MSM pushing back against the blogosphere?

Sister Toldjah blogged By now most of you are aware of the brewing scandal involving Air America and the allegations that they diverted money meant for inner-city kids and seniors to itself. For a brief recap before I go on, here’s the gist of the story from the Washington Times.... Seems pretty newsworthy, right? Wrong. A Google News search (at the time of this writing) on this story leads to about 5 pages worth of hits, with approximately 95% of them being conservative blogs and/or news and opinion outlets. The New York Sun has made this story a priority (see here, here, here, and here for more). The so-called newspaper of record, however - the NYTimes, has not. As of this writing, a search of "Air America" for the last week on the NYTimes article page search points to exactly zero articles. What could be the reason for this? We all know that if this were Rush Limbaugh, we’d be reading about it on the front page for weeks - whether it be about his addiction to painkillers or his ‘controversial remarks’ about Donovan McNabb. Remember that? The MSM devoted unlimited amounts of ink and webspace to reporting Limbaugh’s comments on McNabb, as if that were the most important issue we were facing at the time. And on the story regarding his addiction to painkillers, the media still foams at the mouth to give us updates on the latest developments in that case.

But you’ve hardly heard a sound out of the MSM on the Air America scandal. Why? I believe it may have something to do with the MSM pushing back against the blogosphere.

Actually the MSM is too closely connected with the Left and the Democratic Party. They loved it when they were the only source of news, because they could fool people into supporting the Dems. Rush Limbaugh became so popular because his talk radio show was one of the first where conservatives could hear someone saying what they thought, and the MSM hated the idea of the conservative voice being heard. That is why they focus their ire on Rush. The Left also tried several times to get their own Rabid Left talk radio program going, so they could recapture people's attention and that is why they are burying the problems with Air America, which they see as the latest attempt to have a rabid Left program. The reason Air America and the other attempts have failed is that the left does not need them to hear what they want to hear. They have the MSM to do that job. The MSM is too stupid to realise it is the reason that Rabid Left programming (radio and TV) has not taken off.

CBS News got their heads handed to them on a silver platter and Dan Rather had to show the proper amount of regret over National Guard documents that were shown on the Sept. 8, 2004 edition of 60 Minutes Wednesday (which incidentally was cancelled less than a year later due to ‘bad ratings’) - documents that were shortly thereafter proved to be unauthenticated thanks to the diligent work of Powerline, Rathergate, and many many others in the blogosphere. In simple terms, the blogosphere delivered a "smackdown" to CBS News. Since CBS News is considered part of the big media that so many complain carries an unmistakable liberal bias, the larger point was that the liberal media’s credibility had been dealt a serious blow by citizen journalists across the blogosphere, most of whom had probably never stepped foot inside a newsroom.

The Anchoress blogged Sister Toljah owns the blogosphere this weekend, and she deserves to - she’s written piece (filled with linky goodness) that gives some weight to the idea that the Mainstream Media is involved in a “pushback” against the blogs - she cites, specifically, the utter refusal of the Grey Lady, the WaPo or the networks to look into the story of Air America’s misuse of funds..... So…it’s nothing new. The press, still stuck - mentally and emotionally - in the 1960’s and early 1970’s has shown itself to be utterly owned by the Democrat party and liberal interests, and their double standards and moments of selective outrage are simply SOP for the news industry.

The Curt Jester commented What they resent like hell is not bloggers but conservative bloggers. They had no problem picking up from the story of the remark by then Senate Majority leader Trent Lott from the blogosphere. It it when stories they don’t want to report on gain traction in the blogospere that they get annoyed. If the majority of blogs was like the Daily Kos they would have been on the blog bandwagon instead of being annoyed by accountability.