by the Shaun F. for the Left Coast Rebel

I can think of no greater way to open this piece than to begin with the following Mike Huckabee quote I found in a Politico article:

“Journalism had grown increasingly dependent on spin-doctor spoon feeding and the circular and insular quoting of other journalists instead of attempting to locate and quote.”

Though Huckabee is right, his comments represent only a fraction of the MSMs incestuous, spin-doctor demagoguery. What is killing journalism is more than just the circular quoting of fellow journalists, but the web of misleading information that feeds the statist, propaganda apparatus and is funneled into the news print that millions of citizens read everyday.

I recently found an excellent example in the NY Times.

If you read David Barstow’s recent piece “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right,” you may have noticed the following reference to militia activity in the Tea Party movement.

David Barstow writes:

“Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement.”

The author of the piece, David Barstow, is grossly hypocritical, but also grossly misleading in his claims against the group Oath Keepers. David Barstow’s pen writes so matter-of-factly he entices you to think that this accusation is beyond dispute. Though Barstow doesn’t cite the source of his claim, it is likely that it originated with Larry Keller at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Fall 2009 report.

What is interesting is that although the report alleges a growing rightwing militia movement and tries to use the growth of Oath Keepers as proof, the SPLC compiled no evidence of the sort, only baseless accusations. The report leans heavily on the profiling outlined in a retracted DHS report on rightwing domestic terrorism to make SPLC’s case against the group. For example, the purpose of the Oath Keepers is to encourage military and police force members to swear to uphold the constitution and the oaths they swore when taking office. SPLC argues that since the retracted DHS report includes a profile that militia groups may focus their recruiting on military and police force personnel and Oath Keepers targets the same citizens, then Oath Keepers must be a militia group.

I don’t know much about Oath Keepers, nor is my piece in any way an endorsement, but this militia connection seems egregiously unfounded for a Pulitzer Price winner such as Barstow to report.

So let’s go back through the web of leftist disinformation. The DHS creates a vague and unsubstantiated profile for rightwing domestic terrorists, DHS retracts their report, SPLC uses the retracted DHS report to report on a group that loosely fits the profile outlined, and David Barstow reports the reckless accusations from SPLC as fact.

These examples are easy to come by. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has an excellent piece trying to head off what promises to be the next big, reckless report on the growing rightwing violence in America.