A hypocritical liberal media accuses Obama of hypocrisy

As President Obama begins his long goodbye from office, the media that made him begins reclaiming its credibility – too late.

Let’s mark the beginning of the liberal media’s effort to distance itself from the Obama regime with two recent examples.

First, in a March 29, 2016 Politico Magazine article entitled “Spare Me Your Hypocritical Journalism Lecture, Mr. President,” Jack Shafer begins:

The last person in the world who should be lecturing journalists on how to do journalism is President Barack Obama. Yet there Obama was Monday night at a journalism award ceremony, yodeling banalities about the role of a press in a free society, moaning over the dangers posed by “he said/she said” reporting, and—to the delight of the assembled audience—attacking Donald Trump in every way but name.

Then comes the chiding:

What they [the journalists in the audience] should have done is bombard Obama with rotten fruit or ripped him with raspberries for his hypocrisy.

How do we hate Obama’s treatment of the press? Let me count the ways. Under his administration, the U.S. government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a recent Associated Press investigation. FOIA gives the public and press an irreplaceable view into the workings of the executive branch. Without timely release of government documents and data, vital questions can’t be answered and stories can’t be written.

Before we nod our heads “yes,” applauding Mr. Shafer’s screed, note that he’s angry because the regime has consistently denied truth to the media.  So it’s the journalists who’ve been dissed.  But aren’t the consumers of their alleged “reporting” the ultimate victims of mis- and missing information?   

There’s more:

What makes Obama’s speech so unstomachable [sic] is the way he praises reporters at an award ceremony by calling their work ‘indispensable,’ ‘incredible,’ ‘worth honoring’ and essential to democracy while simultaneously blocking honest press queries with all the formidable energies of his office.

Someone tell Jack that for the last seven years, “honest press queries” have been few and far between.  But the president was spot on about “indispensable” – indispensable to the White House efforts to obfuscate. 

A second example of the emerging MSM meme, heralding the MSM’s diligent but failed efforts to get to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, comes from CNN’s Jake Tapper in a 3-minute YouTube video entitled “Tapper rips Obama as a hypocrite for lecturing media, given his terrible record on transparency.”

Jake blames the media’s shortcomings on the failure of Obama’s regime to be transparent.  The legacy media was stymied by being kept in the dark.  Not their fault. 

Jake’s and Jack’s generation of reporters feel entitled to be told the truth, with minimal digging.  Digging is shovel work; it dirties the hands.  Plus it requires objectivity and critical thinking – traits in short supply these days in the Fourth Estate.    

So as the MSM writes a revisionist history of its role during the Obama administration, the Tappers and Shafers will herald their valiant, though thwarted, efforts to hold government accountable.  For they are their own most appreciative and fawning audience.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/a_hypocritical_liberal_media_accuses_obama_of_hypocrisy.html