Lies of omission

A defining failure of our national media was the thundering silence that greeted the story from the NYT's David Barstow about military analysts being co-opted by the Pentagon.

Again - not news - but an ongoing embarrassment to our national media.

The networks  have yet to even cover this story much less address their own complicity in it - so CJR is bringing it up again:

[Barstow's article] was built on the back of a laudable two-year, Freedom of Information Act battle. The Times and its counsel dragged out thousands of pages of Pentagon transcripts, e-mails, and memos describing the program, but only after months of delays and circular excuses. As public editor Clark Hoyt wrote in a column describing the struggle, full cooperation came only after the paper persisted and a judge threatened to bring Pentagon officials into his court to explain “why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.”

[snip]

Yet not one of the nightly commercial newscasts mentioned the story or offered an on-air explanation to its viewers. Reliable Sources, CNN’s Sunday morning media show, hosted a late-breaking panel the morning Barstow’s article appeared. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann briefly mentioned it. Elsewhere, the silence has been conspicuous.

Given the lack of cooperation some of the news operations gave Barstow in reporting his piece, the weak-kneed response is hardly surprising. Fox News, whose analysts made up the biggest chunk of the Pentagon program, tersely refused to participate in the Times story, and failed to return CJR’s calls seeking comment. CBS also turned down Barstow’s request to comment on its vetting procedures, and failed to respond to CJR’s oral and written requests for comment. NBCand MSNBC jointly rebuffed an interview request, providing instead a statement attacking the Times piece and insisting that they had full confidence in their analysts despite any “personal commitments—past and present.”

While I've always had my doubts about the quality of our network news, If I had to point to one event that solidified my distrust - it's this story.

Willful duplicity by all the networks.

We won't cover this, because we look stupid.

And that's the best case scenario - more paranoid minds than me can come up with bigger outrages without much effort.