How the Press Played Dumb About the K Street Project

[rodeodance]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0119-27.htm

"As for television news? Here's how many references ABC News made to the K Street Project between June 2002 and Jan. 3, 2006: 1. CBS: 0. NBC: 1. MSNBC: 1. Fox News: 0. CNN: 5. CNN never aired a reported piece explaining what the K Street Project was, although CNN International did. If you do the math for that 2002-to-2006 timeframe, we're talking about thousands and thousands of hours of network and cable news programming aired with a grand total of 8 mentions of the K Street Project."

Published on Thursday, January 19, 2006 by the Huffington Post

How the Press Played Dumb About the K Street Project

by Eric Boehlert


One of the most depressing traits of the news media's timid performance during the Bush years has been their newfound fear of facts and the consequences of reporting them. Where Beltway journalists once eagerly corralled facts and dispensed them to the public, scribes today, like youngsters' endless checking to see if it's safe to cross the street, over-think the consequences and end up giving the Bush administration and Republicans a pass.

For instance, in the wake of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea on Jan. 3, some press outlets did their best, belatedly, to explain the crooked lobbying empire Abramoff had built with the help of Rep. Tom DeLay. And specifically, some news outlets addressed the K Street Project, the DeLay/Abramoff/Santorum/Norquist pay-to-play money machine that's playing a pivotal role in the GOP's deepening ethical morass. (Read a smart, concise description of the K Street Project here.) But even then, the media's descriptions have often been half-hearted at best. Appearing on the Don Imus radio show recently, Newsweek's Evan Thomas mentioned, "this thing called the K Street Project," as if he'd just heard about the day before over lunch at The Palm.

In truth, there's not a serious reporter in Washington, D.C. who for the last three years did not know exactly what the K Street Project was. (The GOP openly boasted about it.) The K Street Project was, hands down, the most important behind-the-scenes development in terms of how power/legislation was bought and sold inside the Beltway and represented an epic story with endless angles and repercussions. And yet for the last three years those same serious MSM reporters participated in a virtual boycott of the story, refusing to detail corruption inside the GOP. (Curious, because during the Clinton years the press couldn't stop writing about alleged Democratic funny money scandals that never actually materialized into criminal wrongdoing by prominent Dems.) Only in recent weeks, after Abramoff pleaded guilty and DeLay's grip on power loosened, have reporters felt confident enough to cross the street--to explain what the K Street Project is............

[underpants]

1. Reminds one of PNAC huh? Oh K Street has their own website too

First link here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2376116&mesg_id=2376116

[ClintonTyree]

2. The "Corporate" Press........

that is the key. A handful of Corporations have total control over what we see and how we see it. How many from the Corporate Media have been seduced by the K Street thugs? That's a little piece of data I'd like to have in my possession.

[underpants]

3. Hell George CLooney even had a TV series about K Street

STARRING Carville and the Mrs.

And STILL no mention of it.