The British politician, Edmund Burke is quoted in Thomas Carlyle’s book “Heros and Hero Worship in History” as follows. “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all.”
Edmund Burke would be aghast at the power and influence of the fourth estate today. Political columns are written within hours after an event has taken place and then transmitted across continents and even around the world. Within just a few more hours they are printed, distributed, read and accepted either as gospel or biased opinion. Television and radio report information to hundreds of millions, perhaps a couple of billion, as it takes place. Commentators add their own spin within minutes and add improbable elements to that spin as the story is analyzed and dissected among themselves and with “experts” until it becomes as worn as a months old newspaper passed among greedy readers.
It is indeed true today that the fourth estate is far more important than our government. The media has more power than ever before to get people elected or removed permanently from public service. Interestingly enough, media today is generally owned by massive conglomerates with elements that might be dependent upon elected officials for income from government contracts. Our government officials and the media consequently operate in total complicity to assure the health of their mutual interests. In this incestuous relationship the fourth estate has become more important, more powerful, totally complicit with and integrated with the government. It influences legislation much more than it did in Burke’s day. That influence is clearly for reasons much less pure today than they were in the 1700’s.
PeacockWatch is especially concerned about the objectives and intentions of MSNBC. In a recent article PeacockWatch took MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to task when he said of Obama’s speech at West Point “he went to maybe the enemy camp tonight”. On November 30th, 2009 we have Keith Olbermann saying in an MSNBC article on Afghanistan that “the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys”. Matthews later offered an apology for his statement. However, that apology was thrown into disbelief by the context of his overall comments. His apology falls into the category of total fantasy given his associate Keith Olbermann’s insult to our military defenders.
The dislike these two men have for the military becomes easy to understand when one remembers that it is the military men and women who have fought so hard against socialism and Marxism in the last few major wars. And socialism and Marxism are what MSNBC is supporting so strongly today when they champion the present administration and its group of czars. If our military is strong, and continues to be the most respected of all government agencies, then socialism and Marxism will have a more difficult time in the rest of the world and not have the full support in the U.S. that Obama and his spokespeople at MSNBC desire.
Just as part of the agenda of MSNBC is to denigrate our highly respected and heroic military it is also focused on supporting the public option health plan (See PeacockWatch article “NBC’s Support for ‘Public Option’ at an All Time High”) which is the cornerstone of the move toward socialism in the U.S. and “The Big Lie of Global Warming” which is a supporting strategy.
It has been reported, though only very minimally on MSNBC, that the health care program means a takeover by the government of another 1/6th of the U.S. economy which would be the dream of any avowed socialist. It was also recently reported by the NY Times and CBS (with great publicity from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann) that support for the health care public option according to a December 4th through 8th poll is now at 59% with only 29% opposed. On the contrary, a Bloomberg poll during the same period, and not mentioned at all by MSNBC, shows that 62% of Americans are mostly pessimistic about the benefit of a health care bill that Congress would pass. A Quinnipiac University poll as reported by the Washington Times shows 52% of voters oppose and 38% support the current Congressional health care reform bill. There are many other polls with varying results but MSNBC consistently reports only on those that support the current administration for which they are the primary media outlet and from which their parent organization receives great financial favor.
Edmund Burke was right about the importance of the “fourth Estate”. One wonders how corrupt the media was in the mid-1700’s and if elements of it were as strongly influenced by a particular party as MSNBC so clearly is today. Whatever the answer, it is clear that MSNBC and its commentators Olbermann and Matthews have it as key objectives to denigrate our military through subtle and not so subtle opinion commentary and to report only that information supporting the take over of health care by the federal government. Those two key MSNBC objectives support one overarching Obama administration goal of transforming the United States of America into a socialist empire as quickly as possible.
