{"id":36804,"date":"2013-06-19T06:15:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T11:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=36804"},"modified":"2013-06-19T06:31:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T11:31:11","slug":"their-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=36804","title":{"rendered":"Their Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got this email from a friend of mine who works in a sector that interacts closely with government:<\/p>\n

Earlier this year staff members of a Minnesota Congressional Delegation met with workers of a state agency to discuss the sequester. They asked the gathered workers to relate stories of how the sequester was hurting Minnesotans. None of the gathered workers could think of any immediate problems but assured the delegation that they would send along anything they could.<\/p>\n

Now lo and behold this story in the Strib<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mitch, perhaps someone will take up the mantle of “the sequester hurt very few.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And oh, the tidings of woe the Strib “found”. I’ll let you read it on your own.<\/p>\n

Now, I have no hard evidence on which to base my conclusion; just a couple of observations. <\/p>\n

First: Journalists rarely stumble upon their own stories. The myth of the old school gumshoe reporter hanging around city hall or the Capitol looking for isolated threads of a story to start pulling does <\/em>exist – largely in places with Republican politicians. But they get stories fed to them, too, by special interests. <\/p>\n

So why did theStribfind tales of sequestration horror that nobody else could find? Because somebody – meaning “some group or organization that either lives off of government, or works to further the politics of those who do” – fed them the story.<\/p>\n

Nope, no evidence of that. But I’d bet money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got this email from a friend of mine who works in a sector that interacts closely with government: Earlier this year staff members of a Minnesota Congressional Delegation met with workers of a state agency to discuss the sequester. They asked the gathered workers to relate stories of how the sequester was hurting Minnesotans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tc-media-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36804"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36841,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36804\/revisions\/36841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}