Late May As Well Be Never. The Media Examine Obama, At Last

Now they tell us! Perhaps confident that the election is in the bag, here and there individual journalists are suddenly taking little peeks under the rocks and are discovering unsavory information about their Chosen One, Barack Obama. I doubt that this has as much to do with a sudden crisis of conscience as it has to do with grasping for a shred of post-election credibility.

A fine example was the exposé in the Washington Post this week about Obama’s sleazy fundraising. The Obama campaign intentionally disabled safeguards that any honest candidate would employ to prevent donors from evading contribution laws. One donor, calling himself “Doodad Pro” has donated about $17,000, well above the legal maximum of $2300. And who knows how much money this fellow has given under other pseudonyms. Another intentionally disabled safeguard would have prevented anonymous donors from contributing through untraceable prepaid credit cards. Theoretically, one ultra-rich Hollywood liberal could give vast sums of money through the purchase of these cards. For that matter, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez could donate any amount of money to Obama’s campaign using prepaid cards. John McCain’s donation server automatically rejects such cards.

The Washington Post also discovered that the Obama campaign had accepted $174,800 from a single donor named Mary K. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. When contacted by the Post, Ms. Biskup denies ever giving a cent to Obama. Her credit card records back her up. Somebody “borrowed” her name to make scores of untraceable donations. It’s no wonder that two-thirds of the staggering $150 million Obama raised in September alone came through Obama’s intentionally porous internet.

In truth, the Washington Post did almost no real investigative journalism and discovered nothing that was not already widely known for months in the blogosphere. The Post itself credited bloggers with doing the actual investigative work.

The Pittsburgh Tribune also turned up a bit of information that would have been more useful to voters had it been looked for earlier. Ever since the spreading voter registration scandal regarding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Obama campaign has denied any affiliation with the supposedly non-partisan group. Even his campaign’s donation of $820,000 to ACORN was waved away as something that happened when Obama was only 47 years old.

But, what the Pittsburgh Tribune discovered was that the Obama campaign had shared its donor list with ACORN with special emphasis given to those donors who had already given the legal limit (and had not resorted to prepaid credit cards), but who might be willing to contribute to Obama’s cause through ACORN.

In summary, Obama has been lying.

And reporters are coming out of the woodwork to criticize their brethren. John King of CNN admitted last week that the media had not adequately vetted Barack Obama. Michael Malone of ABC described the media bias in favor of Barack Obama as “appalling” and “bewildering.”

As a fourth generation newspaperman, Malone finds the media bias professionally embarrassing. “So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a ‘journalist,’ you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul,” he laments.

A glaring example had to be the disparity between two similar stories regarding Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. The media quickly a spread a rumor that Sarah Palin had once belonged to an Alaskan secessionist party. That was a lie. But, what is true is that Barack Obama belonged to the Socialist New Party. This is somewhat relevant as Barack Obama sneers mockingly at accusations that his wealth redistribution schemes are socialist.

Columnist Orson Scott Card probably penned the sharpest criticism of journalism’s decline into disinformation and propagandizing. A self-described Democrat, Card stood in awe of the mainstream media’s intentional campaign of disinformation regarding the mortgage meltdown. He points out that the Democrats obstructed efforts to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He points out that the Democrats raked in the lion’s share of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants. And, considering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s quasi-governmental status, he wonders how this would be different from the Pentagon contributing to congressmen who vote to increase the defense budget. He notes other well-known press disinformation campaigns and wonders what became of journalism’s commitment to truth telling.

I can help him with that. And I’m pretty sure he knows the answer. Economic insecurity favors the Democrats’ electoral chances this year, but only if the truth is kept from the voters.