The Chris Moeller Archives

Beltway hacks

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has a profile of John Boehner up on the magazine's website this month. It's more than just a profile really. It's an incision, a detailed examination of Boehner's ongoing battles with the political left, the Tea Party, and objective reality.

Suffice it to say, Taibbi's is not the same journalistic approach that was employed by Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" in her broadcast interview with the incoming House Speaker last month. That television piece included an affectionate trip down memory lane with Boehner's family and a visit to their family restaurant in his small home town in Ohio. During her 13 minute valentine, the only thing Stahl neglected to do was introduce us to the politico's adorable pet dog. Boehner evidently felt so eviscerated after the story aired that he posted the entire segment on YouTube.

This contrast in news-gathering styles is instructive in coming to understand our government's attempts at censoring WikiLeaks and other information operations that attempt to hold our leaders truly accountable. The television networks and the major American newspapers never question-- let alone threaten-- the institutional structure of power in Washington. They're benefiting equally from the corrupt system that's currently in place. Journalists there, in their shared disgust for WikiLeaks, seem to even despise the government transparency they should be championing. In return, it's no more necessary for government officials to censor these traditional news organizations than it is to censor their own staffs of paid spokespersons.

How shaming it should be for these news and information outlets that one of America's two or three top political journalists toils for a predominantly-music-oriented magazine?

posted by CM @ 9:40 PM