Taken For A Ride
I don't know about watching the Fred Thompson announcement on the Leno show. My midnight TV watching is usually reserved for ESPN re-runs of the World Series of Poker and don't know if it's worth it to switch to watching what smells like a sure loser.
Amazing, though, isn't it just how much of a free media ride Good Old Lobbyist Uncle Fred has gotten over the past few months. He's saved millions in paid advertising, the shrewd old dude.
Then again, it isn't that hard to play the press like a comfy personal fiddle. Once you've got its habits and protocols figured out the whole endeavor becomes quite Pavlovian.
In that context, I point you to Jay Rosen's smart analysis of the latest episode in White House propaganda freely amplified by a herd of pressniks. The Prez packs off to Anbar for eight hours and the packed-to-the-gills press plane is brought along in tow. There's not much to report -- actually there's NOTHING to report-- except what the White House stage managers have choreographed but everyone's obediently along for the ride.
Rosen gets to the core of the problem. Contrary to some knee-jerk whining about the media, it's not about a conscious collusion of the fourth estate, nor is the problem simply one of perks, access or servile compliance. It's more complicated than, for example, Glenn Greenwald's assertion that the White House press corps has some sort of "affection" for or "identification" with the Republican Powerful (These same reporters have under different circumstances shown similar deference to Democrats).
Nope. As Rosen argues, the media's ancillary role to power is built right into the current model of contemporary American journalism -- something he has on other occasions called "the contraption-- that odd mid-20th newspaper industry invention of on-the-surface stenographic he said/she said reporting.
Says Rosen in his post on the new Off The Bus project which he co-founded with Arianna:
I think "overwhelmed by" explains more than Glenn's "identify with" or "affection for." In my view the press has suffered from not only a failure of nerve under Bush, and a default in leadership, but a dearth of imagination. Most of the people in the capital press -- the correspondents, their editors and bosses -- could not imagine what it was going to take to maintain any sort of dignified watchdog role under Bush the Radical. They never dreamed that their routines could be so ill-matched to the moment... From this point of view, the reason Washington journalists don't "call them on it" (to use a phrase heard a lot in these discussions) is not that they identify with the GOP, or want to maintain their access, or cannot bear to lose their ticket to Washington cocktail parties, or have to obey corporate masters who naturally favor the pro-business Republicans; rather, it's that "calling them on it" in any consistent way would require a dramatic departure from known methods of Washington journalism. It would mean answering Hadley's question, "Would you guys like us to come without you?" in the affirmative.This last line is a reference to National Security Advisor Steven Hadley's invite to the press to board the latest Bush plane to nowhere. From my perspective, there's no question that a good reporter , often enough, must get on that plane, or that campaign bus to get the story. But how much richer our journalism would be if --sometimes-- the invitation got declined. Cryptic P.S. Look for more from me on this subject very soon.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:39 am
While one could certainly find a scrapbook or two filled with puff peices on Bill and Hill; the notion that the national press does not swing right is laughable. But, as Chris Matthews said of his overexposer of Ann Coulter “we’re all in the same Business.”
September 6th, 2007 at 5:30 am
“(These same reporters have under different circumstances shown similar deference to Democrats).”
Yeah – any of them, like David Broder, who were working back in 1963.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Its not a matter of left or right, its a matter of privilige and perks, like in any other industry.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:31 am
thats privilege.
Critical thinking is not taught in j-schools. Inverted pyramids and kissing ass.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Critical thinking is not taught in j-schools. Inverted pyramids and kissing ass.
Is that true Marc? Do you set out big vats of Kool-Aid for your students to drink?
Also if kissing ass is part of the curriculum, please let me if Paz Vega and/or Monica Bellucci join the faculty.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:24 am
What Marc teaches sounds different from most j-schools – “justice and journalism” etc. I meant the school I myself attended (a double major with philosophy) in the late 90s, and the stories I’ve heard from many j-schools.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Tom Wolfe beat you to this by years, Marc: take a look at “The Right Stuff,” and specifically Wolfe’s extended metaphor of The Press as “the Victorian gentleman.”
