Recycled Media Stories Becoming A Norm

From RCP comes this op-ed by Jack Kelly, about the media's selective recycling of old news. This is certainly not a new concept, it has been going on for quite a while now. One only needs to look back at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, lack of WMDs, and other stories that have already been covered, yet resurrected periodically, when the news gets slow.

Mr. Kelly calls the MSM on a recent story that is being brought back to life, for no other good reason than to maintain the level of negativity that seems to be a requirement, of today's MSM organizations.

We journalists are environmentally friendly. We recycle. We've been recycling old news all weekend, without, of course, telling you it's old news.

"A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein," reported David Sanger and David Johnston in the New York Times Monday.

For the first time? Here's the AP's Tom Raum on July 20, 2003: "The White House declassified portions of an October, 2002 intelligence report to demonstrate that President Bush had ample reason to believe Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program."

With the economy going well and unemployment back down around 4.7%, what's a journalist to do, anyway? It seems that they can't dwell or focus on positives for more than a couple of minutes, what fun would that be?

I mean, if they are going to demonstrate their overinflated sense of importance, they will need to revisit negative stories from time to time, hoping to shape public opinion, rather than reporting it. They will also need to play to the short-term memories of many, making further contributions to the dumbing down of America, instead of educating them. They really have no other choice, in their desperate struggle to remain relevant

But in all of this, it's hard to fault all of the poor ignorant people that buy into this. Many do not have the analytical/critical thinking skills necessary to scrutinize the MSM's flawed methods. But those that know the truth and yet still present falsehoods, exaggerations, and half-truths as fact, are guilty of the greater sin. And in this piece, Mr. Kelly fronts out some of the sinners.