Two recent NewsBusters posts have demonstrated that the major broadcast networks other than Fox News have failed to cover new information reported Sunday evening at the Wall Street Journal. Newly available emails reveal that MIT's Jonathan Gruber "worked more closely than previously known with the White House and top federal officials to shape" the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Monday afternoon, NB's Scott Whitlock noted that "All three network morning shows on Monday ignored" the clearly newsworthy revelations. Very early Tuesday morning, NB's Curtis Houck observed that "The top English and Spanish-language broadcast networks" did the same thing Monday evening. The Associated Press and the New York Times, the nation's de facto news gatekeepers during the Obama era (far more the former than the latter, in my view) were instrumental in this deliberate averted-eyes exercise. Neither outlet has printed a word about what the Journal found.
Here are the results of a search on the MIT economist's last name at the main national web site of the Associated Press shortly after 10 p.m.
A search at the AP's Big Story site on Gruber's last name has no story about anyone with that last name after early March. The last time the Big Story section covered anything containing the MIT economist's name was in late February.
Similarly, a search at the New York Times on Gruber's full name (not in quotes) shows that the last relevant story there was in early March.
Not even Josh Earnest's continued denials in the face of harsh, irrefutable reality have moved either outlet to consider telling the public they claim to serve that the Obama administration has been fundamentally dishonest in representing the scope of Jonathan Gruber's role for almost six years, going back to well before the Affordable Care Act became law.
Why? Because the AP and the Times are the Obama administration's official news gatekeepers. The major non-Fox networks know this, and react accordingly. This is by far the most likely explanation as to why they've also done nothing with the story. Everyone is willing to take whatever heat may come their way in the name of saving Obamacare's subsidies in the King v. Burwell case currently in the Supreme Court. Gruber's role proves that the administration wanted to punsish states which refused to set up their own Obamacare exchanges, and explains why the "established by the states" language was written into the law. When so many states balked at setting up exchanges, the IRS decided it would be okay for a federal exchange to serve those states.
Too bad that's not what the law says — perhaps. We'll be seeing shortly whether the Supreme Court cares at all about what any law actually says, or if the nation has truly descended into rule by judicial whim at the expense of the rule of law.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