September 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Wow, Marc. A home run of a post, er, royal flush of a post – beats every other hand, hands down. I’ve been following Glenn Greenwald’s discussion of the press’ failures, documented as well by Matt Yglesias’ and others. But, I think Jay Rosen nails it, and likely I’d have missed it if you hadn’t called my attention to it. There are just so many available mouse clicks in a day. I had some trouble with Glenn’s affection thesis, but there wasn’t a better one to be had anywhere else. Most see the phenomena, but no one else before Glenn had dared to advance a basis on which the phenomena operated. I’m taken with Rosen’s observation of the difference between what the press expected as the pattern of political cycles, and the degree to which the Bush administration had departed from it; the conventional wisdom, or working theory, didn’t hold and the press was slow to see the difference. And, as a wise commenter to Rosen’s post suggests, the same may hold true for Congress.
As Rosen advances an overwhelmed thesis in opposition to Glenn’s affection thesis. I am stuck on this element of Rosen’s:
Was there not a time when the press was considered to be anything but dignified? But, I suspect that’s a minor quibble in his overall premise. The critical element that Rosen nails is the press’ inability to recognize the change in the pattern, adapt to the change, and match it with a new pattern of their own. But, taking a longer view of history, of which the press writes the first draft, that’s not a surprise.
This is one of these times when I could just kick myself for one of my spurts of ruthless office cleaning. There was a book. A small treatise written by a Spaniard, the title of which IIRC was On Liberty. No, not Mill. It would have been written about the 1940s, I think. It’s premise was the transition of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. A sub-theme was the absence of language for historians to write of that transition. There had been nothing like it before. The person who referred me to the work used it as a basis for the inability of the “world” to comprehend the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. This, of course, is the problem with a major break in an established pattern; the identify, discriminate, associate chain fails when a new phenomena emerges in a discontinuous way. As it turns out, the Middle East wasn’t the only entity to experience Bush’s Shock and Awe campaign.
My own frustration with the press came to a head with, what I hope was, a throw away line Joel Achenbach appended to a column he wrote for the WaPo: I Really Need You to Read This Article, Okay? http://tinyurl.com/yv6mc6
The premise of the piece was the future of the newspaper industry, the issues of journalism on the internet, and click throughs, and marketing. What sent me careening over the edge was this:
That resulted in an exchange of animated emails, at which I was at an obvious disadvantage and out of my element. His understanding of media operations is decidedly different, than my experience as a reader. But, I do know what I want from a newspaper, and I know I’m not getting it. Articulating with clarity what I’m not getting is more difficult. I have a sense of the transcription press, but I’m at a loss to ask more than, “Why do I have to go to the blogoshpere to find out there is this huge disconnect between what the media reports, and what appears to be really happening?” That, naturally, only leads to the us versus them argument between the mainstream press and the blogger world as to who is more legitimate.
Hope for reconciliation between the blog world and the print media world, for this reader, lies in a framework alluded to by Matt Yglesias when he referenced his ability to leverage a story based on the sound reporting done by McClatchy. (I regret I can’t find that link.) That hope, of course, doesn’t solve the “sound reporting” problem which Jeff Rosen takes head on. You can’t solve sound reporting from the inside of a weird bubble where the closer you are to an event, the less likely you are to see what’s actually happening. This could be why McClatchy has been better able to see the big picture; with their available resources, they couldn’t be everywhere the rest of the mainstream press could go, ergo, they actually got a better view.
Interesting. All very interesting. Thanks for this post, Marc.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:17 am
K Nardy: While one could certainly find a scrapbook or two filled with puff peices on Bill and Hill; the notion that the national press does not swing right is laughable.
(Shaking my head in dismay.)
Try this scrapbook: http://www.newsbusters.org/
September 6th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Of course Brent Bozell, who had to pay a libel settlement to the WWF, is a paragon of objectivity only in Cloud Cuckooland.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:36 am
RP, Bozell didn’t write what I linked and such reference is just one more stupid attempt by you to avoid dealing with truth. Read the posts and tell me where they are wrong about media bias. (Like CBS and The NY Times never had to pay libel settlements.)
