In the fortnight leading up to the sequester, the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC wrung their hands about "all the catastrophes that would happen if these cuts went through," NewsBusters senior editor Rich Noyes noted on the March 7 edition of Fox Business Network's Varney & Co. Since, then, however, "they've spent no time asking how is the White House going to decide where these cuts are, how is the administration going to parcel out these cuts?"
In short, "[t]hey're not doing their watchdog function at all," the Media Research Center's research director told FBN's Stuart Varney. What's more, for the most part, the same networks lack any skepticism about how the administration might be targeting their cuts in such as way as to deliberately inflict pain, when it's completely in the power of the Obama White House to structure cutbacks in a way that minimizes its impact on the taxpaying American (watch the full segment below the page break):
ABC... did do a story last night on the cancelation of the White House tours. Jonathan Karl said this only saves $18,000 a week, a very trivial amount of money. That did sort of raise a suggestion, it was just a very delicate suggestion, that maybe these things are being staged for political effect to cause maximum pain. But nothing where they really came out and did some kind of a big expose as they would if this had been a shenanigan pulled by the Bush White House for example.
While March 1 came and went and the sky didn't fall, the liberal media are absolutely befuddled why the public aren't up in arms over the sequester having kicked in.
Noyes noted that NBC's Matt Lauer on Monday "express[ed] surprise that there wasn't more outrage over these sequester cuts" while on Tuesday, an ABC correspondent "said it was sad that investors were still buying into the stock market with these cuts."
