Impunity

Jill Abramson is the Executive Editor of The New York Times, one of the media's most loyal and outspoken supporters of the Obama administration. The NYT editorial policy has been to support virtually every move by Barack Obama, to de-emphasize or positively spin his many domestic and foreign policy failures, to virtually ignore the serious scandals that continue to swirl around the Obama administration, and to otherwise protect a presidency that they believe is historic.

It is surprising, therefore, that the same Jill Abramson is concerned about Obama's treatment of the media.  The Takeaway reports:

Jill Abramson succeeded Keller [a past NYT Executive Editor] as executive editor in July 2011, in the midst of the Obama era. She tells Takeaway host John Hockenberry that the White House's relationship with the press has only deteriorated.

"The Obama years are a benchmark for a new level of secrecy and control," says Abramson. "It's created quite a challenging atmosphere for The New York Times, and for some of the best reporters in my newsroom who cover national security issues in Washington."

Abramson says that the administration's criminal leak investigations have presented large obstacles to news coverage.

"There have been seven of them, and one of them right now threatens my colleague James Risen who has been subpoenaed in one of these cases," she says. "Collectively, they have really, I think, put a chill on reporting about national security issues in Washington."

Those that are covering national security, according to Abramson, say that is has never been more difficult to get information.

"Sources who want to come forward with important stories that they feel the public needs to know are just scared to death that they're going to be prosecuted," she says. "Reporters fear that they will find themselves subpoenaed in this atmosphere."

Abramson says that the Obama Administration uses legal loopholes to make things difficult for journalists and media organizations. She says, for example, that the Obama Justice Department pursues cases against reporters under an obscure provision of the 1917 Espionage Act.

Yet, Abramson's "reporters" do nothing to expose the secrecy, the scandals, and the failures.

Over at CBS, Sharyl Attkinson, once of the few actual journalists at the network (she resigned in frustration a month ago) gives an interview on FoxNews (the other media hamsters avert their eyes] reported by Newsbusters:

Appearing on Thursday's O'Reilly Factor, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson claimed that CBS "had barely begun to scratch the surface" of the "Fast and Furious" scandal before the network moved on from the story. She noted that the network showed similar reluctance for its coverage of Benghazi and the ObamaCare rollout.

Before her resignation last month, Attkisson covered Obama administration controversies like "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi and her reporting helped the CBS Evening News win the Edward R. Murrow award in 2012. Yet she told O'Reilly that higher-ups at the network moved on from the "Fast and Furious"scandal "due to lack of interest, well before we found answers to a lot of questions."

"It just came to be that, I don't think on the viewer's part, but on the people that decide what stories go into the broadcast and what there's room for, they felt fairly early on that this story was over when I felt as though we had barely begun to scratch the surface," she revealed.

She went on to state her reporting on Obamacare, Benghazi, and the IRS scandal were disregarded and spiked by the network's producers. She was told to back off. Ominously, Attkinson reported last year that she believed her personal and office computers were hacked by parties unknown.

What's fascinating is that the MSM has become (sorry for the coarse language) Obama's bitch. They are abused by this administration, even admit that they are being abused, but like many abused spouses, have neither the courage nor the will to stand up for what is right.

It's ironic, the NYT and CBS (along with almost every other MSM outlet) told us in 2008 that the Obama administration would be different. That is would be historically open, transparent, competent, bipartisan, inclusive, and honest. It is none of those things—in fact, it is historically closed, incompetent, hyperpartisan, divisive, and dishonest.

And still, the MSM soldiers on, avoiding its responsibility to report the facts, delineate major mistakes, and most important, expose dishonesty. There is no broad-based media counterbalance for this presidency and therefore, Jill Abramson should express no surprise that this administration acts badly and with impunity.