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For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said this morning that he was “appalled” by the plan and said the newsroom will not participate.
“It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase,” Brauchli told The Post’s media reporter, Howard Kurtz. The proposal “promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post.”
Earlier this morning, Brauchili said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth. Brauchli,was named on the flier as one of the “Hosts and Discussion Leaders.”
Um…. Cue the Music!
Notice how when the Newsroom found out about this; they were all like, “We are not involved!” Uh-huh, sure you all aren’t. Gives a whole new meaning to the word, “In the tank.” More like over the tank hank, if you know what I mean here.
Now as for Ed Morrissey; He is still trying to figure out what to call it:
A facilitator! That’s certainly more pleasant than “pimp”. I prefer the Night Shift term “love broker,” which reasonably applies between lobbyists and the White House — and for that matter, between the press and the White House, too.
Poor Ed. Someone could be selling crack outside his front door; and he still would never stop smiling and being kind to them. It’s that whole Catholic upbringing thing, and no, I do not mean that as an insult either. The man makes makes my sorry protestant self, look quite bad at times. Every Catholic I know, is just like that too. Scares the living bejeezes out of me. I mean, the world could be on the brink of nuclear annihilation; and Ed would still be there, holding his balloon and smiling. I can’t say I have not heard Ed get aggressive, I did once; Ed was on Mitch Berg’s Show once, and some idiot tried calling in to argue with Ed over something; and basically tried to call Ed a liar over something. Ed turned on the man, I had never seen him like that. It was quite amazing to behold.
Anyhow, Ta-nehisi Coates is quite surprised, but gives the news guys the benefit of the doubt:
I genuinely believe that the newsroom staff could not have known that the marketing department was out promising lobbyists access to them in exchange for cash. I also have no idea why any White House officials would allow themselves to be used for such a purpose. If there aren’t already laws forbidding high-ranking officials from taking part in something like this, there should be.
But even though it’s not exactly surprising, that doesn’t make their latest attempt at cashing in on their pro-Obama bias any less distasteful. Hell, for that matter, the liberal McClatchy news outlet been working hard at making money on Obama’s election for months now via selling a book full of Obama glossies and articles taken and written on the campaign trail, as well as a DVD commemorating his “historic run.” Gee – no wonder they gave him such fawning coverage last year. Liberal bias + the need to raise $$=a complete loss of critical objectivity. Follow the money.
Quite true and if anyone’s looked at the New York Times as of late; they know that this is perfectly true. Talk about over the tank hank!
Damn, even the DailyKos folks are not to impressed with this either!:
This comes at remarkable time for the Post, really, with columnist Dana Milbank just having whispered to the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney that he was “such a d*ck” during their televised battle over newspaper versus blogger ethics.
Perhaps, for an extra ten grand, they’ll bring Milbank into the salon, to whisper to you that, “you’re such a rich d*ck.”
That’s the critical difference between blogs as media watchers and major media itself – as much as big media might like it, bloggers have neither the ability nor the desire to engage in the sort of ethical lapses that are available to outlets like the Washington Post every day. We may sit in our mothers’ basements watching torrented Thundercats episodes, but we do it honestly.
Uh, I haven’t watched Thundercats since I was like, uh, 14 years old? Also, Liberal Bloggers, Honest? Since when? Tell that to Sarah Palin, Please.
Even Reason Magazine is not amused. When the Capitalist Libertarians cry fowl, you know you are, uh, Screwed.
Anyhow, the “Off the Record Solon’s” are now canceled. Seeing that the story was exposed. Paraphrasing a common line from the “Scooby Doo” show; “and I would have gotten away with it, if it were not for those meddling bloggers!”
Gibbs: “… But, again, let’s–How about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP’s tradition of asking the first question. I will let you [Chip Reid] ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted in Annandale—“
Chip Reid: “I’m perfectly happy to—”
Helen Thomas: “That’s not his point. The point is the control–”
Reid: “Exactly.”
Thomas: “We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not– This White House.”
Gibbs: “Yes, I was going to say, I’ll let you amend her question.”
Thomas: “I’m amazed. I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and—”
Gibbs: “Helen, you haven’t even heard the questions.”
Reid: “It doesn’t matter. It’s the process.”
Thomas: “You have left open—”
Reid: “Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.”
Thomas: “It’s shocking. It’s really shocking.”
