In case you missed it there was a very important story on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show where Maddow took on her own network (NBC) for the way network executives blocked Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults.
According to Farrow, who was Maddow’s guest on the show, NBC President Noah Openheim issued direct orders several times that Farrow’s piece on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults was not to be published. It was this stonewalling by NBC executives that led Farrow to leave NBC for New York Magazine which ended up breaking the Harvey Weinstein story earning him a Pulitzer prize.
Naturally, the fact that Farrow won a Pulitzer prize for a piece that NBC executives refused to publish has reignited the age old question of media manipulation by network executives. Specifically, the question is whether media houses run news items strictly based on their newsworthiness or do other factors like cronyism, politics, etc make network executives bury otherwise newsworthy stories? This is a debate that has been raging for a while now.
You’ll remember Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders got in hot water recently with some mainstream media types after he accused the Washington Post of not fairly covering his campaign because he routinely attacks its owner Jeff Bezos. Bernie Sanders essentially accused Washington Post of ignoring favorable coverage of him while highlighting news that cast him in negative light
WATCH: Bernie Sanders attacks the free press, accuses Jeff Bezos of interfering with WaPo’s 2020 coverage #MTPDaily@agearan: “As one of those Washington Post reporters, I can attest that we do not have some sort of edict to write or not write things from Bezos.” pic.twitter.com/DyXq4gbA6l
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 13, 2019
Given this bombshell segment on Maddow that network executives do indeed bury certain stories, is it fair to say that Bernie Sanders was on to something with his criticism of the media? We now know for a fact that network executives do indeed bury certsin stories.
This story is especially important for those of us who have advocated and petitioned for quite some time now that the mainstream media take a serious look into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s military discharge. This too appears to be a very newsworthy story that for whatever reason, network executives appear to have labelled “Do Not Publish”.
#BREAKING:When will #MSM which READILY DIGS INTO every Democrat’s past, ALSO DIG INTO @senatemajldr‘s secretive and HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE military record? cc @MichaelRogersDC #TheResistance #MitchMcConnell #CNN #MSNBC #Yahoo #SundayThoughts #FBRPartyhttps://t.co/ipHJ9QVGg2
— Emoluments Clause (@Emolclause) March 31, 2019
Bottom line folks, there’s always been suspicion among members of the public that a select few people exert undue influence on our media consumption. In an open society like ours, the public is best served when media executives make decisions to publish stories strictly based on newsworthiness. There is absolutely no excuse as to why NBC executives sat on the Weinstein story unless of course Weinstein pressured them to do so–a valid line of inquiry. There is also abzolutely no reason why 30-plus years into his tenure as a U.S. Senator, Americans should still be speculating on the reasons as to why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was discharged from the military in 1967. The mainstream media could get this answer if they wanted to. The question is why don’t they? What media executive has told them not to look into it?
For those of you very happy with @Emolclause’s activism don’t shy away from the “tip jar” below on your way out.
You may reach the author via email at author@grassrootsdempolitics.com or author@emolumentsclause.com
