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When Media and Journalism Diverge

Ruben Navarrett Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- You'll have to excuse some of my journalism colleagues. They're not themselves lately. 

When someone is attacked by a mob of critics, we're not supposed to pile on additional and unnecessary criticism.

It used to be unseemly to beat a dead horse; now it's how too many in the Fourth Estate spend much of their time -- especially if the horse is really an elephant.

All too often the folks who get piled on by the media are conservatives and Republicans.

People like Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. In a previous incarnation as a reporter for CBS News many years ago, O'Reilly was sent to cover foreign conflicts in Argentina and El Salvador. Current and former journalists have accused the cable news host of exaggerating, even lying, about his experiences there. 

O'Reilly was also a reporter for a Dallas television station, where he attempted to look into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. CNN -- whose weekly news program "Reliable Sources" has dedicated two shows to O'Reilly's foibles -- obtained a tape recording that seems to contradict an item that he mentioned in his best-selling book "Killing Kennedy."

 

I don't get it. Why is this even a story? O'Reilly was once a journalist, but that suit doesn't fit him very well anymore. 

Last month, the person at the bottom of the pile was Rudy Giuliani, who learned that Pat Benatar was right. Love really is a battlefield. During a Feb. 18 dinner for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the former New York City mayor acknowledged that what he was about to say was horrible. But he foolishly said it anyway.

"I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America," Giuliani told a private gathering. "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." 

What Giuliani said was repugnant, but the reaction by the media was excessive. After a barrage of columns, editorials, analyses and commentary, Giuliani tried to explain what he meant in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. 

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