printConflict of interest equals corruption. Yet, it is the modus operandi of major media in America, left and right. There is a “revolving door between media and successive administrations.”
Josh Hawley, a politician and friend of the Tucker Carlson Show, is on a book tour. My tongue is firmly in my cheek when I say this, because a politician should not serve any interests other than the people who pay him. Their fame or notoriety comes from the fact of their election. Using their position, paid for by the taxpayers, to aggrandize and enrich themselves is unethical and disgusting.
Writing and promoting books on the job, accepting book deals, paid lectures: These, in my opinion, should be outlawed.
Hawley’s book, I assure you, is inconsequential. Politicians are mostly inconsequential, banal minds. The book’s central, hackneyed “idea” of breaking up Big Tech, will help you NOT ONE BIT if you’ve been financially deplatformed and your speech, also the source of your income, has been throttled. Case closed. (A far better route is hinted at in my Deep Tech piece.)
As I observed in “Brian Williams: Member Of Media Circle Jerk,” America’s presstitutes are “no better than the lobbyists and the politicians they petition, they move seamlessly between their roles as activists, experts and anchors; publishers and authors; talkers and product peddlers; pinups and pontificators.”
No sooner does a politician, left or right, make a name for himself through media channels, than he starts peddling product: throw-away books, for one. Again: Any profit off a tax-payer funded office should be prohibited. It has to be.
Network friends entertain each other on their respective shows, making an even greater mockery out of the typical canned TV “debate.” They do it all the time. The public doesn’t seem to care that their heroes are corrupt.
And family members hop on the gravy train.
Ethical practices entail keeping your (journalistic) work and friendships APART—just as you should keep your wife out of the office of the president (the late Mugabe) and your kids out of the White House (Trump). The avoidance of conflicts of interest was once grasped by people, too.
The corrupt and avaricious American media conceal these practice, because they want to partake in what is lucrative, career-advancing corruption.
What Fox News’ Howard Kurtz says below is all well and good, except listen to this:
“You know, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this game of musical chairs. It’s no secret that many high-profile people have moved back and forth between Fox News and Trump administration,” Kurtz concluded. “But it does seem that more journalists join Democratic administrations like Biden’s.”
In the car, the other day, on the radio, I heard Jason Rantz, a local radio host, enthusiastically repeating the “nothing inherently wrong” mantra to his listeners. See, Jason and his ilk would like to flit between radio and politics; between commenting about the news to making news. They’d, moreover, like you to believe that the revolving door is ethical. It isn’t.
Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz cited Joe Biden’s Secretary of State pick and CNN global affairs analyst Antony Blinken as the latest example of the “revolving door” between the media and presidential administrations, Tuesday.
“When Joe Biden does unveil Tony Blinken as his pick for Secretary of State today, he’ll be introducing the global affairs analyst for CNN, which Blinken joined after working at the top of the Obama State Department,” Kurtz noted in a segment on America’s Newsroom.
“This revolving door is spinning even more quickly between the media and the government,” he continued, pointing out that “there’s a mini exodus at MSNBC for Obama veterans who became cable pundits,” and who are now leaving to join Biden’s presidential transition team.
“Rick Stengel, former Time Magazine editor, had joined the Obama State Department, now has left MSNBC for the Biden transition,” Kurtz went on. “Also leaving MSNBC for the transition… former Obama prosecutor Barbara McQuade and Zeke Emanuel, medical expert who worked on Covid strategy. Jen Psaki, who many may remember as Obama’s State Department spokeswoman, has left CNN for the transition.”
Kurtz explained that “sometimes, the connections are behind the scenes,” citing “former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham [who] was an NBC and MSNBC contributor, but dropped from that role for helping Biden with some of his speeches without disclosing that to viewers
This revolving door between cable media, neoliberal (CNN) or neocon (Fox), and the D.C. duopoly, notwithstanding, it’s time to switch off the game show that is the incoherent, celebrity-driven, Big Con Inc. If you haven’t; you’re part of the problem.
UPDATED (5/5): I forgot to mention that on Tucker’s show, last night (5/4), Josh Hawley also alluded to:
“…Big government run by the Left.”
The very same permanent state was run by the “Right” until January. LOL.
Come on. The Deep State and the hydra-headed horror of a government that heads it is seamlessly unseemly.