You are either mentally or honesty challenged. Maybe both.
Also, don’t go far afield from Marc’s topic to defend the media as being biased to the right.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Marc:
As if the Republicans are the only ones guilty of this.
As to bias, how about theses stats:
September 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Much like the wise men viewing an elephant there is much to savor in both Rosen’s and Greenwald’s pieces. But I’m afraid that Marc is too gentle on the Great and the Good in the Media world. The idea that the WH Press is composed largely of poodles and stenographers is now just about a cliche even to them (Helen Thomas excluded of course – which is why she’s been banished to the outer circles of that hell).
But Marc goes astray when he says that these same reporters have shown similiar defference to Democrats. Reg is close when he conflats Dave Broder and 1963. No doubt the WH Press Corps of that era (a much smaller crew) LOVED JFK and covered for him shamelessly. To this dayKennedy buddy Ben Bradlee insists that he had no inkling of Kennedy’s indescretions (something hard to believe as his rival Niel MacNiel at TIME says they were preparing a story at the time of his assasination). But that was then and this is now.
As it happens VANITY FAIR has just published a piece by Marty Peretz’s daughter on the treatment that Al Gore got in 1999 – 2000 and it names names (C.C. Connely, Maureen Dowd) and kicks ass (like the pres I guess). And while Eric Alterman of “Media Matters” is right that the article doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said by Bob Sommerby ad nauseum at the HOWLER it will be a revelation to a larger audience that will be getting it for the first time. And there it is. The unequal treatment of Bush and Gore is simply stunning. As Sommerby says, with great truth, it is largely because of the coverage of the man-child from Crawford that we’re stuck with this maifestly unqualified person in the Oval Office.
And do we really have to look at Bill or Hil? It is obvious that what exists here is what Digby has named “The Clinton Rules” which is that there is one set of rules for the Clintons and another for others. Look at the Norman Hsu “Scandal”. Hil gave the money back but she is getting flack for his deeds. I don’t like her taking money from lobbyists but she’s hardly alone there. Meanwhile Mitt Romney’s FINANCE CHAIRMAN has a 23 count indictment for financial irregularities but he isn’t on the fron page.
And its not just Clinton. Recently one of the boys on the bus – sorry name escapes me and I’m too lazy to look it up – told his peers at the POLITICO (which is bankrolled by a Bushie “Ranger” BTW) that he, like most of the political press hates John Edwards and thinks he’s a phony. Maybe that’s why we’ve heard so much about his $400 haircut and his big, big house as if having dough means you can’t want to help the poor (FDR phone home!).
These same people disliked Clinton. He was smarter than they were and made them feel inferior. And Gore was a goody two shoes and made Maureen angry.
There it is. Digby (again) got it right. The DC political press is like Junior HS. A bunch of Heathers deciding who is cool and who is not. Karl Rove is cool. He plays mean tricks. John Edwards is not – he should stay home and watch his wife die.
George Bush used to be cool. He was a man’s man. Chris Matthews wanted to hang out witrh him. Now Chris prefers Fred and Rudy. They’re manly men!
That’s why they’re losing their readers and viewers. The public don’t buy this crap. They sure as hell ain’t going along with the surge. What’s exasperating about the Dems is they still are enthralled by the scribblings of these fools. Ah life in the bubble!
September 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am
I hope everyone went to GM Roper’s article which alleges “Left wing” media bias in the US media. It is from a Canadian site called “Lifesite” and in the section “About us” describes its group as a Canadian “Pro-life” site with interests in stem-cells, euthanasia, abortion, assisted suicide.
You will find no disussion of the UCLA Prof’s methodology and precious few examples. But I wonder if the news outlets targeted might have played those issues down the middle? Whatr do you think?
Stilll I have to give Roper points for originality.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am
The New Republic’s Thomas Edsall reckons the party identification of the Washington Post’s newsroom favors the Democrats by between 15 and 25 to one.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Woody,
Brent Bozell is the head of the Media Research Center, which sponsors Newsbusters. You linked to the entire site. Nothing mentally challenging there, except for your inability to click the about button on their page.
