By MARC McDONALD
Love him or hate him, you've gotta admit, Larry Flynt is one smart man. Like a lot of us, he's sick and tired of Republican hypocrisy. And he knows that the mainstream media is pathologically incapable of ignoring a story that involves sex.
One gets the feeling, though, that the mainstream media just wishes Flynt would go away. There are already indications that the MSM isn't prepared to investigate Flynt's sex scandal leads. For example, on July 10, as Media Matters reported, neither NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News reported on the disclosure that Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) phone number was among the phone records of alleged "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
The Vitter case has gotten heavy play in the progressive blogosphere. But it remains to be seen if the MSM will investigate this story and give it the coverage it deserves.
In any case, this isn't the first time that the MSM has downplayed or ignored bombshells that resulted from Flynt's investigative efforts.
For example, in 2000, Flynt tried to encourage the media to examine a bombshell story that, in 1971, George W. Bush got his then-girlfriend, a woman named Robin Lowman (now Robin Garner) pregnant and then arranged for her to have an abortion. (Note that in 1971, abortions were illegal in Texas).
But, predictably, Flynt got nowhere. The same mainstream media that gave us 18 months of around-the-clock, saturation coverage of the Monica Lewinsky story, refused to touch the Bush/abortion story.
It's downright eerie and Orwellian, the way the Bush/abortion story has been consistently ignored and even covered up by our nation's media. Few Americans have even heard of this story to this day.
One interesting episode on CNN a few years back neatly sums the media's approach to this story. On November 7, 2000, Flynt briefly spoke about the Bush/abortion case during an appearance on CNN's "Crossfire." Bizarrely, CNN later deleted Flynt's comments from the show's official transcripts, in an unprecedented move that indicates that the media in this country have received orders from their corporate owners to not touch this story.
Flynt was later interviewed on the Bernie Ward radio talk show on KGO radio in San Francisco, where he mentioned the CNN transcript issue and then lambasted the media:
"The mainstream media is scared to death of this story. They won't even check out the facts that I already have, much less ask Bush the question."
The mainstream media snoozed through this story during the 2000 election. And I suppose there's little reason that the media will look into it now.
It's true: the Bush/abortion story was never confirmed. But the lack of confirmation on a story never stopped the MSM from giving widespread coverage to stories when they involved Bill Clinton. Recall how in March 1998, the MSM gave saturation coverage to the Paula Jones case. (Time magazine even put the story on its cover).
It remains to be seen if the MSM will investigate Flynt's latest bombshell story. But on the basis of the MSM's track record in the Bush era, the odds are not good.
In fact, since Bush first took office, the nation's media has fallen into an eerie slumber. From GannonGate to PlameGate to the Downing Street memos, the media has snoozed through one major GOP scandal after another.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Media Ignored Previous Larry Flynt Bombshell; Will It Cover His New Revelations?
Labels:
George W. Bush,
GOP scandal,
Larry Flynt
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3 comments:
Any newsroom has to calculate the best they can whether an item is news, how much people are going to care.
The coverage during the Lewinski scandal today speaks more about what was important to us at the time.
Why wait for someone to spend resources digging for confirmation that Bush 43 had a different view on abortion when he was 25 years old?
People are more concerned about who this man is right this minute.
re:
>>>Any newsroom has to calculate
>>>the best they can whether an
>>>item is news, how much people
>>> are going to care.
Yes, well the MSM has been doing a sh*tty job of deciding "what's news" now for the past couple of decades.
They tried, desperately to convince the American people that Clinton's blow job was important news.
The American people yawned and continued to give Clinton an approval rating in the high 60s.
Oh, and the public also increasingly simply stopped buying a daily newspaper.
Newspapers have seen a steady drop in circulation for decades. And the MSM's news broadcasts' ratings have also been declining.
People are simply no longer believing the MSM's b*llshit and are turning to independent voices on the Web, thank God.
re:
>>>Why wait for someone to spend
>>>resources digging for
>>>confirmation that Bush 43 had a
>>> different view on abortion
>>> when he was 25 years old?
Yes, well it's certainly obvious that YOU don't have a f*cking clue as to what makes a news story.
This was a very important story in the run-up to the 2000 election. Bush was trumpeting his anti-abortion, anti-Roe V. Wade views and courting the religious right.
If Bush indeed had knocked up his girlfriend and secured an abortion for her, this was an important story that the MSM should have investigated. The American people have the right to know if the candidate they're voting for is a hypocrite and a liar.
Had the American people known this at the time, maybe the Chimp wouldn't have gotten into office, and we could've been spared the horrors of the past 6 years.
Uh, more to the point: It was ILLEGAL. He committed a CRIME.
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