By Julie Kelly
Ever since Axios reported that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson unfettered access to surveillance video captured by Capitol security cameras on January 6, 2021, the corporate media has experienced a collective convulsion bordering on a nervous breakdown.
Guardians of the fourth estate long ago abandoned their self-proclaimed role as watchdog over those in power in exchange for the role of lapdog. But apparently the last ones to get the joke are reporters, editors, and cable news hosts themselves, who still operate under the delusion they maintain a vaunted place in the pecking order of American society rather than rank in popularity just below the toxic sludge smoldering in East Palestine, Ohio.
Not long ago—or maybe it has been a long time?—journalists would salivate at the chance to report on the contents of a massive trove of footage related to what the government calls a terror attack, especially if the same government pulled every trick in the book to keep it under wraps. Compelled by slavish idolatry of the state and contempt for the common man, the media, for lack of a better term, is acting as if the release of unseen video recorded on January 6 is a crime in progress.
This comes, mind you, after two full years of uncritically repeating every talking point about the so-called “insurrection” which involves calling it an “insurrection” even though no one has been charged with “insurrection.” No cop cried too unconvincingly, no lawmaker made too outlandish a claim, no occupant of the White House told one too many lies to jolt the slumbering curiosity, or even innate sense of skepticism, of corporate media apparatchiks.
“Breaking news” bulletins sought to grab the attention of their shrinking audience before airing a cherry-picked clip gleaned from the very collection of tapes now considered sacrosanct.
It’s hard to know where to begin in the January 6 Hall of Hypocrisy, but let’s start with an easy target: Washington Post political columnist Philip Bump. Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Post famously changed its motto to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Since January 6, few newspapers have devoted more column inches to the four-hour disturbance that only temporarily delayed the certification of the 2020 election. A three-part series published in October 2021 provided a novel-sized exploration into what happened before, during, and after the protest. Proceedings of the January 6 select committee earned nonstop coverage including reposting, you guessed it, clips of surveillance video played by the committee to an international audience.
Bump now bristles at the thought of fair play. “We should have no confidence that Tucker Carlson will do anything but use the video to which he’s been given access for anything other than promoting his own narrative,” Bump sneered in a February 21 column. “It’s not just that Carlson cannot be relied upon to actually consider the video in an objective way, though he certainly can’t be. It’s also that there is no reason to think that he will present the video in context, to include information that moderates what’s being shown on the screen.”
Darkness, it appears, is not a threat to democracy if it pertains to a blackout of taxpayer-paid recordings that might lay bare the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.
Over at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow fretted that Fox News will “use this government material to concoct an alternative narrative to give us some more convenient revisionist history about what happened on January 6.”
Not to be outdone, Maddow’s MSNBC colleague Joy Reid warned that Republicans could “twist the footage” to help “criminals get out of jail.” This from the same network that infamously reported the 2020 riots were “mostly peaceful” as property burned behind a reporter.
Then maybe “the media” (aka the Ministry of Propaganda) should have been pressuring the Democrats to release all the video, not just their tiny sampling showing the reaction to the Capital Police’s unprovoked attack with flash-bang grenades, gas and rubber bullets. Instead, they were more than happy with the altered version of reality they were fed and even happier to promote it.
Oh, you mean like complying with discovery and allowing access to exculpatory evidence? THAT kind of crazy shit? If the evidence gets someone out of jail, then I guess they weren’t a criminal, were they, you racist bitch?
Raskin is one of the liars that stand to be totally exposed when the actual videos are revealed. We’ve already seen enough to invalidate the left’s version of January 6th. What remains is the evidence that incriminates them.
McCarthy DIDN’T make all videos available for public examination. McCarthy gave all the videos to Tucker effin’ Carlson.
If you think that will result in a fair, objective, and responsible evaluation, you’re crazy.
They are not really available they must go to DC to see them. Not all of them just a portion. Yes set them all out on the internet for all to see we really want to know who opened those huge doors that have a special code.
Please enlighten me as to where I can get “fair, objective and responsible evaluation”? I need a laugh today.
BTW you won’t find it here. >>> https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158710498/npr-layoffs-2023
06/04/23 – Marjorie Taylor Greene flip-flops on public release of Jan 6 footage, having proclaimed that selected journalists would get unfettered access
Only their designated propagandists should decide what the public can and can’t see.
No one cares.
I will second that.
People who don’t care never win.
People who don’t care ALWAYS win.
While you are wrong, as usual, why not? That’s how the left operates. The DOJ, FBI, IRS and CIA leak to leftist media and give shit-piles like CNN advance notice of their GESTAPO raids, so why would it be objectionable if Republicans selected media and journalists to share information with?