Impeaching the source is precisely what you are attempting to do here. That’s what I’m also attempting to do.
Bozell is an ideologue. His father was an ideologue. Bias is in the eye of the beholder.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Voting Democrat neither makes one left wing or even liberal, it is simply a matter of the bourgeois DC culture that looks down on Repub trogs, but finding them “likable.” Its more than just a junior high school, its backstage at a rock concert.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:39 am
All I got from Woody’s link was a cartoon about Jay Leno and Fred Thompson.
Brent Bozell believes the media is too liberal ? No shit ? What will we learn next ? Pat Buchanan thinks the country’s too full of Mexicans ? (Incidentally, Bozell is so unbiased an observer that he chaired Ol’ Pat’s finance committee when he ran in the GOP primaries in ’92. Of course, Bozell’s still a nutcase who fabricates rationales to continue the war in Iraq – “Not a civil war!” according to BB – a crackpot cause his erstwhile comrade Pat abandoned.)
When Elizabeth Edwards called out Ann Coulter for calling her husband a “faggot”, Brent Bozell stood up for free speech by…comparing Elizabeth Edwards to Hugo Chavez. Bozell: “This attack on Ann Coulter, a conservative writer, is part of the liberals’ plan to squash free speech by conservatives. They want to silence Coulter, as well as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and many others. Hugo Chavez does this type of censoring in Venezuela—but in America, we don’t.”
Apparently Bozell believes that flaming lunatics calling people ugly names are beyond criticism if they’re attacking liberals. He wants free speech for the most vile of right-wing nutjobs but attacks anyone who criticizes them. That’s why the resident house wackjob here keeps linking to Bozell as proof of “liberal bias.” The guy’s a fellow Neanderthal and strokes Woody’s sweet spots. Linking to Bozell to discredit liberals is like linking to “People’s Daily World” to prove the perfidy of the Right.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:54 am
“The New Republic’s Thomas Edsall reckons the party identification of the Washington Post’s newsroom favors the Democrats by between 15 and 25 to one.”
That’s why the Washington Post has been such a fierce liberal opponent of Bush’s Iraq debacle.
Oh….wait a minute.
This argument about reporters party ID at the most prestigious big city dailies (which also just happen to be cities where the population votes overwhelmingly Democratic most of the time) doesn’t even qualify as entry-level analysis of the very real problems with most journalism . Stenography, “access journalism” and a bogus attempt to portray “objectivity” are certainly the most generic of the press’s failings. The class bias and, frankly, laziness of many reporters plays into it as well. Atrios had a post once about whining coming out of the White House press room. I believe Bush was out of town and there were no press conferences, so the White House press corps who weren’t traveling with him just sat around and complained that there wasn’t anything to do. Here they had time to actually scratch beneath the surface of issues beyond their daily press feeds and they conceived of their jobs as sitting on their ass in a holding pen for scribblers. Disgusting.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:57 am
RLoC, thanks for the reference to Vanity Fair. One of those pieces that is of sufficient length that I want to read it in print, and was grateful to see it’s available on line; http://tinyurl.com/yu963t
Without, having read it yet – it’s printing as I write – I struggle to agree with your argument about a press that sets out to trash/misrepresent a candidate, for what ever reason the press believes it has an advantage in doing so and, by your argument, succeeds – setting aside the 2000 election which was conferred on Bush by SCOTUS. I am reluctant to swallow whole your argument the press’ complicity in the trashing of Al Gore (or, swiftboating of John Kerry) was sufficient to swing the election(s) on its own. It fails to answer the question as to why a large number of voters weren’t swayed.
I think there are really two distinct pieces here; the who, and the how. Who is doing the reporting, and what is the structure under which the reporting is being done. I don’t mean to step in between you and Marc on the antics of Maureen Dowd or other specific writers, but I think Greenwald, Rosen, and Marc are trying to unravel elements of the context in which these players operate. I think this is a different question. There is an algorithm the press has used for solving a problem, and the algorithm failed. The algorithm failed both the reporters and the public. I think answering the question why the algorithm failed has merit.
