Maddow: VA Is ‘Problem in Progress’ That Media’s Treating Like a Sudden Scandal

Rachel Maddow has been one of the few people on cable news during the Obama administration frequently drawing attention to important veterans’ issues, and Wednesday night, as she discussed the current VA outcry, she said the media’s treating this like a brand-new scandal as opposed to something that’s been a problem for years and years.

Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said it’s “sad” how it took weeks and weeks of media coverage for the White House to speak out, and even with that, the response has been very weak so far. Maddow called it a strange story to cover because “so much of the ‘this is a scandal’ coverage is covering this as if this is a totally new problem, as if something like this has never happened before.”

She pointed out that issues have plagued the VA for years, but the media gave them little to no attention. And so, now that they’ve finally gotten around to the huge recent news about VA mismanagement, “it feels to me like it’s the media coming upon a problem in progress and calling it a scandal, rather than something brand-new being uncovered.”

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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