“(The link goes to The New York Times, not to some Obama-bashing site.)”
—Law professor/bloggress Ann Althouse, sending readers to an article about the Obama administration has apparently squandered 11 billion dollars on a mismanaged, ill-conceived, never realistic effort to launch high speed rail in the U.S.
Now you guys, we can only trust on POSITIVE Obama stories….
Quite apart from the story itself, which reveals just another example of the stunning ineptitude and waste in this most incompetent of all possible presidencies, Althouse’s statement raises several important ethical issues. Admittedly, there are websites that literally won’t publish anything positive about Barack Obama’s efforts, but to be fair, any media outlet that is objective and doing its job will become, by necessity, an “Obama-bashing site,” because the President’s record, results, conduct and leadership skills have been routinely dreadful. The fact that most sites that qualify for that description are already biased against progressives and Democrats shows how hopelessly polarized, and lacking in journalistic integrity the mainstream media is.
The New York Times has been the opposite of an Obama-bashing site; it has thoroughly disgraced itself and betrayed its readers by being an Obama-excusing, spinning, enabling and favoring-come-hell-or-high-water site, which isn’t journalism at all, but propaganda. To cite just one of thousands of examples, the Times tried to excuse the President’s infamous Obamacare lie—you know the one—by saying that he “misspoke.” This naked partisanship brands the paper as an unreliable source, but oddly, the very reason for its untrustworthiness is why it is the most believable source for a story like the high speed rail fiasco. The Times is so biased in favor of the President, that if it chooses to report something that reflects poorly on the Administration, the story must be true (and, perhaps, even worse than it is made out to be.)
So American journalism has reached the point that the only news sources we can believe are those who are reporting events that counter their own biases. Unless that happens, we literally can’t trust any news source.
Terrific.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ve noticed that! And it is an incredible development, isn’t it? In fact, whenever I hear or see that NYT or Huffington say something that is critical of Democrats or the White House line, I give it a look. Nearly the only time you find this, though, is when it has become impossible to spin it positively without risking a major loss of credibility.
WHAT credibility?
When their own leftist readership is able to see beyond their fogged up reading glasses and smell a rat, that’s when the liberal media has a problem. It takes something pretty odoriferous on their part to make that happen.
Steven, the liberal media has had a much bigger problem, and has had it for years…publishing the raw, unslanted truth, with no spin, no apologies, just reporting. AOL/Huffington Post may be (but not necessarily guaranteed to be) the biggest offenders. Which is why I watch Fox News…they’re still slanted but at least there’s a small chance of getting some straight skinny there. Elsewhere, not so much. Hence, the media in general HAS no credibility as far as I am concerned.
I’m amazed that the IRS targetting scandal hasn’t hit that point. Instead, i still see the same known to be false excuse hurled up time and time again “Liberal groups were targetted too!”.
It’s a continual round of verbal duck, dodge and weave.
Oh, come on. That is just $11 billion. This administration has wasted 2-4% of our total federal revenues on improper Medicare payments each of the last several years ($60-$120 billion each year) and refuses to do anything about it. In other news, 1/3 of all federal revenue goes to Medicare, so what happens when we expand it?
The inimitable Ms. Althouse is one shining lily in what is generally deemed the sea of weeds that populate “77 Square Miles Surrounded by a Sea of Reality;” my hometown Madison, WI.