And, now, I’ll shut up and read the Vanity Fair piece.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:58 am
jcummings:
“Voting Democrat neither makes one left wing or even liberal,…” Sure, but it certainly doesn’t make one conservative. I imagine you believe that mainstream journalism is insufficiently Marxist. Fine.
There are several types of bias in the media. There’s partisan bias of course, but there’s also bias rooted in class, race, geography, culture, education (very important) etc. etc. In manifests itself in story selection, sources, sequence of facts, use of “experts” and story placement.
My belief is that the American prestrige media , taken as a whole, is liberal, Democratic, elitist, coastal, meritocratic, and overvalues academic credentials when guaging credibility.
Thank the Lord we don’t have to rely on them any longer.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:08 am
LOTS I have to rush now but one example on Gore v. Bush. After the first debate spot polls showed that a sizeable majority thought Gore had rather handily won. Then the media started talking about Gore’s “snorts”, about his “lies” (he didin’t tour Texas disaster site with James Lee Witt but with hisDeputy as an example) and totally ignored Bush comment that most of his proposed tax cut would go to those under 50,000 a year (quite false of course). The upshot of all this? A week later Bush was the decisive winner.
I’ll be glad to go into more detail but hopefully yoy’ll have a chance to read the VF piece.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Maybe Gore shouldn’t have told fibs.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:31 am
RLC:
Terrific strawman argument, so perhaps you would like a direct quote from the study found here
September 6th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
“Thank the Lord we don’t have to rely on them any longer.”
Atrios couldn’t agree with you more.
The hack, in-the-tank reporting on this war by “elite media” is proof that the right-wing critique is typically clueless and tendentious. That Knight-Ridder, as has been mentioned, is the least elite of national media and was also most critical of the establishment “conventional wisdom” out of the Beltway points to the problem as having little or nothing to do with “partisanship” or voting patterns of elite reporters and everything to do with an inability to quit playing the role of stenographers and concerning themselves more with access to powerful insiders than with credible journalism.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Unfortunately Roper, your link offers this insight into their “methodology” – which is patently ridiculous.
“To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. ”
Totally lame….you should be embarrassed to blow this crap through your rusty trumpet !
September 6th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
There’s always Democracy Now! However, as I tell my left wing Auntie, I’d watch, but I think Amy wears far too much make-up.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Here’s a study for ya with the unsurprising finding that watching FOX News makes you incredibly stupid:
The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public’s mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy — discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq — helped fuel support for the war.
While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans’ opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.
As the researchers explained in their report, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.â€
Almost shocking was the extent to which Fox News viewers were mistaken. Those who relied on the conservative network for news, PIPA reported, were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three.â€
September 6th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Let me guess GM, those UCLA and Mizzou profs assign labels to the think tanks. Gee I wonder where Brookings (home of O’Hanlon and Pollack) come out? I see folks from AEI cited all the time, also Heritege. The good people at FAIR (yes, they have bias too) simply counted guests on shows like “The NewsHour” and “Meet the Press” and found that they were overwhelmingly White, Republican, Administration officials (Bush 43), and from Wall Street. Almost no labor, few women, very few minorities.
As Eric Alterman (another Prof by the way – NYU) says “What Liberal Media?”
September 6th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Okay, RLoC. An insightful piece. Again, I appreciate the heads-up. Something else I wouldn’t have found on my own. Apart from the chronicling of the media’s attack on Gore, the bit that grabbed me was this:
Tough on what Katherine? Tough on the person as package, or tough on the person’s position. The choice Katherine Seelye made is evident. This is all reminiscent of the The Rittenhouse Review piece, AL GORE AND THE ALPHA GIRLS; http://tinyurl.com/2u4u7y
My questions, however, still go unanswered. Why were/are so many immune to this crap? I recognized the attributions to Gore as crap when I read it in the press then, as easily as I recognize the validity of Petreaus Report as crap now. At the time of the 2000 and 2004 elections I was up to my ears in classes, a preliminary exam, field exams, and data set constructions. I had zero time for the internet, blogs, bloggers, or alternative media sources. I still don’t have time for the teevee. Whatever my filters were, I’m not alone in having them. I see the influence to which you’re referring, but that can’t be the whole answer. So, if we agree on the media’s influence on voters, and if we can agree to give it 50% of the influence (?), what accounts for the other 50%? And, further, what allowed the Katherine Seelye-s to perpetrate this nonsense? Why do those voices come out ahead of everyone else? And, why is Maureen Dowd still writing this crap – behind a freakin’ paywall no less? I suppose I could as easily be asking, What comprises the Solow Residual?
