"We have two kinds of people in Washington in the press, we have the reporters and the repeaters," NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham told Fox News's Neil Cavuto on Thursday's edition of his Your World program. "We've had the repeaters all week of panic, you know, big scoops of sequester panic ripple" from the media who were busy parroting fallacious Obama administration talking points. [watch the segment below the page break]
"Part of the problem with this whole thing is" that the liberal media have been "instructed to go out and build panic, and they're very willing to go and do that" for the Obama administration, the Media Research Center director of media analysis added. "Our news media is so statist that they always think that the withdrawal of government from anything is a disaster" while they:
...never want to consider that a tax hike has a real impact on people or a spending increase, or a trillion-dollar deficit has impact on real people. They're not willing to go out and illustrate what happens when our bond rating goes in the toilet. But they're willing to do it in this case.
For a bit of historical perspective, Graham reminded Cavuto and his audience that this scare mongering is "very much what they've always done." "We can go back to the government shutdowns in the Clinton years where they say, you know, the Skattleberrys can't afford a Christmas tree* this Christmas. They love this kind of story, they just love it," the veteran media critic noted. "It's usually blatantly lying and emotionally manipulative" which eventually turns off most Americans who "go, you know what, I'd rather watch Jeopardy!, there's more facts on that show."
*yes, that really happened:
"Monuments and national parks are shut. So are museums. A long-awaited rare exhibit of the Dutch painter Vermeer at the National Gallery, eight years in the making, is closed. And the shutdown now has a human face. Joe Skattleberry and his wife Lisa both work for the government. Both have been furloughed. They can't afford a Christmas tree."
-- ABC reporter Jack Smith, December 22, 1995 World News Tonight, the fifth day of the federal government shutdown.
