In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing the media flushed its credibility down the toilet when it valued breaking information first over reporting the facts. Remember CNN’s John King proclaiming a ‘dark skinned’ man had been arrested? Or the misinformation about the number of people killed and injured?
The federal government, meanwhile, took political correctness to a whole new level – initially refraining from calling the attack ‘terrorism’ and refusing to acknowledge the Tsarnaev brothers’ Muslim ties.
The incompetence has spilled over into week two of the investigation. Since TheBlaze broke the story of the Saudi national, Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, who was initially considered a ‘person of interest’ in the Marathon bombing investigation before later being downgraded to merely a ‘witness,’ the media has been silent, while the government has been in denial.
As TheBlaze reported, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano finally admitted (kind of) the Saudi was in fact placed on a watch list, but her statement was inconsistent at best:
NAPOLITANO: He was not on a watch list. What happened is — this student was, really when you back it out, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was never a subject. He was never even really a person of interest. Because he was being interviewed, he was at that point put on a watch list, and then when it was quickly determined he had nothing to do with the bombing, the watch listing status was removed.
“We have like 10 sources on this,” Glenn said on radio this morning of TheBlaze’s investigation.
“It is amazing,” Pat added. “All of the media sources who just blindly believe what Janet Napolitano has said, when what Janet Napolitano has said has changed almost every day.”
“Journalists, you shouldn’t trust the Bush Administration, and you shouldn’t trust this guy’s administration. You shouldn’t trust them,” Glenn said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t go after them all the time. It means that you approach everything with a healthy does of skepticism.”
The art of investigative reporting has clearly been lost, if mainstream news outlets are now willing to take the government at its word on cases as sensitive as this.
“They just keep saying, ‘Well, I called the government and they said they just totally screwed up and put a random Saudi on the watch list. Oops,’” Stu joked.
And if the government really is just putting random Saudi Arabians on terror watch lists because they are Saudi Arabian and, therefore, a threat, the government is admitting racism!
“We’re supposed to be like, ‘Oh, they’re just racist. Put all the Saudis on the watch list. It’s all right. There’s nothing there. They just put random Saudis on the terror list whenever they interview them,’” Stu said.
“We pointed that out before. Nobody on the right is even taking this approach. Humiliate them for their racism. They don’t want to be called racist, so go for it,” Glenn explained. “If that’s their answer, if you believe what they are saying, then that’s racist.”
Glenn went on to explain that he knows many respected journalists at the major networks who put together reports on this story, only to be told that their stories would not be published or brought to air.
“What kills me is that they are now trying to make this into a conspiracy theory,” Glenn said. “People are like, ‘He has no facts.’ No, I have the documentation. I have the sources. We have as much as Woodward and Bernstein had. We have the sources.”
“Its pretty amazing how much they’ll dismiss,” Pat responded.
“In the end you’ll destroy yourselves. I just hope you don’t destroy our country at the same time,” Glenn said of the media. “We are in it for America. Now is there a single person out there that is also in it for America? ‘Well, we called the DHS already. The Department of Homeland Security said there is nothing to worry about.’ Oh, okay, whoo. You guys should get a nap in. That sounds like a tough day of investigative reporting.”