-By Warner Todd Huston
There was a secret, off-record meeting between President Obama and a passel full of extreme-left, so-called media folks last week. No, this isn’t black helicopters stuff. It really happened as the Washington Post admits.
None of these Old Media leftists are reporting what happened at the meeting, but none that have been outed, so-to-speak, for having been at the meeting are denying that they were there. They are just giving a “no comment” about what went on.
In attendance was the entirety of the MSNBC line-up. Matthews, Schultz, Maddow, the whole crew. Now, granted, these MSNBC people aren’t in any way journalists. They are pure propagandists that entertain with left-wing spin, not facts and truth. Ditto for Ariana Huffington and extremist activist Markos Moulitsas, both have admitted to being at the meeting. But many of the other participants are supposed to be real journalists.
Two of the so-called “real” journalists were Greg Sargent and Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post. There were others but Whemple doesn’t list them by name in his Washington Post piece.
So, that raises many questions: What was said in that meeting? What was done? What assignments did the President hand out to his propagandists?
Well, it is sure that the so-called journalists genuflected and took their direction from The Won. He certainly told them what to be “reporting” on and how to report it. It isn’t likely he allowed them to say much — well, aside from the occasional, slobbering “we love you” — because, after all, we are talking about Obama here. His only interest is himself. I am sure while he was talking to them he was admiring his brilliance in a hand mirror during the meeting.
Anyway, this was just a programming session. Just another propaganda planning meeting between the Obammessiah and his very own crew of Joey Goebbelses.
What is most amusing is that this president has given the least amount of open press conferences than any other recent president. Those that criticize this claim point to the fact that he’s actually given more interviews to the press than any recent president. But this is misleading. (As Whemple notes: 568, compared to 190 for George W. Bush, 187 for Bill Clinton, 294 for George H.W. Bush and 224 for Reagan over a comparable period).
Why is it misleading? It is misleading because the largest bulk of those “interviews” were not free and open exchanges. These were “interviews” that were pre-programmed by the White House where “interviewers” were told what they were allowed to ask and told what is off the table for discussion.
In other words, few if any of those 568 “interviews” were real interviews. They were instead fully programmed pieces of Obama propaganda. Obama doesn’t work without a net. He programs all media coverage.
In truth, this president rarely gives the press an open chance to ask him anything they want. This has been the most closed, secretive presidency in decades.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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