When Did The News Become the news?

Maybe it was always thus. Maybe the news media and the news were always Clark Kent and Superman but they at least wore glasses and pretended to be separate and distinct characters. 

Maybe the Cronkites and the Bradlees and the Sulzbergers were not essentially different from their descendants, but they at least pretended to be reporters. Maybe they were just a little more suave, a little more subtle, a little more sophisticated. None of them ever proclaimed, "I am Kal-El and I come from the planet Krypton!" Maybe they were just good at keeping secrets to themselves.

Can we pinpoint when the News became the news? I cannot do so but I can tell you it was a fairly recent phenomenon. If I were pressed to give an immediate answer I would say that holes appeared in the dike during the Reagan Administration and the dam broke in 2008. At any rate, the dam did break and the fourth estate flooded all those other estates as well. 

Sometimes a snap shot tells the story better than a video. The ever-insightful, always profound, always truthful Daniel Greenfield offers a revelation that succinctly captures the state of American news media.

But this time the media wasn’t just manufacturing a messaging consensus through its echo chamber. Instead it was directly involved in a conspiracy that eavesdropped on the political opposition and that is attempting to overturn the results of the 2016 election using not only dirty tricks, but the government.

Media smears are nothing new. Media coups are a whole other thing.

James Clapper, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, allegedly coordinated with CNN. And then took a job at CNN. Clapper isn’t alone. Obama’s CIA boss, John Brennan, is over at NBC News. Josh Campbell, Comey's assistant, is at CNN. The three arms of the Deep State offer interchangeable employment. Much as Fusion GPS was paying the wifeof a top DOJ official to investigate Trump.

This is what organizational integration looks like. And that’s what a Deep State looks like.

CIA or CNN? Who can tell the difference?

The investigation of the investigation has made it very clear that top CIA and FBI people were coordinating with the media. When CNN knows what’s going on at the FBI, that’s a leak. But when the FBI knows what’s going on at CNN, that’s close coordination.  

Spygate depended on close coordination between Clinton’s people, the media and Obama’s intel folks. But it was the media that lubricated the alliance of the Democrat Deep State behind the coup.