Embarrassing Month for American Media Culminates in Jackson Memorial

Today is a dark day for the American press. Weeks of covering Iran, health care and Honduras have now culminated in 24/7 coverage of the Michael Jackson Memorial.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Every major story the press has touched recently has been handled without objectivity or significant analysis.

First, the press covered the Iranian elections as a legitimate democratic exercise in a republican nation. CNN gave hours of coverage to the elections in the “Islamic Republic” and reported on “voter fraud.”

In reality, the Iranian elections are sham plebiscites with absolutely no effect on the Iranian government and the Ayatollah who controls the Persian theocratic dictatorship that the mainstream media has continuously insisted on calling the “Islamic Republic.”

In the midst of this sham coverage of a sham election, President Obama planted a question in a press conference and although Dana Milbank wrote at length about this outrage, the rest of the press basically took it lying down.

No outcry, no boycott of the press briefings and certainly no meaningful coverage of Obama’s blatant transgression against the freedom and independence of the press.

On the heels of this failure, the press entered into orgiastic coverage of Michael Jackson’s death on June 25th. The breaking news that went on for hours, the banal musings of Larry King and the absolutely self-serving live coverage from Neverland Ranch that defined the media’s treatment of Jackson’s death can only be described as shameful.

But it gets worse. Coverage of Jackson’s death was briefly overtaken by the American media’s coverage of the “coup” in Honduras on June 26^th. Knowing little about Manuel Zelaya and apparently unwilling to delve deep and learn more, the American media lambasted the Honduran military as having overthrown the legitimate democratic government of Honduras.

They barely mentioned though that this democratically elected president was going forward with an illegal plan to remove term limits and become a socialist dictator in the vein of Hugo Chavez.

So here we have a string of four failures on the part of the American press. They’ve editorialized inappropriately and without sufficient information on international events, refused to stand up to the Obama Administration when their independence was threatened and devoted almost 24/7 coverage to the death of a man who (Congressman Peter King pointed out) none of us would leave in a room alone with children.

It culminated today in constant coverage Jackson’s memorial including live footage of his family driving to lunch. I’m tired of this ridiculous coverage and I’m tired of the mainstream media’s sham priorities.