Has there been a better week in American politics to launch a nonprofit news site devoted to combat journalism?
It began with the unsurprising but still utterly hypocritical announcement that the Obama re-election campaign would encourage wealthy donors to support pro-Democratic "Super PACs," despite the president’s demagogic attacks on the Citizens United decision and the "shadowy groups with harmless sounding names" that threaten "our democracy." The media were happy to indulge the administration and its surrogates, such as DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, in the lame excuse that somehow the Republicans were to blame for Obama not living up to his own campaign rhetoric.
Then the Free Beacon broke the news that former congressman Ron Klein of Florida, a prominent "bundler" of donations to the Obama campaign, had registered as a lobbyist for Spirit Airlines Inc. despite the campaign’s ban on lobbyist donations—a story that somehow made it past those grizzled and hardened and "balanced" watchdogs in the mainstream press. We were happy to see Politico and MSNBC run with the story, which resulted in Klein being dumped briefly from campaign even as Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina and company kept the money he had raised for them. Of course, the campaign was happy to take Klein back after he said he had "deregistered" as a lobbyist and that his registry had been a "clerical error."
As Obama flew to New York City to hobnob with wealthy members of the fashion and entertainment industries, including prominent supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the media focused their attention on the Republican race for president and the debate over the Obama administration’s decision to mandate coverage of contraceptives in the health insurance plans of religiously affiliated hospitals and universities. The job of exposing progressives who bash industries while in office only to profit from them afterward, and of covering the mounting threats to American primacy, was left to the WFB.
We are happy to have it. The press may be a "feral beast," but this week the beast has had to deal with another small but lethal animal in the jungle. The counterattack has begun.