Retiring Schieffer hints at, but can’t admit, how the media got played by Obama

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Criticism of the mainstream media isn’t new here at Save Jersey, but we try to be a little more (maybe a LOT more) analytical about it than many of our right-of-center new media counterparts. 

So there’s a LOT that I could say about CBS legend Bob Schieffer‘s farewell interview with Fox News on Sunday while conceding that he always seemed like a nice guy and hardly the worst them where media bias is concerned. I want to focus on one point in particular (since Howard Kurtz said most of what I’m thinking); specifically, when Bob recollects that the whole political world was struck back in 2008 by young politicians with “an unusual name.”

It starts in the segment below around the 2:22 mark. Kurtz pointedly inquired whether Obama, in Kurtz’s opinion, had been given an “incredibly easy ride” in the early days of his presidency. After hitting the ball around a bit (see above), Schieffer offered a verbal shrug. “Maybe we were not skeptical enough,” he concluded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sz7fsOHTqk

Uh… yeah? Ya think?

But they should’ve know. We did. Even Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose conceded this point back in 2008 but no one in the media (including Brokaw and Rose) corrected course and started asking serious questions. Fear of retaliation from the liberal establishment? Or willful blindness induced by ideological preference? Maybe a little of both and a few other things. Does it really matter at this point? Nothing can now reverse the damage of this not-ready-for-prime time legislator from Illinois making fools out of ALL of them, including Chris Matthews, who while always an unapologetic liberal used to have some dignity/journalistic integrity before admitting to a “thrill” going up his leg.

Think about it: a bunch of big time, iconic, multi-millionaire media anchors/reporters and they ALL got played by the biggest fraud in world politics since Perkin Warbeck masqueraded as the Duke of York in the 16th century. And even at the point of retirement, as Bob Schieffer just demonstrated, they still can’t bring themselves to outright say it.

Sharyl Attkisson tried and paid for it.

But these same media heavyweights and their progeny were unflinching in their administration of a metaphorical press corps rectal examination of ANYONE (1) who has ever met Chris Christie and (2) driven over the G.W. Bridge.

Bottom line? I sincerely hope Bob enjoys his retirement, but for what it’s worth, I persist in my belief that he and his contemporaries failed in their fundamental to ferret out the truth and protect the electorate from making uninformed decisions. That’s not the legacy I’d like to leave. Let’s hope there’s a new generation of journalists somewhere in the pipeline who will do better.

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Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8405 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.

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