The Orwellian truth controllers semi-admit their Orwellian truth control

An amazing passage in a New York Times article posted today, September 15:

The upheaval over an anti-Islam video has suddenly become Mr. Obama’s most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season, and a range of analysts say it presents questions about central tenets of his Middle East policy: Did he do enough during the Arab Spring to help the transition to democracy from autocracy? Has he drawn a hard enough line against Islamic extremists? Did his administration fail to address security concerns?

These questions come at an inopportune time domestically as Mr. Obama enters the fall campaign with a small lead in polls. His policies escaped serious scrutiny in the initial days after the attack that killed four Americans in Libya last week, in part because of the furor over a statement by Mitt Romney accusing the president of sympathizing with the attackers. White House officials said they recognized that if not for Mr. Romney’s statement, they would have been the ones on the defensive.

But who created the (utterly artificial) furor over Romney’s (perfectly legitimate) remarks that, as was the furor-creators’ intention, helped the president escape scrutiny over his policies? It was the media themselves, led by the Times itself. The Times reports as something that happened “out there” the very thing it made happen.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 15, 2012 10:53 PM | Send