At this point, the right’s Woodward and Bernstein are Peggy Noonan and Dick Morris, and that says about all you need to know about the state of conservative journalism.
Morris, as printed by The Hill, which pays him to be a columnist for some reason:
William Wilkins: The G. Gordon Liddy of the IRS scandal?
You can write anything when you put a question mark after it. Dick Morris: The G. Gordon Liddy of toe-sucking?
Anyway, Noonan, who was chief amongst the hacks leaping to call this the next Watergate when it broke two months ago, writes this about hearings last week that produced little to no news:
A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal
The “bombshell” is that one IRS Cincinnati employee testified that they ran the cases up to the chief counsel’s office. Problem is, as Media Matters points out, we knew this two months ago. Peggy Noonan knew this two months ago and wrote about it at the time.
Here’s her lede this time:
The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.
The office of the chief counsel has 1,600 employees. But you won’t learn that from Noonan, who would have you believe that William Wilkins himself answers the phones.
— BuzzFeed, of all places, runs a post on how the end of the free Internet is nigh.
Regular Internet users soon came to expect that almost every type of media they once paid for — music, movies, news — would be available for free, legally or otherwise.
That era — let’s call it the Internet’s free trial period — is coming to an end. In the 12 years since courts shut down Napster, the Internet has taken its hatchet to every other branch of the media industry, deftly pruning ad dollars, jobs, and shaving away bottom lines. Now the reaction, opposite but never quite equal, and always late, is starting to take effect. The untamed and lawless expanses of web content are quickly being replaced by paywalls and monthly fees. And, surprisingly, we don’t really seem to mind all that much. Most of us don’t even seem to notice…
As far as trends move, paid news’ is creaking along glacially. The percentage of enthusiastic paywall subscribers is still below 20%, but it’s growing — an encouraging sign for a business model that was widely predicted to fail at the outset. “Today’s paywalls are by no means perfect, [and] have a lot of big holes in them,” Magid Advisors’ president Mike Vorhaus told BuzzFeed. “But we’re all going to pay for more and pay for stuff we’re not used to paying for. And as a result, publishers of all kinds will continue do a better job figuring out what we value and packaging our content better and more efficiently.”
It’s a bit much, but they’ve got the right idea.
— The Guardian had a really good year last year, taking in more new digital revenue than it lost from print.
Alas, it still lost $47 million.
Its digital revenue increased to $85 million last year, a 29 percent gain (more than a quarter of that digital revenue is subscriptions, mostly from its dating site). That’s a big deal. Growing a relatively mature revenue stream by nearly a third in one year is no joke. If the paper could somehow continue that kind of growth for another three years (and maintain flat costs), it would turn a small profit by 2016, if print continues to decline at 7 percent a year.
That surely won’t happen. But The Guardian is fortunate to have investments that kick off tens of millions of dollars a year plus a $400 million trust fund. That gives it a safety net that few other newspapers have.
Nice try Propagandist! Here's a comment I left at the media matters blog you cited wherein I explain how media matters is comparing apples to oranges, and how therefore their 'debunking' of Noonan is bunk.
In May Noonan said: Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.
In her Bombshell article Noonan said this:
Mr. Hull told House investigators that at some point in the winter of
2010-11, Ms. Lerner's senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the
publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the
applications would require further review:
Q: "Did [the senior adviser to Ms. Lerner] indicate to you whether she agreed with your recommendations?"
A: "She did not say whether she agreed or not. She said it should go to chief counsel."
Q: "The IRS chief counsel?"
A: "The IRS chief counsel."
In other words, this 'debunking' is a crock of baloney. She didn't say the same thing in May and July as this 'debunking' implies. The use of the word bombshell is appropriate because the testimony revealed the specifics regarding how the Tea Party cases were handled differently than cases receiving normal scrutiny, and the testimony indicates that the operation started almost immediately after the 2010 mid-term elections. This article glosses over the difference between the IRS officials knowing about the matter in August of 2011, and them initiating the operation and knowing about it in the winter after the 2010 elections. We also know the name of the official and the name of the specific office involved. It's obvious that nothing less than a notarized confession written by Obama and all his collaborators will suffice for the media matters crowd. No matter how much circumstantial evidence piles up that indicates this was a political operation with the purpose of tying up conservative groups so they couldn't effect the 2012 election, you'll just keep your little circle jerk going. The testimony given Thursday destroys your talking points wherein you claim 'progressive groups were targeted too'.
I have no doubt that despite the above stated facts, Obama lovers will continue to cite the media matters article as 'proof' that Noonan's "bombshell" should be ignored. It's absolutely Orwellian.
#1 Posted by Joe Michael, CJR on Mon 22 Jul 2013 at 04:52 PM
There's also a lot of difference between knowing that "high level IRS officials knew about something", and someone revealing the name of the specific office involved, and the knowledge that the office involved is headed by a political appointee. Most high level officials at the IRS are not political appointees. It's the difference between there being evidence of there being a circumstantial connection to Obama and there only being a connection to apolitical IRS officials. That's a gigantic difference, even without any confessions (which we'll never have). Knowing what we do about Obama's personality and how and when this operation was initiated, and whose office was involved, combines to provide strong indications that this was a political operation targeting Obama's enemies. Not having a written confession from Obama on hand is no reason to stop an investigation that continues to produce evidence of a political operation utilizing IRS powers.
Obviously Columbia is not a hotbed of journalistic integrity. When your argument is reduced to 'media matters says so' you know you're dealing with one weak writer.
#2 Posted by Joe Michael, CJR on Mon 22 Jul 2013 at 05:10 PM
Still, we have a high up IRS employee pleading the fifth. Ryan seems to think that fact does not merit further investigation. I guess it is a good thing he was not investigating Watergate.
#3 Posted by Joe Johnson, CJR on Tue 23 Jul 2013 at 07:29 AM