The Nation - "Banned From TV on Conventional Wisdom's Holy Day, Ornstein and Mann Briefly Return"

[TomCADem]

Here is a nice article on the Nation noting how Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann have been declared non-entities for pointing out that the corporate media has been protecting Republicans by portraying a false equivalence between Democrats and the modern extreme right Republicans:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172166/banned-tv-conventional-wisdoms-holy-day-ornstein-and-mann-briefly-return

It was a small victory in the battle against false equivalency in the media: pundits Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann were on a Sunday morning talk show.

That may not sound like a big deal—after all, Ornstein used to be a Beltway media fixture, and he and Mann have for years been among the “most quotable” sources for media on the Hill. But last weekend CNN’s Reliable Sources became the first mainstream Sunday news program the two have appeared on since their op-ed “Let’s Admit It: The Republicans Are to Blame” was published nine months ago in The Wash Post. Their crime? They “came out” from years of straight-down-the-middle political opining to point out that not only are Republicans threatening the economy and democracy itself, but the mainstream media enable them by refusing to notice.

Despite hoots and hollers from the sidelines, the MSM continue to pretend that the GOP emperor wears the finest of clothes, even as his parade of reality-denying, gun-toting, hostage-taking supporters do a striptease for the nation every filibusterin’ day. In the name of “balance” (and keeping advertisers), the media blame the country’s problems on a generic “Congress” or “Washington.” Or they cry, as Ornstein and Mann write, “’Both sides do it’ or ‘There is plenty of blame to go around,’ ” mantras that “are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias.”

After their op-ed and the book it’s adapted from, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, came out in April, Ornstein (of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) and Mann (of the centrist Brookings Institution) went missing from Big Media.

[Yavin4]

1. Ornstein and Mann Are Missing A Larger Point

A good percentage of the media, print and broadcast, is owned by Rupert Murdoch. There are only so many jobs, and his empire has about 30% of them between Fox News, Fox Business News, the Wall Street Journal, etc.

These "journalists" are more concerned about their future career prospects than they are about telling the truth. Any real journalist has no chance whatsoever of working for Murdoch's empire.