Romney Camp Breaks Precedent, Bars Press From Israel Fundraiser
JERUSALEM - In a precedent-breaking move, the Romney campaign said today it will bar reporters from attending a high-dollar fundraiser in Israel Monday morning.
The claim that Romney broke a precedent seems rather implausible - I intuitively knew this could not be true. Obama is known for being very secretive (and sleazy) about his fundraising - and this includes the fact that his team disabled all fraud protections in his credit card system of fundraising (both in 2008 and in 2012) - which in turn allowed untraceable contributions to his campaign. I did a quick google search, and in 5 seconds found this article:
Obama holds DC fundraiser for re-election campaign
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is raising about $1.5 million at a Washington fundraiser to benefit his re-election campaign.
Obama met with 25 supporters at the upscale Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Wednesday, a day after several fundraisers in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. Tickets for the event started at $60,000 per person. The fundraiser was closed to reporters.
The Obama campaign says the proceeds will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama's re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.
Apparently, Romney was not breaking any precedent - Obama has barred reporters from his fundraiser only 10 days prior. The claim against Romney is obviously false - and it takes 5 seconds for anyone interested in the truth to refute the accusation.
While I was writing this, I suddenly remembered another funny thing - and I have a feeling that you probably don't remember it. During the Democrat primary fight of 2008, Huffington Post quoted Obama speaking at a fundraiser, and his now infamous talk about the American people who "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment..." Here are some details which are less known about this quote. For starters, Fowler, the journalist who had access to the Obama's fundraiser, was initially very reluctant to report his words. According to the NYT:
"Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him..."
"...she stewed for several days over whether to write about the comments about small-town voters. “There are no standards of journalism on the Internet,” she said. “I’m always second-guessing myself. Is this the right thing to do? Am I being fair?”
She said she initially decided not to write about them. “I thought I wouldn’t put it out there, this really might damage his campaign,” she said. “I talked it over with my husband, and like many people, he didn’t see anything wrong with the remarks. He didn’t think it was newsworthy.”
Another interesting detail was that Huffington Post which employed Ms. Fowler was also reluctant to publish the quote from the Obama's fundraising because they understood the negative implications for his campaign. Huffington Post journalists were forced to call Arianna Huffington (who was at that time thousands of miles away in French Polynesia, staying on billionaire Obama backer David Geffen’s 454-foot yacht) and asked her permission to make the quote public. Ms.Huffington was also reluctant to publisize this information and according to her:
“Roy (Sekoff) and I were on the phone multiple times. I agreed with how he and Marc (Cooper) decided to handle it, placing Obama’s thoughts in context and avoiding sensationalism.”
The article appeared on Huffington Post 4 days after Obama's speech. The reaction to the publication was swift - the liberal supporters assaulted Ms.Fowler for reporting Obama's comments. For example, Joseph Palermo, a professor of history, and a Huffington Post author wrote an article entitled "Faux Obama supporter Maihill Fowler sets up smears on Obama", which predictably ended with a familiar accusation of that Fowler was a racist.
According to the NYT, multiple commenters on the hard-left wing website dailycos could not forgive Ms.Fowler:
"If we let her go, others will do it... We’ve got to show the ‘journalist’ that they can’t manufacture dissent. This isn’t about Obama, this could easily be a story about Iraq or Iran. This is the type of disingenuous reporting that we have to stop. We need to make an example of her.”
Ms. Fowler herself conceded that
"Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press."
Still, according to Ms.Fowler:
We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities. Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They [the Obama team] thought I would put the role of supporter first.”
Does not this quote pretty much describe the Obama's relationship with the mainstream media today - that he sees and demands the media to be his supporter first?
The NYT article about Obama's unfortunate choice of words inexplicably becomes an article about Ms.Fowles, and whether she made the right choice reporting to the public the truth. Do not forget that NYT is a newspaper written by the liberals for the liberals, and some level of sincerity among comrades is expected. For example, Marc Cooper has this to say about the Obama's fundraiser:
“It was indeed a fund-raiser to which the press was not invited. Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasn’t on or off the record. Off the record is when journalists consensually agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.”
Note, that the tempest in the teapot occurred during the Democratic primary, and the media was divided between the hard-left supporters of Obama and the hard-left supporters of Hillary Clinton. It's highly unlikely that either of them would have given any ground or leaked any damaging information when Obama was facing McCain.
More interestingly, this past story puts today's firestorm about Romney's closed fundraiser in an interesting light - apparently, Obama had journalists barred from his fundraisers since 2008 - and yet, this never was an issue for the media.
What's more, Ms.Fowler was hardly the only one who recorded Mr.Obama's clinger speech, apparently, "The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras. " But only Ms.Fowler took the courage to publicize Obama's comments. Still, Ms.Fowler, a self-described reporter did everything in her power to minimize the effect of the article. According to the NYT:
The important quotes were buried deep in the narrative, almost as if they were couched to soften the blow. She also said she thought posting on Friday would mean fewer people would see it.
In the end, this had little effect on the 2008 elections, and Obama became the president. But he learned his lesson, and today, no one is allowed to bring the cell-phones to his fundraising events. Apparently, Obama is trying to protect the public from learning more about his promises to his rich supporters. Evidently, no one could recall any presidential candidate who would put so strict restrictions on the reporting, but the media is not reporting about this truly unprecedented development.
And speaking of foreign fundraising - just a few weeks ago same Obama held multiple fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, France and China. Not a peep from the media.
I cannot avoid the conclusion that the media will try to hide anything damaging to the Obama regime. Note how little attention was paid to the Fast-n-Furious program or multiple scandals with the taxpayer dollars being sent to the Obama's friends and fundraisers. Do not miss the non-story about Obama's bundler and a major Democrat politician Jon Corzine, who presided over the disappearance of 1.2 billion dollars - and who continues to collect money for Obama. Of course, it's impossible to forget how NBC had to break a story about Fast and Furious - only 1.5 years after it was reported by other media outlets. What was the reason why NBC was forced to break its silence about the Obama's secret operation to arm Mexican drug lords with automatic weapons? A bi-partisan vote in Congress to hold Eric Holder in contempt due to his refusal to provide sufficient evidence to the House investigators.
On the other side, mainstream media outlet are making wild claims against the republicans or perceived right-wingers, and these accusations often have no basis in reality. For example, the claim that Romney's decision to bar journalist from one of his fundraisers is clearly false as this article demonstrated. In recent months, the NBC was caught editing Zimmerman's recording to make him sound like a racist, while ABC launched an obviously groundless accusation that the Colorado shooter was connected with the Tea Party. Media giants like yahoo, NBC and ABC have multiple people hired specifically to check the correctness of the facts they publish, so it is beyond doubt to me that such "errors" have to be done on purpose.
Lesson #1: If mainstream media makes an outrageous claim about a Republican, it's very probable that this claim is untrue. The reader is advised to check the facts and find out if they support the accusations.
1 comment:
More on Obama's fundraiser:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/27/120827fa_fact_mayer
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