Even a radical leftist like Seymour Hersh thinks the media are obsequious toward President Obama. In an interview with the leftist U.K. paper The Guardian, Hersh said "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy."
Hersh claims the Obama administration "lies systematically," yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him:
"It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.”
Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
Hersh is one of those arrogant journalists who think that only reporters are idealists, and they are the wise men, and everyone in government are “nincompoops” who need correcting: "I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever … Not that journalism is always wonderful, it's not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity."
It should be said that when Hersh rails against “lying” presidents, Hersh uncorked some wacky-sounding conspiracy theories about the last administration that liberal papers were knocking down.
In 2011, Matthew Balan noted The Washington Post took apart Hersh's outlandish conspiracy theory that "neo-conservative" members of Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta inside the military "overthrew the American government" and were waging a "crusade" against Muslims. The newspaper reported that, contrary to Hersh's claims, General Stanley McChrystal was not a member of either organization, and that there was "little evidence of a broad fundamentalist conspiracy within the military."
Hersh was also frustrated with Obama's foreign policy: "Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn't get one."
