innocent bystanders

Because we couldn't possibly have had a role in the problem we're criticizing!!

David Sirota complains about the media:

[T]he Newsweek reporting team is constantly referring to "reporters" and "the press" and "the media" - as if Newsweek reporters aren't a part (and a leading part) of those things - as if they are innocent bystanders. More broadly, the way they portray it, candidates and political operatives are larger than life heroes or villains who make Big Decisions and Face Consequences, while the media is a herd of lobotomized automatons that are so mindless and innocent and pure, that they cannot be held culpable for anything at all. Indeed, according to Newsweek, the entire political media is an innocent bystander to politics. And Newsweek creates this portrayal as if somehow the reporters writing their story have nothing to do with "the press" they are writing about.

They've been doing this forever, with the Clintons as the prime example. Digby notes that they're set to do so all over again:

The press is beside itself concern trolling the Obama administration about how the "Clinton Circus" will ruin him, replete with hand wringing and despair about how unfair it all is. But if it is a circus, it's because the media make it one.

These posts could be useful reading to encourage students to criticize passive voice, assigning agency, and deconstruction.