September 6th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
And mr Williams. Leaving aside the question of Gore’s “Truthfulness” on touring Texas with the amazing James Lee Witt (he had toured many other sites with the FEMA director just not this time – it was the deputy) let me ask this: which was the bigger whopper that night? Gore’s confusing Witt with his deputy or Bush claiming that his tax cut went mainly to the middle class and lower?
September 6th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Well, one involves spinning tax policy, the other involves the actual physical location of the candidate at a certain point in time. Both are fibs, granted. But the latter is mind-numbingly stupid.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
When Gore spoke of singing “Look for that Union Label” when he was a kid, he didn’t count on the fact that song was written when he was 27…etc.etc.
Or: “I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on that issue.” Again untrue, and easily checked.
“I took the initiative in creating the internet.”
“It didn’t know that it was a fundraiser.”
“I grew up on a farm in Carthage, Tennessee.”
September 6th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Obviously, bob williams has not read the Vanity Fair piece. Can we not clutter up the thread responding until he does?
September 6th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
“My sister was the very first volunteer for the Peace Corps.” Sorry, coundn’t help myself. I’ll stop now.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
G.M., you can’t educate people who want to stay stupid. There’s nothing to gain by arguing with reg and Randy.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I don’t know Woody…you seem to have impressed most everybody here that you’re a complete crackpot. That must count for something in your circles.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
There is a tendancy here to make this a little more complicated than it is. Why the media has it’s right wing bias in national politics is ripe for specualtion, THAT is does is hardly a matter worth speculating on.
Whitewater….Enron. That’s about all you really have to say. Or perhaps we should examine the coverage of Hillary Clinton staffing the White House Travel Office with patronage jobs; as opposed to the Bush White House sending Heritage Foundation Cub Scouts to set up the new goverment in Iraq. How’s that working out? How did it impact the American Taxpayer? I bet you more people still know about the travel office.
Think of a major, high profile liberal pudent commenting on Bush meeting with supportive parents of a fallen American in Iraq. Now imagine that pundent saying the family was really glad their Son was killed, just so they could get the publicity. NOW…imagine that pundent continuing to make the rounds on all the T.V. shows as a legitamite commenter. Imagine Mark Cooper telling you to “just ignore him.”
One could go on, pretty much forever. The favorite (ad nausum) example of the right on “liberal bias” is of course Dan Rather. The right wing President of CBS also berated Rather at the time, saying it was wrong to do that story so close to an election.
That’s a nice submation of our national tragity. Had the “left wing” media seriously reviewed Bush’s record when he first became a candidate, we might have been sprared the catastophe of his Presidency. Mark Cooper still does a tap dance of revulsion on Whitewater. The Harkin Stock deal was a rip off where Bush actually screwed other people big time, and he didn’t take a loss, my friend.
Or how about lying about a drunk driving conviction (and a lie of omission in this case is obviously a lie) when running for the highest office in the land? Too busy giggling about “Love Story” and other inventions.
Woody, you shake your head in ignorance and bias. Yet most people who watch Fox News, we should note, are honest enough to admit they know it’s not fair and balanced. They LIKE the news biased; to them it’s part of being for America.
So, I troll on here and annoy. Marc Cooper is not the one to go to for anaysis in these matters. He blows whatever he can from the Dems to the furthest reaches, and tells you to ignore the everyday crimes of the right with a sort of “boys will be boys” shrug. What I think might be illuminating is some give and take, or debate, between what we might generally call the Cooper School and the Alterman/Conason School. But we never do.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
reg,
It gives him street cred in Wankerville.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
You’re right LOTS. Since all of those are answered in the VANITY FAIR piece I’ll refrain from wasting pixels here.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
That Vanity fair piece is by Marty Peretz’s daughter. A little chummy, no?