Gibbs: “Chip, let’s have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?”
Reid: “Okay.”
Gibbs: “I think—“
Thomas: “No, no, no, we’re having it now–”
Gibbs: “Well, I’d be happy to have it now.”
Thomas: “It’s a pattern.”
Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”
Thomas: “It’s a pattern. It isn’t the question—”
Gibbs: “What’s a pattern?”
Thomas: “It’s a pattern of controlling the press.”
Gibbs: “How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I’m controlling the press–poorly, I might add.”
Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”
Gibbs: “How so?”
Reid: “Well, and controlling the public—”
Thomas: “How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on. That is shocking.”
Gibbs: “We had this discussion ad nauseam and—”
Thomas: “Of course you would, because you don’t have any answers.”
Gibbs: “Well, because I didn’t know you were going to ask a question, Helen.
Go ahead.”
Thomas: “Well, you should have.”
Reporter: Thank you for your support.
Gibbs: “That’s good. Have you e-mailed your question today?”
Thomas: “I don’t have to e-mail it. I can tell you right now what I want to ask.”
Gibbs: “I don’t doubt that at all, Helen. I don’t doubt that at all.”
After that Helen Thomas went nuclear…With the due respect; the woman went on a tirade. She was quite ticked.
Following a testy exchange during today’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.
“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.
“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.
“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.
“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”
During today’s briefing, Thomas interrupted a back-and-forth between Gibbs and Chip Reid, the White House correspondent for CBS News, when Reid was questioning Gibbs about who was going to decide what questions would be asked of President Obama in a townhall meeting that was scheduled to take place in Annandale, Va., today.
It looks like the media’s honeymoon with the President is over; his free pass just ended. His whole “We cannot pick on him, because he is new, and because he’s black and we might be called racists“, little card just ended today. After this, look for the Press to become more confrontational and start criticizing the President more. The Government, in a free and democratic society cannot control the media, it will bite them in the rear end, if they do. The Obama Administration miscalculated and thought they could control the message, because Obama was black. They thought wrong.
This should be a very, very interesting pattern to follow and watch. I give it 6 months or maybe less and the MSM will be contacting WorldNetDaily for more information on the whole Birth Certificate rumor. This does, of course, poke holes in Bill O’Reilly’s theory that the whole media is controlled by the Liberals and that they’ll never say anything bad about him.
Update: A Big thank you to Free Republic for linking in. Thanks “FromLori”!
“The financial crisis of 2008 had its roots primarily in ill-conceived government policies,” reads the memo. It was prepared by Republican staffers to advise GOP members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on how to handle a recent hearing on the government’s role in Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch.
The memo attacks Bush’s — and Obama’s — bailout policies for exacerbating the crisis. “Given the role of government policies in creating the conditions for the housing bubble which caused the financial crisis, it is remarkable that the prescription of the Bush Administration and the Democratic Congress was more government intervention in the economy,” it says. “The Obama administration has not missed a stride.”
It is about time someone over at the G.O.P. woke up and smelled the coffee.
Somebody at GOP-HQ has finally got a clue to what Michelle Malkin — and Heritage, and Cato, and Instapundit, and every other actual pro-market individual or institution in America — has been saying for more than a year: Keynesian “pump-priming” does not work, and is not conservative.
Okay, so why did Michelle Malkin and all the rest listed attack Ron Paul when he was trying to espouse these principles during the election? Oh, that’s right, because they were and still are; taking orders from their Zionist masters. Like John Podhartz for example, and people like the Israeli lobby and The Project for the New American Century.
Countdown to the Right Wing Jewish race-baiters attacking me in 5….4….3…2….. (Sieg Heil!)
Synopsis: It’s time to sing America’s praises for the Fourth! Unfortunately, Uncle Jay sings about the news instead. Ever since last December’s year in review, fans have been screaming for Uncle Jay to be singing. So by popular demand, here’s 2009 in singing review. The first half, anyway.
The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year’s disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don’t need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.
Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat’s strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.
But the team’s real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman’s lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs.
What Mr. Franken understood was that courts would later be loathe to overrule decisions made by the canvassing board, however arbitrary those decisions were. He was right. The three-judge panel overseeing the Coleman legal challenge, and the Supreme Court that reviewed the panel’s findings, in essence found that Mr. Coleman hadn’t demonstrated a willful or malicious attempt on behalf of officials to deny him the election. And so they refused to reopen what had become a forbidding tangle of irregularities. Mr. Coleman didn’t lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact.
