@SharylAttkisson: Now She Tells Us?

What happens when a journalist’s political ideology has a head-on collision with his or her professional integrity? Well, he or she spikes the ol’ integrity, of course.

Or so it has seemed for longer than I care to recall.

Everyone knows that correspondent Sharyl Attkisson left CBS News a while ago in dissent.

Now she speaks out.

Again.

Washington Free Beacon:

“Any journalist…would agree… that there’s pressure coming to bear on journalists for just doing their job in ways that have never come to bear before….It’s particularly aggressive under the Obama administration. I think it’s a campaign that’s very well organized – this design to have sort of a chilling effect, and to some degree has been somewhat successful…,” Attkisson explained to Kurtz.

She added that there is a large amount of pushback from the Obama administration when unfavorable truths are discovered and reported about.

“Rather than providing the information that I think they’re required to provide, the public information that we own and answering questions, it’s just a lot of obfuscation, accusations, saying things are phony scandals, bogus, not real, giving misinformation and false information… and then modifying it when they’re caught doing so…,” she said. [read it all]

Well, who ya gonna believe, Barack or your lyin eyes, Sharyl? Huh? Huh?

Look, we don’t want to be too hard on Ms. Attkisson but Barack Obama is the least vetted president in American history. Nearly 40 percent the American public believe the president is hiding important information about his background.

How does a nation find bipartisan ground with questions like that hanging out there unresolved?

Yet the media, Ms. Attkisson among them, turned their heads and ran off to crowdsource Sarah Palin’s emails for purely ideological reasons.

As a regular guy I’ll admit I have always been dubious of the media. Even as a small boy, Uncle Walter creeped me out. There was no way I wanted to be caught doing peepee in the lavatory while that man was in the room.

But since the 1990s, and the Clinton administration, the ethics of the media in this country have been reprehensible. Let’s not pretend this all began with Barack Obama.

Why is it Ms. Attkisson is just now figuring this out? Or did the whole 77 cents thing come into play here?

At what point does one make a decision to speak the truth in spite of the damage to one’s career?

When the severance package exceeds the risk?

Americans should insist on full cradle-to-grave disclosure for anyone running for national office; no sealed records, no obfuscation, no he-said-she-said, but full disclosure.

If we had had that when Barack Obama threw his hat in the ring, he would not be president today. Of that we can all be certain.

Perhaps until then Fourth Estate could actually do its job?

UPDATED

Reblogged @That Mr. G Guy. Thanks Mike!