September 6th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Okay, Richard. I’ll go back and read it again.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
reg: “Unfortunately Roper, your link offers this insight into their “methodology†– which is patently ridiculous.”
Way to go reg, pick out a two sentences which are not representative of the entire article or all of the methodology used in a multifaceted study and claim that you are justified in your delusions. The only real wanker in here reg is you, well, you and your straw man.
RLC, obviously you didn’t read the article or you wouldn’t have made such a stupid statement. Read the whole thing and if you even come close to understanding the methodology I’ll be amazed. In fact Richard, why not publish your own paper refuting the findings. And this statement “As Eric Alterman (another Prof by the way – NYU) says “What Liberal Media?— is stupid beyond belief. UCLA (a liberal leaning school if there ever was one) says there is left leaning bias in the MSM and you counter with Alterman, a left leaning author? PUH-LEZE… even you ought to be able to see through that.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
“Way to go reg, pick out a two sentences which are not representative of the entire article or all of the methodology used in a multifaceted study
Read the link, folks. That was the description of their methodology by the guys who did it. If I’m wrong, it would be nice for Roper to actually prove me wrong. I’m more than willingly to admit I’m wrong if there was something in that link I missed. Prove it. Otherwise, I’d apprcieate Roper admitting HE’S wrong if he can’t provide some evidence otherwise. But no one should hold their breath…
And if Roper can’t provide evidence but stands by his charge against me, he’s not just wrong. He’s a deliberate liar.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Isn’t it interesting that for all of the ad hominem, there’s nothing in Roper’s comment that describes any methodology other than what I quoted.
Again, If GMR can show something from his link to the study that I missed in the authors’ description of their methodology, fine. I’ll be happy to acknowledge my error.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Roper, the right’s argument always focuses on the irrelevant. If the National Reporters covering, say, election 2000 favored a ticket of Carrot Top/Tito Jackson; it means nothing… if you don’t look at what they put in the paper and over the airwaves. Have you, by the way, polled the major sharholders and sometimes very hands on owners of the T.V. stations and newspapers?
Give me a simple yes or no, my blowhard friend. Did the media coverage play as hard with Bush as with Gore? PUH-LEZE… say yes, so we can dispose of you once and for all.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
In other words of reg, if someone can’t provide evidence (suitable to someone who will find nothing suitable in this case) then he is a “deliberate liar.”
Nice logic…and, with no option of proving you wrong with you being both the accused and the judge.
G.M. may be smarter and have more patience than do I, and there are conservatives smarter than either of us who would go to greater lengths to deal with the crazed left at this site, but we have the quality of not allowing this group to intimidate us and run us off like they have others. If your best argument is to be rude and call people names, then you have no rational arguments to present.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
It isn’t evidentiary as much as at it is a matter of perception. The media does have a liberal bias, that of social big-city northeast/coastal liberalism, but this in no way focuses on how stories are selected and how they are presented. On issues of importance, the media is indeed centrist if anything, reflecting the cautiousness of shareholders.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
New Poll Proves Liberals Dominate National Press
“That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute. Does this affect coverage? Is there really liberal bias? The answers are, of course, yes and yes. It couldn’t be any other way.”
List of journalists taking sides
“MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.”
Of course, this is no proof of anything to those whose minds are made up.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
The only question I have of Brent Bozell is, would he support the return of the Fairness Doctrine?
September 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
The Wooden One: In other words of reg, if someone can’t provide evidence (suitable to someone who will find nothing suitable in this case) then he is a “deliberate liar.â€
Not when on the basis of a link he’s provided that I quote he accuses me of misrepresenting – in this case the researchers’ methodology in their own words.
You really are a piece of work Woody. Total fucking moron…also flagrantly hysterical with your perennial crocks of shit.
If Roper can cite evidence of some methodology other than my quote from the researchers at the link he provided, I’ll be more than happy to admit error. Something that you’re too much of a coward to ever do.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“The only question I have of Brent Bozell is, would he support the return of the Fairness Doctrine?”
