Image: screen capture from Fox News Channel online.
In medieval Europe, merchants and tradesmen formed guilds. Members benefitted from mutual aid. Common standards were adopted. Competition was held at bay and political influence was maximized.
Europe’s guilds are long gone but in the 21st century New World we find ourselves with a new guild. Call it the Media Guild.
Like the guilds of medieval Europe, the Media Guild operates under a code of common standards. Its individual members, though nominal competitors, routinely help one another. And above all, the Media Guild works hour-by-hour to maximize its political influence.
The Media Guild’s existence has been made evident by its response to a hot mic recording of ABC anchor Amy Robach talking about her reporting on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. You remember Jeffrey Epstein. Until his (suspicious) jailhouse suicide, Epstein was a high-rolling New York financier and big pal of, among other lefty luminaries, former president Bill Clinton.
You might recall that Epstein was the impresario of the “Lolita Express,” a modified Boeing 727 airliner that he used to shuttle friends to a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where guests would enjoy orgies with underaged girls. You might also recall hearing that Bill Clinton was a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express.
In the recording Ms. Robach candidly laments the fact that three years before his arrest in July 2019, she had a fully developed story ready to go to air on Jeffrey Epstein. After painstaking effort, Robach had convinced Virginia Roberts, who for years had served as a sex slave to Epstein while she was still a minor, to come forward. Said Robach:
She had pictures, she had everything. It was unbelievable what we had… We had [Bill] Clinton and everything.”
Yet, as Robach complained on the tape, ABC spiked the story. Robach speculates that because Britain’s Prince Andrew was implicated, the Palace put pressure on ABC and ABC, fearful of losing an interview with Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton, killed the story.
Perhaps.
But my ears perked up upon hearing the word, “Clinton.” ABC’s ties to the Clintons are well known. Among the most visible of those ties is ABC Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos. Before joining ABC, he served as Communications Director in the Clinton White House. If ABC spiked the story on account of Bill Clinton, it wouldn’t be the first time a legacy media outlet acted to protect the Clintons.
When the story of the Robach hot-mic tape broke, ABC issued a weasel-word statement saying that Robach’s story was withheld because it was not sufficiently corroborated as to meet ABC’s high journalistic standards and blah, blah, blah. (In issuing the statement, ABC offered no explanation as to how, as recently as September of last year, completely uncorroborated reporting concerning then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh managed to clear ABC’s high journalistic bar.)
There is no version of this story in which ABC doesn’t look positively awful, if not evil. If ABC withheld a story of grotesque abuse of underage girls for three years in order to, at best, protect access to an interview subject or, at worst, protect a political crony, it is an act of nearly unimaginable cynicism.
If it were me running the newsrooms at any of NBC, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Times, et.al, the story of ABC’s journalistic malpractice would lead the newscast or run above the fold. Yet from the august members of the “legacy” media we have heard exactly nothing. Not a second of air nor a pica of type.
And it actually gets worse. ABC convinced CBS to fire Ashley Bianco, a former ABC producer who was suspected – incorrectly as it turns out – of leaking the Robach tape.
That’s how it works when one is a member of a guild. A guild’s first order of business is to protect the common interests of its members. Chief among the interests of the Media Guild is its members’ common cause with Democrats and high profile liberals. If you have any doubt about that, ask yourself if you seriously believe that ABC would have spiked Amy Robach’s story if the principal subject of it had been a wealthy Trump supporter – say for example Las Vegas mogul Sheldon Adelson?
No, I don’t think so either.
So, is it any wonder that polls show that a staggering 69 percent of Americans no longer trust the media?
Solid column once again. ABC looks positively awful, if not evil, because ABC is awful and evil. Plain to see. And in their complicity, so is the rest of the liberal media. Apparently, people in high liberal places think it is perfectly OK for other people in high liberal places to rape and otherwise molest underage girls–just another of those special privileges enjoyed by those clearly better than the common mob. Oh, where oh where is the National Organization of Women when molested and raped girls need them? Assuming that organization still exists, are its members still on the side of those liberals in high places, just as they were when Bill Clinton was the Epstein of his day?
Buddy: I’ll go-ya one-better. As a group, let’s suggest, respectfully, that Paul consider taking ABC Radio News off KTBB, and replacing it with Fox News on-the-hour. Who’s with me?
Nailed it again, Paul (mostly). I’m wondering about the why behind the media selling out to liberal reporting. It seems simplistic to say it’s a guild. I agree that the networks act like a guild. But why is this? I’ve thought for some time that it was a matter of $$. But with abysmal ratings, you’d think one of the networks would break with the group, chasing more viewers. This hasn’t happened, disproving my notion. For whatever reason, US media have completely abandoned the concept of a “free press” in favor of one-sided, editorial reporting. Predictably, there is no moral compass, giving a pass to even the most despicable characters in our society. Which makes their steady dose of moral outrage about conservatives completely laughable.
Jim, that has puzzled me as well. One would expect at least one or two media outlets to be more even handed and Fox-like, as doing so would help their ratings and thus their income. But the only other Fox-model, and better done at times, is One America News which I find myself turning to more often. One possible explanation for why balanced journalism isn’t happening elsewhere might be found in the type of journalist and media management spawned by academia. Academia’s product is poorly educated, easily lead, with no understanding of business and an ingrained distrust of the public’s ability to figure things out if given just a straight presentation of fact news. What we have is a leftist media willing to take market loss and consequent pay cuts and job losses, preferring instead the pleasure of feeling superior to those to whom they “report” the news.
Very good my friend. We definitely need more intelligent patriots like you. Keep up the good work Paul
Not much to add to the “spot on” essay from Paul. The media are definitely guilds/syndicates, where those of similar interests serve each other. As serious as protecting a pedophile from being exposed, and helping to prevent other children from being abused, this cabal is having a destructive effect on our country. They are united in the goal of protecting the powerful and the swamp, and they have barrels of ink and unlimited airwaves. It is an enigma that the media promote a form of government that will completely eliminate the freedoms that they now enjoy. If the tyrants ever seize control, they will be mere stenos for government propaganda. Wait a minute…….they already do this, but they still have the freedom to be unbiased. Unbiased news media, what a novel idea!
IF I MAY poll-the-panel, two-part survey on the matter at hand:
1. Who saw “Fox News Sunday?” Did you feel Impeachment coverage on this week’s show was — and Chris Wallace generally is — balanced?
2. Scroll-up to my post above, and take-me-literally. Should we suggest to Paul that KTBB drop ABC News and go with Fox News Radio.
Of course this editorial is spot on. However….it does beg the question why KTBB still has ABC as its national news especially given Mr. Gleiser’s role in management there.