Saturday, January 24, 2009

Obama and the Media's Paradigm Shift

From Manhattan to LA, there seems to be a new vision brought about by our new President. One where old definitions must be rethought in this new post-Bush world, at least inside the newsrooms and editorial offices of the main stream media.

When George W. Bush was sitting in the oval office, the military version of events on the ground would be thought of as fiction first, unless proven beyond a shadow of doubt. Reporters would hammer away at military spokesmen and then contact their 'unnamed military sources' to get the 'real story' of events on the ground, especially when that story fit the liberal template of; US=bad, everyone else=good.

Terrorist insurgents became 'innocent civilians' when the MSM wrote their stories, air strikes on arms caches in remote towns became air strikes on peaceful farming villages, and so on. If the aftermath of an air strike showed ten dead bodies, all clutching AK 47s and RPGs and one child was tragically injured or killed, guess what photo went out over the AP wires? It would not be the ten dead terrorists, I can assure you.

US=bad, everyone else=good, that is the perspective of most of the American media and the liberal left. If the Unites States armed forces are doing anything to anyone, anywhere in the world, it must be bad thing.

So what happens now when those troops are under the command of President Barack Obama? Will the dead terrorists magically stay terrorists when the story hits the pages of the New York Times? What about dead civilians? Will they become 'unfortunate pawns' killed because the terrorists deliberately hide amongst the civilian population in this new post-Bush world, or will they be held up as examples of a recklessness Obama administration?

What about Code Pink, Mooveon and the Kos kids, they will surely slam the new President when the Obama administration performs these air strikes, right?

So when President Obama orders missiles fired from Predator drone at a remote Pakistani village killing 22 people and the liberal left doesn't doesn't immediately condemn it, did it really even happen?

US=not so bad, everyone else=not so good?
Oh how the times are changing. This will be very interesting to watch.

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