In August 2011, I first wrote about something I call the “Democrat-media complex,” the all-too-cozy relationship that causes many in the media to slant their reports in favor of Democrats. On Thursday, Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir that the relationship is so cozy that some journalists actually “lose their minds” and even “swoon” over Barack Obama.
“But that’s the presence of Obama, even on the press corps – even on the people who follow him every day – when they’re near him, they lose their minds sometimes,” Hastings told Bashir. “They start behaving in ways that are juvenile, and amateurish, and they swoon.”
Hastings even admitted that he, too, sometimes gets caught up in Obama’s “presence,” The Blaze reported.
“Oh, I do,” Hastings said. “Oh, man.”
When he first met Obama in Iraq in 2006, Hastings recalled that he had an opportunity to ask tough questions but was unable to do so and consciously decided to ask him soft questions instead.
In his book, “Panic 2012,” Hastings recalled an anecdote in which a Wall Street Journal reporter used a sock puppet to interview the president.
“It was a puppet that looked like Obama,” he said.
Hastings “refused” to imitate the “squeaky voice” the reporter used, Mediaite said, while adding that Obama found the episode “very strange.”
Last October, former Democratic strategist Pat Caddell warned that the media had become “the enemy of the American people,” and was suppressing news that would be harmful to Obama.
After the election, a survey showed that a vast majority have no confidence in the so-called “mainstream media.”
“We might have a conflict of interest in the media,” Jason Howerton wrote at The Blaze.
Video of the exchange can be seen here.
Related:
- Post-election survey shows vast majority have no confidence in mainstream media
- Yes, Virginia, there is a Democrat-media complex
- Distrust of mainstream media at all time high, poll says
- Majority of voters view media as biased and unethical
- Democratic strategist: Media purposefully suppressing news that would hurt Obama
- MSNBC caught using tweet from ‘Gov. Bev Perdue’ parody account
- MSNBC caught using edited clip from rally to attack Mitt Romney
- Media helps Obama campaign by misrepresenting woman’s question at Iowa town hall
- Obama’s ‘other race speech’ contains parts never seen by public
- Former network producer: ‘I’m done’ denying liberal bias in the media
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