http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35120.htm

Media Gets Targeted by Obama, Discovers No One Cares Except the Media

By Bethania Palma Markus

(excerpts from B. P. Markus' article)

While my local press corps was babbling about some ancient history-Michael Jackson-related minutia bullshit, another media storm was brewing. Apparently the Associated Press and Fox News recently found themselves on the business end of the Obama Administration’s hostility toward journalists. The AP learned the Justice Department searched troves of their phone records. Meantime, Fox News’ James Rosen had his personal email account scoured by the DOJ and he’s being called an “aider and abettor” and “co-conspirator” in a criminal case regarding classified document leaks.

So now, all of a magical sudden, the news media in this country seem to be waking up. After years of either promoting or ignoring George W. Bush’s, then Obama’s constant infringements on the civil liberties of average Americans, the media suddenly think it’s a scandal now that they’re the butt of it. But while the AP and Fox News aren’t the first, they’ve never caused a stir about the U.S. government’s abuse of journalists until it hit them in the face.

I can personally recall recent instances where my local media corps sold out the public and kowtowed to authorities in direct opposition to their duties, causing members of the public to pay a painful price. When Occupy L.A. was raided at City Hall in November 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department told the media that they couldn’t cover it unless they were hand-selected by the LAPD. No one, not even the big dog in the room, the LA Times, took them to task on this, even though it was obviously unconstitutional.

Meantime the TV stations shut off their aerial camera feeds upon order by the LAPD. The result of this was, people were beaten and abused while in custody. Protesters had bones broken. But none of this made it into public view. Instead, reporters swarmed the next-day presser, eager to pepper the powerful with pandering, meaningless questions and hear the police chief and mayor crow about how smoothly things went. I guess it was smooth if you didn’t have your arm fractured by a bean bag gun, your ribs broken by a baton, or forced to piss on yourself while in custody. (http://egpnews.com/2011/12/reports-of-police-abuse-emerge-after-occupy-la-eviction/)

A similar thing happened during the Chris Dorner saga this February. At the culmination of their pursuit, with former LAPD officer Dorner pinned down in a Big Bear cabin, police told news outlets with aerial feeds to stop filming, so they did. We all know what happened next, because people listening to scanners had the presence of mind to record. The cops commenced with an apparently pre-planned “burn.” They fired incendiary devices into the cabin and Dorner burned inside. Would they have given that order if the news choppers were still filming overhead? Probably not. The media’s decisions to be obedient lapdogs to authority enabled authority to assume too much power, abuse protesters and extra-judicially execute someone.

Meantime, the reasons behind Dorner’s vendetta rang all-too-true to L.A.’s maltreated communities of color. His accusations of police brutality hit a nerve. But you don’t see L.A.’s news media aggressively digging into officer involved shootings, killings or beatings even though there is a history of police brutality in Los Angeles. If they report it, they usually source only the police, and they don’t follow up. They don’t put it in context. No one is held to task for the pattern of abuse on civil liberties and human rights in L.A.’s poorest neighborhoods. The police are given the benefit of the doubt, and people of color are treated like criminals. In fact, in an apparent collaboration with the LAPD, the media chose to redact the names of officers Dorner accused of being abusive when they published his “manifesto,” even though the un-redacted version was all over the Internet.