Thursday, September 25, 2008

If It Isn't a Crime, It Isn't News



Michael Baron of U.S. News and World Report wonders why mainstream media pays scant attention to Barack Obama and his tight relationship with William Ayers, the retired Weatherman and utterly unrepentant Pentagon bomber. The answer might be that reporters are exercising the journalistic equivalent of jury nullification, "the process whereby a jury in a criminal case effectively nullifies a law by acquitting a defendant regardless of the weight of evidence against him or her" and is "thus a means for the people to express opposition to an unpopular legislative enactment."

Mainstream media being so far to the left and so entrenched in the Obama camp, it matters less to them Ayers planted the bombs than under whom they were planted. Since that was mainly the despised military and "the pigs" the crime, in their eyes, is effectively nullified. For even though Ayers' methods might have been unorthodox, even a tad excessive, deep inside his heart was pure and his cause was good; he was fighting the man. Hence he did no wrong, hence there is no story. Obama gets a pass.

Imagine a different situation: supposing Ayers, rather than bombing, inter alia, the Pentagon, the Capitol and the NYPD headquarters, had instead devoted his incendiary talents to the destruction of abortion clinics. Stretch the mind a little further and also imagine Ayers is chums with John McCain (try, anyway). Could we expect a similarly blasé attitude from our mainstream media or might they then decide setting off bombs really isn't a nice thing to do after all and it reflects badly on a presidential candidate who is pals with someone who does?

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