with the way him and his peers behaved during Bush years. But he seems to be deliberately blind to the way him and his peers are behaving RIGHT NOW, still putting republicans above all else