This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire’s team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn’t been counted, setting off a hunt for “new” Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she’d discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.
Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don’t end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.
Uh, Sour Grapes much guys? Look, I am about as happy about Al Franken being a damn Senator; as I would be about getting a root canal. But this petty whining and crying, because you lost a legal challenge is just downright childish. Besides, Norm Coleman was most likely out of money and just could not afford to keep fighting. Not only this, The G.O.P. most likely told Coleman to drop it, because the G.O.P. was already bruising from the Mark Sanford scandal. Not only this, but the G.O.P. is looking towards 2010 and 2012, and the last thing they need; is to be viewed by the General public as a party desperately trying to grasp for power.
Patrick Stack makes a valid point, but in the process dredges up old Democratic Party conspiracy theories and sour grapes of his own:
First, Norm Coleman’s concession was hardly “gracious” — he drew out the process in court for seven months, leaving Minnesota down one senator the whole time. And if anybody is the model for election legal street fights and sketchy vote-count maneuvering through the courts, I think that would have to be the guy who “won” in the 2000 Presidential election.
Glass houses, yo.
Patrick (Nice name, by the way! ) makes a point in the first part of that, but in that second part, he drags out the old dead tired conspiracy theory that Bush stole the election. There is absolutely no valid proof that Bush stole that election, if there was, how come John McCain did not steal this election in 2008? That’s because there was no election fraud at all. The SCOTUS made that decision based upon one big factor, there was no way those votes could be counted down in Florida accurately, in a reasonable amount of time and Bush won more states than Gore; so, the Court decided in Bush’s Favor. Now am I happy about that? Quite frankly; No, I am not. Bush economic polices proved to be a disaster for this country, his authorizing the bailout of all these banks. The War in Iraq; which Bill O’Reilly himself even has said was a waste. I could go on and on about that, but I think you know what I mean. I never was a Bush Cheerleader, anyone that reads this blog knows this to be a fact.
Chris Cillizza over at “The Fix” has a nice explanation of how Coleman won, sans the Conservative Sour Grapes.
Which brings me to my final and most important point. I was over at HotAir last night and I happened to watch this video here:
Now, first off this video is supposed to be what MSNBC calls “Fair and Balanced.” If that is fair and balanced, I think I want to move to another Country. Secondly, If Markos and crew over at DailyKos think that the Democrats are going to now do every little thing that the “Nutroots” wants them to; they are going to be in for a HUGE surprise and letdown. The Democratic Party establishment looks out for one person and one person alone; itself. The only difference between the Establishment of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party; is the name. Sure, the Grassroots or in this case the “Netroots”; may have some limited influence, but when the “Goodyear hits the Asphalt”, so to speak, the Establishment calls the shots and if Markos and company think that this 60 votes myth is going to change that, they are going to be in for a big surprise.
Whew, that’s a long title… But it is what is happening.
Vanity Fair did a rather long article about Sarah Palin. The long and the short of it is this; there’s nothing new in it. So, say Conservatives and Liberals. Now that is a rarity!
Every Catholic I know, is just like that too. Scares the living bejeezes out of me. I mean, the world could be on the brink of nuclear annihilation; and Ed would still be there, holding his balloon and smiling. I can’t say I have not heard Ed get aggressive, I did once; Ed was on Mitch Berg’s Show once, and some idiot tried calling in to argue with Ed over something; and basically tried to call Ed a liar over something. Ed turned on the man, I had never seen him like that. It was quite amazing to behold. 
) makes a point in the first part of that, but in that second part, he drags out the old dead tired conspiracy theory that Bush stole the election. There is absolutely no valid proof that Bush stole that election, if there was, how come John McCain did not steal this election in 2008? That’s because there was no election fraud at all. The SCOTUS made that decision based upon one big factor, there was no way those votes could be counted down in Florida accurately, in a reasonable amount of time and Bush won more states than Gore; so, the Court decided in Bush’s Favor. Now am I happy about that? Quite frankly; No, I am not. Bush economic polices proved to be a disaster for this country, his authorizing the bailout of all these banks. The War in Iraq; which Bill O’Reilly himself even has said was a waste. I could go on and on about that, but I think you know what I mean. I never was a Bush Cheerleader, anyone that reads this blog knows this to be a fact.