The American people deserve much better from the mainstream media and if they don't insist on it, they won't get what they think they deserve from government either.
The main point of my last article was simple but generally unappreciated: "The other Rev. Wright scandal is the politically correct media's failure to have exposed the pathetic Obama-Wright relationship long before the Iowa caucuses."
An astute and appreciative emailer shared her insight into the American media in general and NBC News, which is much more into promoting the Obama campaign than providing the kind of information voters need to make informed decisions, in particular.
Emailer:
"This piece is the smartest article I have read about the whole Wright incident and I have read a lot. You are the only one who gets that it was a TOTAL breakdown and failure of the American media. My husband has worked for NBC for 25 years. The first 10 years he worked in field news in the LA market. I remember many years ago when he came home from work one day as told me that NBC Corp had 'moved' the NEWS Division into the Entertainment Division. He said it would be the death knell for news. He said that news would become a profit center. The other MSM stations went through similar changes and of course nationwide newspapers were folding, downsizing, and merging like crazy to have any chance of survival. Most have completely outsourced newsgathering to AP or Reuters or they just report what MSM reports and call it news – all with cost savings and profit motives. And if that wasn’t enough we had the FCC lifting regulations and limits on ownership of media sources and the advent of cable news and the Internet. It was a perfect storm that has gone undetected. I am only 49 years old and I have watched the transformation of modern media right before my eyes.
"The people reporting the news wouldn’t know true news if it bit them on the rear. ABC 'broke the story' by showing the video clips on TH morning, Mar 13 and that night I remember watching Anderson Cooper say to his panel 'I'm not sure if we should be covering this story'– he was asking the panel for affirmation that these videos might be newsworthy. Five minutes research on the Internet would have seared his eyeballs. Over the next couple of days I read that NBC, CBS, and MSNBC all held back because they didn’t want to appear to be piling on Obama. To put this in context, remember that the Spitzer Scandal broke on MON and by Wed we knew the name of the dang prostitute. Nobody was concerned about the perception of a piling on that story – sorry no graphic images intended.
"I was becoming aware of the Wright story about two weeks before ABC 'broke' the story. I was fishing around on the Internet, trying to figure out why there were persistent rumors about Obama being a Muslim. I had seen him make references to his pastor and mentor several times so it seemed like it should be easy to find out. About the same time I saw a guy on Lou Dobbs who mentioned Black Liberation Theology and James Cone, and Wright – I think the show was about Hillary making Obama denounce Farrakhan in the debate and I think Lou had somebody on in regards to that incident. I had NEVER heard of anything like BLT [My note: Black Liberation Theology, not bacon, lettuce and tomato]. I had heard of the Nation of Islam, but this was different than this stuff. I assumed it was a fringe group but I did some surfing and I was shocked. I was in complete disbelief to find that our Presidential candidate, who was running on a campaign of HOPE and Change, was associated with this church. That shock did not compare to the realization that the MSM [Mainstream Media] had been complacent in this duping. The information was everywhere and they weren’t picking it up. When I read these words on the Trinity United website I thought, 'I am in the twilight zone':
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain 'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation.
"We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.
"Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They must reflect on the following concepts: I won’t list the precepts.
"The is no way I can describe my shock. I still can not believe this could happen in my country.
