For years, it seemed like the media was in love with Obama. They reported his every move and constantly fawned over him. In the last couple of months (since a couple weeks after he was re-elected, basically) the media seems to have turned on him. Nobody pays much attention to him, and he currently has not one, not two, but THREE scandals hounding him (Benghazi, the IRS targetting conservative groups, and now the Justice Department’s secret supeona of the AP’s phone records. You don’t have to be much of a student of politics to notice that scandals live or die based on how much attention the mainstream media pays to them. A couple of years go, all of these events would have passed with little notice by the mainstream media. Not these days, apparently.
Is it because Obama is now a lame duck, with no political future?
What makes you think they are going to pay any more attention to the scandals beyond the minimum?
This is going to be like Fast and Furious. A bit of muted tongue-clucking, someone to supply a ‘debunking’ to reassure liberals in the MSM that it isn’t so bad after all, and then go back to trying to find something else to talk about.
I don’t think much has changed. The media needs to fill time and space, and will cover things they feel are important. None of the “scandals” you mention are really “hounding him.” (there are threads on all three, and I won’t go off on those tangents here). I guess I disagree with your premise that the Press was “in love with Obama,” and your premise that they have “turned on him.”
I don’t know - this AP thing is pretty shifty, and you don’t cross the media.
I sometimes think there’s kid gloves when dealing with the Obama administration that weren’t worn with Bush, but I don’t agree with the hard-core ranting of a lot of people on the right.
But this AP thing…it may be bad for Obama, even beyond the facts of the matter. And if what has been alleged is true, then it is well deserved.
Ah. The Ken Lay - Enron Defense. “I had no idea what was going on in the organization of which I am in charge! I am only responsible for the GOOD things. All the bad things were done by underlings without my knowledge!”
Hard to imagine anyone could be dumb enough to belive it.
In the universe in which I reside, the media has spent the last several years accusing Obama of being “divisive” and not doing enough to reach out to Republicans.
Apparently you haven’t noticed, but even senior Democrats like Max Bacus are calling the IRS thing unaccepable and appear to be looking for someone to throw under the bus. Obama is apparently outraged by the conduct, or at least is faking it. Obviously, they see something wrong.
The Benghazi thing is admittedly mostly about trying to derail any future political plans of Hillary’s, but the fact remains that the administration lied about why the attack occurred. It has been well established that they knew it was a terrorist attack almost immediately, and that the anti-muslim video was irrelevant, but they still kept on blaming the video.
I’m not that well versed on the AP thing, with it having just broken, but on the surface it’s rather disturbing that the Feds are trying to force the media to effectively give up its sources.
See, here’s the thing, though. By design, Obama has jack-all to do with the day-to-day operation of the IRS. So this isn’t a scandal connected to him. So we can’t use it to decide if the media has turned on him, now can we?
Barcus is hardly a Democrat. And, as I recall, the IRS lady apologized. That should do it, I think.
That is not a “fact.”
Nothing new here either.
Although the Fourth Amendment does not restrict the use of pen registers and trap and trace devices, federal statutory law does. See generally 18 U.S.C. §§ 3121-27. These statutes make it a crime to install and use pen registers and trap and trace devices except by court order or pursuant to one of a few other narrow exceptions. 18 U.S.C. § 3121. A state prosecutor or law enforcement officer who installed or used such a device in violation of the statutes would be committing a federal crime.
The statutes allow “[a]n attorney for the government,” or, in certain cases, a state law enforcement officer, to apply for an order authorizing the use of a pen register and/or a trap and trace device. 18 U.S.C. § 3122. An application for such a court order must be in writing, upon oath or affirmation, and must certify that “the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.” 18 U.S.C. § 3122.
If the application contains the proper certification, the court “shall enter” an ex parte order authorizing the use of a pen register or a trap and trace device. 18 U.S.C. § 3123(a)(1). The court need not, and may not, make an independent assessment of the likelihood that relevant information will be obtained. Only a “court of competent jurisdiction” may enter such an order, 18 U.S.C. § 3122(a)(1), meaning a federal district court (including a magistrate judge), or a state court empowered by state law to issue such orders. See 18 U.S.C. § 3127(2).
The order must contain the information set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3123(b), which generally requires that the order name the subscriber, identify the target of the investigation, and list “the number or other identifier of the telephone line or other facility” to which the order applies. The order lasts for sixty days and may be renewed upon the same showing that is required for initial issuance. 18 U.S.C. § 3123(c). The order is presumptively sealed unless the court orders otherwise, and the phone company, or other relevant person or entity, may not disclose its existence to the subscriber. 18 U.S.C. § 3123(d). Likewise, when presented with an order, the phone company or other persons or entities in a position to facilitate the installation of the pen register or the trap and trace device are required to assist as needed and must be compensated for reasonable expenses incurred while assisting. 18 U.S.C. § 3124. Emergency use of a pen register or a trap and trace device without a court order is authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3125 under limited circumstances (including approval from the United States attorney general or from another listed official), provided that an order is obtained within forty-eight hours.
“The media” does not function as one or make decisions the way the OP is suggesting, so this is starting from a very flawed premise. There’s such a thing as critical mass with regard to scandals and issues, but the heads of all the corporate news divisions don’t get together in a room and decide if they’re going to be nice to someone or not.
No, they wouldn’t have. All of these things would have gotten news coverage at any time.
Actually, the Fast & Furious thing is a good example of the media ignoring what should have been a major scandal.
The short version of the story is this: the DEA had the epically moronic idea of having undercover agents sell huge numbers of guns to Mexican cartels, hoping to to track the guns and bring down the cartels. Can you guess what happened to the guns? If you guessed, “The DEA promptly lost track of them all,” then you guessed correctly. Those guns continue to turn up in all manner of drug-related crimes, and have been involved in several murders.
There have been hearings on the project, Eric Holder was held in contempt of congress over it, and Obama has invoked executive privlidge to avoid turning over documents relating to Fast & Furious, but for the most part the scandal has flown almost completely under the media’s radar.
It wasn’t ignored by the media at all, and there was significantly less to the story than met the eye. There’s a difference between “the media ignored this!” and “this didn’t get as much attention as I think it deserved.”
Not actually true. If you remember the first draft of this scandal, the administration was supposed to have lied in blaming an obvious terrorist attack on a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ inspired by the events in Cairo (which were about the video). Now that it turns out the CIA talked about that ‘spontaneous demonstration’ in every draft of the talking points, nobody cares about it anymore. How odd that is.