U.S. media as "watchdog" sleeping on the job

The news media in the United States is allegedly the nation’s “watchdog” over corrupt practices in the political and social sphere, but it would appear that it has been slumbering on the job. Stories about sex “scandals” and right-wing blowhards disseminating assorted misinformation, deception, propaganda and paranoia is not “news.”  After the 2004 election, the U.S. domestic media would not touch a BBC report on the widespread vote fraud, theft and suppression by Republicans in Ohio, which handed the election to George W. Bush—and there is no doubt that the Republicans were using the same tactics this year, which explains Karl Rove’s bizarre behavior. 

Now the UK’s The Guardian is reporting how The Washington Post  has attempted to suppress a report by Bob Woodward by burying it as a “Style” story. As one should know by now, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch has tried to shape the dissemination of news to suit his own right-wing views, and to help do this in this country, he recruited “former” Republican hatchet man Roger Ailes.  Ailes sent Fox News defense “analyst” and another “former” Republican instrument,  KT McFarland (who like another Fox strumpet, SE Cupp, thinks a two-letter name signifies something other than ridiculous pomposity), to  serve as an “emissary” from Murdoch to convince pre-scandal General David Patraeus to present himself as a presidential candidate. Ailes would resign as president of Fox News and run his campaign, and Murdoch would bankroll his campaign and use Fox News as a round-the-clock, free campaign ad.

Patraeus eventually decided against the offer, but it was a close call for what The Guardian called “hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.” The Guardian amazed that unlike the British Parliament in the recent News of the World scandal, the U.S. Congress refuses to call for hearings on Murdoch’s attempt to subvert the political system—instead wasting taxpayer money making ridiculous accusations against UN ambassador Susan Rice. The newspaper also questioned the U.S. media’s incomprehensible refusal to investigate a story that suggested the undermining of its own institutional credibility—instead preferring to turn cheap tabloid with  the Patraeus sex scandal.

Or perhaps that is the point: The corporate-owned media doesn’t want to call attention to the fact that it is corporate-owned and controlled.