In what could qualify as the biggest non-story of the year, the mainstream media has been reporting on the utterly normal behavior of a sitting governor using a helicopter to save time:
Blunt-talking New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has made ethics and government reform a centerpiece of his Administration, raised some eyebrows yesterday with his decision to take a state helicopter to his son’s baseball game yesterday afternoon. Moreover, he left the game in the fifth inning, presumably to make it back to Princeton for his meeting with a group of Iowa activists who had flown to New Jersey to try to convince the governor to run for president.
Governor Christie scandalously decided that his time constraints may require him to skip New Jersey traffic from time to time by using the very transportation afforded to him as governor.
One can be assured that the investigative journalists at ABC were not quite as quick to point out that Christie’s predecessor, Jon Corzine, spent a fair bit more of the tax payers dollars and not for something as admirable as making his son’s baseball game (via Cubachi):
Corzine wire transferred hundreds of millions of dollars, “Jersey style” to democrat friends across the state, and how 65% of the money NJ had for this fiscal year, was already spent. And now he found out two days after his inauguration that the $500 million surplus he was told by Corzine that NJ had in it’s bank, was actually a $2.2 billion deficit.
For comparison, the Governor’s helicopter was $12.5 million and will be used primarily for official functions not only by Christie, but by his successors as well.
Meanwhile, as has been noted here and elsewhere, Weinergate is finally getting the attention it merits only because of the unrelenting efforts of new media. The old media is trying their hardest to prevent Rep. Weiner from being treated the same way they treated Mark Foley when helping win the House for the Democrats in 2006.
Whether it’s shifting the focus away from the Congressional member to Andrew Breitbart…
[youtube rNRKbZgOt4U nolink]
…or CNN advising to “Play it down, let others play it up.” “Others” being journalists, presumably.
Even Jon Stewart had to acknowledge that the MSM is falling woefully short of journalistic standards when compared with the blogosphere:
(The whole clip is good but fast-forward to 4:26 for Jon’s media tweak)
As Stewart notes:
“Wow…those blogs! That sounds a lot like…reporting!”
Indeed it does. Perhaps less stories about Governors taking rides in transportation that is afforded to them as a result of their elected position and more about the fact that the Democrats haven’t passed a budget in two years? Or perhaps cover the sex scandal involving lewd photos and a sitting representative?
I find it doubtful that our esteemed press will suddenly take an interest in hard news, preferring instead to rehash the same tired templates that they’ve been pushing for three years now. As for their motivation to target a governor going to a baseball game? Your guess is as good as mine.
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