Orson Scott Card goes nuclear on the EneMedia

Wow. Just wow. The author of “Ender’s Game” takes no prisoners. Read the whole thing for yourself. ANd keep in mind: OSC is not a Republican or conservative, but an old-school Democrat.

To you newspeople at CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC. To you journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, at newspapers all over America.

You did it. You won. You were able to get Barack Obama his second term.

You knew that if you told the American people the truth, they would not have reelected this man.

Americans don’t vote to reelect a commander-in-chief who abandons our soldiers and agents and ambassadors when they’re under enemy fire.

But you, confident that you are much wiser than the American people, you decided we had no reason to think about this during the election.

[…]

Barack Obama is still a liar — you didn’t change that, you merely hid it.

Barack Obama is still the selfish, cowardly commander-in-chief who abandons American public servants — you didn’t change him, nor did you give him any reason to change.

[…] Even though his administration, his FEMA, did at least as badly as the Bush administration did after Katrina, and with far less excuse, you did not run endless coverage of the people’s suffering, the way you did with Bush.

We have an exact comparison now. We know that you air negative video and print negative stories only when you don’t like the president involved; when you support the president, when he’s on your team, you downplay the negatives, you find other people to blame. You become “impartial.”

[…] There are still a few real news outlets — a few reporters, a few stations, a few newspapers, and one cable news network that remember what journalism used to mean.

You have to attack Fox News and sneer at them and accuse them of bias, don’t you — because they’re actually doing the job you merely pretend to do. They shame you by their genuinely balanced coverage, so you have to lie and accuse them of being what you are: ideological hacks, providing propaganda in order to advance a cause, while hiding the unhelpful truth.

So let me ask you a question[…]:

If Barack Obama had a propaganda minister with the power to shut you down if you ran stories that embarrassed him or his administration, would your station, your network, your newspaper, your magazine still be in business?

[…]Everybody at Fox News would have been jailed, and Fox News would have been shut down. But you already do everything you can to get people not to listen to Fox, so the actions of such a propaganda minister would merely make official what you already try to accomplish by other means.

Don’t you dare say I’m lying or exaggerating, because the Democrats did try to shut down conservative talk radio, and you supported them in that effort, allowing them to get away with calling the proposed action “fairness.”

You go along with the big lie every day. You did it obviously and openly in these last weeks before the election, allowing Barack Obama to conceal, cover up, lie — all because, like good obedient party flacks, you knew that nothing was more important than keeping the Beloved Leader in power.

If Barack Obama were a dictator with the power to control the media, you would not have to change your news coverage in any way.

[…] Democracy only works when the people have enough true information to make their own choices. But when somebody decides that an informed public might not make the right choice, and so withholds from them the information that would lead them to make “mistakes” and elect the “wrong people” — well, we don’t actually have democracy, do we?

We have rule by an elite that makes our decisions for us, and keeps us from knowing information that “isn’t good for us.”

Because you know best, don’t you? You and your friends who all think alike and hate and fear anyone who thinks differently from you — while priding yourselves on “tolerance.” You will dismiss what I’m saying here as “bitterness” because my candidate did not win the election.

What you don’t get is that [Romney] was not my candidate. He was merely the only choice left to me, once I understood that the Beloved Leader is the most incompetent and untrustworthy commander-in-chief that America has ever had.

Once I understood that the Beloved Leader will lie about decisions of his that killed people, and that you would help him cover up his high crimes and misdemeanors — then whom else could I turn to, but the candidate the Republicans offered to replace him?

By sheer luck, the Republicans transcended themselves and offered us a decent, intelligent, moderate, honest man of proven ability.

But you helped support the Beloved Leader in his lies and attacks on that decent man, and enough people believed those lies and attacks that the Beloved Leader held onto power.

Next time the Republicans will probably offer one of their usual clowns. But then we’ll take him gratefully, because by then we’ll be fed up with the consequences of the ideologically-driven, arrogant, dishonest Beloved Leader that you foisted on us.

So yes, CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and all the rest of you in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: You won. [Wikipedia link mine — NCT]

But we know you now. We know just how low you’ll go, how compliant you will be with the Beloved Leader.

Just because brown-shirted thugs aren’t beating your opponents in the streets doesn’t mean you aren’t every bit as much the enemies of democracy as any Nazi or Bolshevik ever was.

Telling us the truth and letting us make informed decisions — that was your job. That’s why the press gets special protection in the Constitution. That’s why you’re called “the fourth estate.”

Democracy did not fail us in the presidential election of 2012.

You did.

As Steven Brill put it way back: When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good.