"Then when I saw the first Wright videos clips on CNN it was like having the wind knocked out of me – LITERALLY. I was sick to my stomach. When I found the other videos on the Internet where Wright is simulating a sex act; when I learned than the one sermon where Wright compares Obama to Jesus and bashes Hillary was given on Christmas Day, 2007; that the 'chickens coming home to roost' was a sermon given A mere DAYS after 9/11 when we were all still reeling with the raw pain of that tragedy that is the context that America doesn’t know I was overcome with a sense of loss and violation that I haven’t recovered from. When I read and heard the opinions of prominent/successful blacks saying this was very common in black churches and that even very educated blacks find comfort in this forum I felt race relations have been set back 30 –40 years. I think I am a 'typical white lady'. I considered myself to not be a racist and I believed we have made tremendous progress in race relations. I have delighted in the triumphs and firsts I had seen blacks make in every area of life. But this reaction has rocked me to my core. But what rocked me most was I know I am as typical a white lady as you can find and I have never ever heard the N word said in my presence. I have never heard a racist remark amongst my friends in my life. I am not saying I thought life was perfect for blacks, but I thought we had made a lot of progress AND that my typical white friends felt like this too, AND their friends – we are all still hurting. And yet the media is falling all over this candidate and fawning all over his speech and agreeing that we are making to much of the connection. Why doesn’t anybody hold him to the same standard as other the candidates? The presidency is not an affirmative action position.
"But as you said the REAL SCANDAL is the media’s failure to expose this relationship from the beginning of the primary season. Geraldine Ferraro was absolutely right, when she awkwardly stated, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept". She was trying to tell us there was nothing of substance and if he were a white guy running on the same experience and on a platform of Hope and CHANGE he wouldn’t have made it past Iowa. But with the MSM media’s duplicity he was allowed to create a momentum that no other modern day candidate has ever been allowed to achieve. If the media had been doing its job he would have been putting out fires and would have been on the defensive when his rhetoric didn’t actions, (from the beginning there was a fundamental disconnect between his words and his actions), and other candidates would have emerged. John Edwards told us his was getting out of the race because he couldn’t get any media coverage with a black guy and a woman in the race. How different a race it would have been if Obama had been vetted – for all of Hillary’s warts she tried to tell us this – Bill tried to tell us this was a fairy tale because there was no substance and the media would not even peek under the rug.
"And the media is still continuing to bury their heads and distance themselves from the controversy like it is radioactive. There is so much THE PUBLIC STILL DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS STUFF. They think it’s all out there now. They don’t know about all the stuff I copied from the website or the 12 precepts or even what Black Liberation Theology is. (In my opinion BLT is not a Christ centered church. I think it is a guise, but that’s a separate issue. I think the Muslim rumors stemmed from confusion and similarities in BLT practices and Nation of Islam practices.)
"This situation is the perfect scenario for exposing the status of media. It scares me to death to think what else is the media afraid to look into. Obviously the Bush White House has had more control over media access than is healthy and journalists, if not outlets, have been punished for unfavorable press. Another current scandal that should have been rooted out by the press is the Housing Crisis.
"America needs to know what is going on. We have taken the 'Free Press' for granted. We need to hold their feet to the fire and get the competition back into the game. I honestly don’t think Obama will be elected in the General Election because the GOP 527s will expose all of this even without McCain’s blessing. It will re-energize the Republican base and bring them out in droves. And Obama will fade into history as the black candidate who got bashed by the GOP in the GE. Years from now, in spite of all of the MSM fawning, nobody will even remember his speech. If he is elected this stuff will continue to come out and will cripple his presidency.
"Please, please, please, please fight to get your article into the press. Try to get this article in the WSJ (they published one of the first Wright stories), NY Times, PA, NC, IN, and OR papers. If the states primary has already passed it won’t get picked up, except in NY or WA D.C. I really think Lou Dobbs would have you on CNN. Try Fox – Chris Wallace seems very fair.
"I am not just stroking you. I think this is the most important story of the decade – not Wright, but the media breakdown. This campaign and the part media played is going to be studied in all the top schools for decades. You have presented a fair a balanced article that should be recorded as the article that finally broke open the impact of the profit centered MSM, and the polarized liberal and right wing cable new sources.
"Thank you for your wonderful article and thank you for listening."
Thank you for writing, emailer. Hunter Thompson stated in 1970: "In a democracy, people usually get the kind of government they deserve, and they deserve what they get." The American people deserve much better from the mainstream media and if they don't insist on it, they won't get what they think they deserve from government either.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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