The MSM’s Grope and Change Double Standard

In case you’re wondering  how the media is handling Obama’s TSA Gropers as compared to Bush’s NSA Eavesdroppers, Newsbusters is hot on the case.

While the broadcast networks have generally empathized with the distress of airline passengers over the TSA’s new and intrusive airport searches, they have not — thus far, at least — gone so far as to impugn the Obama administration as launching a war against Americans’ civil liberties.

Indeed, NBC’s Matt Lauer on Monday even sympathized with TSA Administrator John Pistole: “I hate to even think of what happens if the government caves in on this, and relaxes these procedures, and someone manages to get something on board a plane and causes harm. Imagine the questions you’ll be asked at that point.”

But that’s not the approach those networks took when it was the Bush administration taking steps to protect citizens against potential attack. Instead, as a 2006 analysis by the Media Research Center documented, the networks firmly aligned themselves with those who saw the Patriot Act and the electronic surveillance of international phone calls as a dire threat to civil liberties.

While some on the Left claimed the media were enthusiastic boosters of the Bush administration in the days after 9/11, our analysts found network reporters began to question the idea of a vigorous War on Terror within days of the attacks. During live coverage on September 13, 2001, ABC’s late Peter Jennings suggested the United States might no longer be a free country. “Much of the evidence now being obtained in this investigation is being obtained under something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is pretty much equivalent, I think some people believe, to martial law,” Jennings told former Clinton Justice Department official Eric Holder.

“As a result,” Jennings wondered, “do you believe that civil liberties have effectively been suspended in the country?”

For the next five years, network reporters would return to the “endangered civil liberties” topic in a majority of their stories about the Patriot Act (56 out of 91 stories, or 62%). The networks presented fears about a police state as valid and reasonable, perhaps even an admirable early warning. On the July 4, 2003 CBS Evening News, fill-in anchor John Roberts claimed that “as Americans celebrate their independence today, concern is growing that civil liberties are threatened as never before by the Patriot Act.”

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In 2005, all three broadcast networks jumped on revelations in the New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been monitoring suspicious phone calls and e-mails to and from the United States. That first night, December 16, 2005, ABC’s World News Tonight began their broadcast with the words “Big Brother” beside a picture of President Bush; anchor Bob Woodruff teased, “Big Brother, the uproar over a secret presidential order giving the government unprecedented powers to spy on Americans.” 

So, just two days after the worst terrorist attack on the homeland, ever, Peter Jennings was already hammering Bush for spying on suspected terrorists. And who did he go to for commentary?! Why, Clinton’s crooked former Justice Dept official, Eric Holder, who as Obama’s Attorney General almost immediately dialed back Bush’s NSA policies, allowing perhaps three attacks on American soil. His suspension of the investigation into Major Nidal Hasan, enabled him to murder over 30 fellow Americans at Ft Hood.

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Yet, The Obama administration gets a free pass on that.

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It also gets a pass on its draconian screening procedures in US airports which target ordinary citizens.

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Where are the cries of “big brother!” from the MSM over the countless horrific stories, (10 of the most outrageous outrages, here.) that have come out since these enhanced screening procedures began? Where’s the MSM on this story?: TSA Tried to Intimidate Man Who Recorded Strip-Search of Child into Deleting Video (Update).

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This is why people increasingly turn to bloggers for news.

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RELATED:

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TSA Chief John Pistole: If Passengers Don’t Undergo Naked Scans or Gropings, “They Don’t Have a Right to Fly”

Bush was called a Constitution-shredding, tyrannical,  fascist dictator for allowing surveillance of suspected terrorists.

Yet, we have TSA employees under Obama literally telling people we give up our rights when we fly, and that’s just hunky dory.

Something is wrong with this picture.

PREVIOUSLY:

It Begins: New Product Designed To Hide Privates From TSA Screeners Hits The Market

Video: Jack Webb Goes After The TSA

Video: Fox News Sunday: Lame Plans For Lame Ducks/ Big Bro Run A-Muck?

How The Obama Administration’s National Security Failures Led To “Grope and Change”

Video: 44 Ways To Say TSA

Ghailani Debacle Blamed On Bush

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It Begins: New Product Designed To Hide Privates From TSA Screeners Hits The Market

Lady Gaga’s secrets can be safe.

The Rocky Flats Gear ad says, “Stop invasive and dangerous x-rays!

Something tells me that wearing these garments through airport scanners could backfire horribly on their owners. But I guess it’s worth a try, if some brave souls want to be the guinea pigs.

The Blaze reports:

It’s a special kind of underwear — with a strategically placed fig leaf design — and a Colorado man says it’ll get you through the airport screeners with your dignity intact.

Jeff Buske says his invention uses a powdered metal that protects people’s privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings.

The ad says “Protect your health. Protect your privacy. Protect your future.”

What I want to know is, could they also be used to protect the very types of items the scanners are looking for?

Park51 Mosque Developers Apply For a $5 Million Federal Grant

The good news is the developers are short the cash they need to build their ground zero mosque. The bad news is they’re applying for $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th, according to The Daily Beast’s John Avlon’s two sources who have direct knowledge of the matter.

The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (LMDC), which oversaw the $20 billion in federal aid allocated in the wake of 9/11 and is currently doling out millions in remaining taxpayer funds for community development. The redevelopment board declined to comment on the application (as did officials from Park51), citing the still ongoing and confidential process of determining the grant winners.

While news of the application has not previously been made public, developer Sharif El-Gamal outlined it in closed-door meetings, according to two individuals he spoke with directly. The thirtysomething, Brooklyn-born El-Gamal is motivated more by real estate ambition—one of these sources describes him as aspiring to be the next Donald Trump—than Islamic theology or ideology.

While the developers certainly have the right to apply for public money, it shows, once again, their callous disregard for the sensibilities of Americans who object to the notion of a mosque and Islamic center so close to ground zero.

“If Imam Feisal and his retinue want know why they’re not trusted, here’s yet another reason,” says Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam and Director of the Moral Courage Project at NYU, when I asked her about the grant proposal. “The New Yorkers I speak with have questions about Park51. Requesting money from public coffers without engaging the public shows a staggering lack of empathy—especially from a man who says he’s all about dialogue.”

Amazingly enough, they’re asking for way more than the suggested amount from this grant program:

Part of the strangeness of the application is that it blows past the suggested range of $100,000 to $1 million that these grants are supposed to fall to within (I’m told the entire pool for this round of cultural funding will come in under $20 million). According to the two sources knowledgeable about the thinking behind the proposal, the strategy behind the $5 million ballpark was trying to yield a higher figure in the end.

Because Avlon doesn’t believe the Park 51 project qualifies for the grant, he says they’ve positioned themselves into a lose-lose situation:

In the end, Park51’s application is likely to be unsuccessful financially while mobilizing a new round of opposition. It’s a lose-lose proposition put forward by a tone-deaf organization that seems determined to alienate allies and embolden opponents.

Perhaps since they’ve already been so successful in talking “multi-cultural New Yorkers” into accepting their ground zero mosque,  they decided they’d give it a whirl.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers