As The Worm Turns: ABC’s Jake Tapper Speaks Truth to The Media Schlepping for Obama
Before we jump into this, were you aware that close to half a million dollars of "Stimulus" money was used by the Obama Labor Department for ads “green training” jobs aired during commercial breaks on two MSNBC cable shows, hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann in 2009? This just adds to the Obama administration's billions of taxpayer "stimulus" dollars money-buring on "green energy" that is now a useless pile of ashes.
Spending reports under the federal Recovery Act show $495,000 paid to McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC, which the Labor Department hired to raise awareness “among employers and influencers about the [Job Corps] program’s existing and new training initiatives in high growth and environmentally friendly career areas” as well as spreading the word to prospective Job Corps enrollees.
The firm ultimately negotiated ad buys for “two approved spots” airing 14 times per week for two months on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” and “The Rachel Maddow Show,” according to a project report, which listed the number zero under a section of the report asking how many jobs had been created through the stimulus contract.
David Williams, president of the nonprofit watchdog Taxpayers Protection Alliance, called the contract “questionable” because it created no jobs and because of the placement of the ads on shows viewed as friendly to the administration’s policies.
“Hiring a PR firm does not create jobs, and this was obviously meant for selling a particular political agenda,” Mr. Williams said. “The placement really reeks of a political ad rather than a job ad, and taxpayers see through this.
Had this been the Bush administration's spending of tax dollars on Halliburton TV ads...
The media is failing the American people. A couple days ago, after at least a week of whining from the news media, Obama did a cameo appearance in the White House press room. We were supposed to believe Barry just happened to spontaneously pop-in, as if he is always just so accessible, when the exact opposite is the case. I mean, we have seen more of Barry Obama on Jay Leno than we have before the news media's gathered reporters...
Media Bias: From spinelessness at presidential news conferences to local reporters following White House instructions on questions, the mainstream press is in the bag. Such blatant bias could decide the election.
Monday's "spontaneous" White House press conference, featuring someone who has made himself a stranger to the press — the president — was a pathetic example of an establishment media happy to be used.
When asked about the obvious falsehoods being said by Obama campaign operatives on national TV (Romney might be a felon) and by his PACs (Romney gave some laid-off steelworker's wife cancer and killed her), Obama lied about the lying saying either he didn't know about the PAC ad's claims and that nobody had accused Mitt Romney of a felony...
The press corps should have pounced right then and there. Instead, it let Obama ramble on about "the overall trajectory of our campaign."
On the outrageous ad accusing Romney of the cancer death of the wife of a laid-off steel worker, the work of Obama super-PAC Priorities USA Action run by former White House aides, Obama claimed, "I think it ran once."
Again, the reporters fell down on the job. None pointed out that the commercial ran repeatedly — and at no charge to the Obama campaign — on numerous cable news channels covering the controversy it ignited.
Add to this the fact that Obama has broken precedent compared to previous presidents by choosing by name the tiny handful of favored reporters who get to ask questions. This raises the issue of what point there is in having so many dozens of reporters present in the White House briefing room at all.
Post 2008 election Anita Dunn said in an interview the key to Obama's success was the way his campaign operatives manipulated and controlled the media and the message. ABC's Jake Tapper echoes this as truth to what happened then, and continues to happen now...
Jake Tapper was on Laura Ingraham Radio Show yesterday morning and finally said what we have been saying for the last four years. The MSM was in the tank for Obama in the 2008 primary and general elections and tipped the scales for him. The MSM is still very deep in the tank for Obama this election, and has been his PR unit. They have been blatantly ignoring important news, such as the economy and the war in Afghanistan, not to mention selectively burying the administration's actions such as the ATF's/DOJ's deadly "Fast and Furious" Gunwalker operation, or the current sexual harassment allegation's at the female-run Department of Homeland Security and I.C.E..
(Note: It's audio, not video)
Tapper mentions he is waiting for a one-on-one with Mitt Romney. Perhaps Romney is a bit doubtful of the MSM and its agenda. The trust is gone.
In recent days the MSM has felt a bit the jilted lover as Obama chooses entertainment news vehicles and local news stations to be interviewed, usually with fluffy softball questions. Blogger White House Dossier's Keith Koffler points out the administration can better dictate the tone and the questions with local medias...
The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk.
In interviews with three local TV stations Monday, two from states critical to Obama’s reelection effort, Obama held forth on the possibility of “sequestration” if he and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, allowing him to make his favorite political point that Republicans are willing to cause grievous harm to the economy and jobs in order to protect the rich from tax increases.
Obama Monday threw the White House press corps a bone by suddenly appearing in the briefing room for 22 minutes and taking questions from a total of four reporters. It was his first press conference at the White House – albeit in miniature – since March, and only his second of the year. Obama before Monday had taken exactly one substantive question from White House reporters since June.
But the three other interviews Obama also held Monday pointed to the advantage he gets by focusing on local press, with whom he has been speaking more regularly.
Under sequestration, if a budget deal is not reached by the end of the year, harsh automatic spending cuts will occur. Each of the network reporters were from cities with major military facilities that could be unduly impacted if sequestration occurs.
Two of the reporters were from Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, both presidential battleground states. The third was from San Diego.
The reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. “The president invited me to talk about sequestration,” NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience. In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at:
“What do you want individual San Diegans to know about sequestration?” she asked.
In a representative republic the news media is a watchdog on the government for the people. However, the news media decided, not just four years ago but (from my attention) back during the Clinton administration, it would pick and choose a political agenda and party to represent and literally cover for. It has become a more than willing arm of the democrats and any White House democrat administration, allowing itself to be manipulated. Recall shortly after the 2008 election MSNBC's Chris Matthews starkly made that clear to America. And roughly two years ago MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski admits to receiving and reading Obama White House talking points on air being fed to her live on her Blackberry.
A recent morning zoo radio show on a New Mexico station (93.3 KOBFM) Obama was asked, "If you had a superpower what would it be?"
Upon hearing the inane question I answered for him "The USSR"... Obama said he would wish he could speak any language.
Corre la bola | 
Just as "Che" thought the legal system could do without actual evidence, which he considered bourgeois nonsense, the MSM thinks it can do without credibility. The media is so arrogant, so delusional about being morally superior and simply knowing better than the public, that it feels it can run roughshod over any and all silly bourgeois concerns over its blatant partisanship and barely disguised political advocacy. But perhaps I exaggerate. Perhaps the fact that 90% or more of media people are liberal Democrats really has no bearing at all on how they do their job.
Drill, Obama may have been sincere about wanting to speak every language. That way, he could presumably wow everyone on earth with his supernatural oratorical skills, and there'd be no end of leg tingling and swooning admirers. If you don't think he believes that shit, you're mistaken.
asombra -
"Superpower" ... USSR ... Obama
Was a bit of a dry ironic comedy spin.
The MSM reminds me of the old Laugh-In skit with Lily Tomlin as Ernestine, the snotty telephone operator. Her standard reply to customer complaints was something like "We don't care. We're the phone company. We don't have to." It may have been in the days when one company had pretty much a monopoly on phone services, but you get the idea. It's like the new York Times; it can't imagine that humanity could actually dispense with its services, such as they are. Arrogant fools.