He considers the Fairness Doctrine as equivalent to Hugo Chavez closing down newspapers. I’m not kidding…he’s been very forthright on this issue.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I love it when the rightwing masks their innate thuggishness in shameless self-pity and calls for ideological affirmative action…
September 6th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Know your not kidding, Reg…I’ve always wondered why no interviewer has ever posed this question to him. He whines all the time about liberal media bias, and the F.D. would solve all his problems
September 6th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Woody – “If your best argument is to be rude and call people names, then you have no rational arguments to present.”
GMR – “The only real wanker in here reg is you”
Still waiting for evidence that I mischaracterized the methodology of that study when I quoted Roper’s link.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Woody,
Is it hard to understand people voting one way, yet listening to their bosses in another?
September 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I oppose the fairness doctrine.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Jcummings:
Is there any sort of analogy to the fairness doctrine operating in Canada?
September 6th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jim Hitchcock, the Fairness Doctrine is an obsolete piece of legislation for which the only recent consideration to bring it back has come from the Democrats to shut down talk radio so that the liberal mass media can dominate the information world again for the benefit of Democrats.
jcummings, people hire others who think like them, people vote as they think, and, importantly, people also write as they think. Mass media has developed a culture of left-wingers and liberals and excluded, for the most part, conservatives. By writing liberal articles slanted to help the Democrats, journalists are doing what their bosses want them to do.
reg, there’s a world of difference between one personal slight to you from G.M. versus thousands of crude insults from you to conservatives. As usual, you try to pick out one exception to prove a rule. That only works with stupid people.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
And there’s a world of difference between quoting a source someone provides and then getting called a “wanker” by that person without them providing one iota of evidence that your quote misrepresents, in their own words, what the source based their conclusion on and coming back with noting but “wanker” in response.
Go to hell with your inane whining Woody.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Alterman has shown in “What Liberal Media” that mainstream reporters tend to be self-identified as “social liberals” – as are most Americans in fact – on issues like abortion rights and civil liberties, but that they are hardly liberal when it comes to challenging conventional wisdom among economists, who as a group lean to the right. This entire line of argument about whether or not reporters tend to consider themselves “liberal” or tend to vote Democratic misses the problem of media bias almost in its entirety. Studies that show which “experts” and “opinionmakers” appear on shows like the PBS Newshour, broadcast news and news talk – and how moderate centrists are brought on to take the “liberal” side while hardcore rightwing ideologues most often represent “conservatism” – are much more to the point in terms of what the news audience gets on the receiving end.
Enough on this crap. Don’t need any more useless interactions with the PopUp Clown…
September 6th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Actually GM “What Liberal Media?” is the title of a book that Alterman wrote. Course he’s suspect cause he has a column discussing the same in HUFF POST plus weekly rants in the NATION where our genial host writes.
Are you so sure that UCLA is a liberal outpost? Ever visited the Economics Dept. There? Does the name E.O.Wilson in sociology ring a bell? I mean maybe its not up to efforts of Claremont but the old “Southern Section” of UC is the West Coast outpost of the Chicago School.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Okay – one more. Here’s what we get from “conservative journalists” – Bill O’Reilly just called Media Matters and MoveOn.org, “the most vicious element in our society today.”
Why the hell would anyone want to hire crap merchants like this in the interest of phony “balance”. Woody provides “balance” here presumabley – balance between reasonably sane people who have varying opinions and folks who are totally unhinged and, worse, flagrantly dishonest.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Correction – that should be “James Q. Wilson”
E.O. is the bug man from Harvard.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I think the fairness doctrine is no big deal. There were plenty of right wing blowhards who did just fine on the radio during the fairness doctrine; the success of Limbaugh (and Howard Stern) has more to do with national packaging; no doubt help along by media consolidation. The blogs are speaking to a greater audience; the myth of Rudy (Mayor of 9-11) is currently falling hard; to epic shame of the media and the right.
Liberals do have to learn to present their case better, and not worry about being called names. The virtuoso bullies, as Woody knows damn well; are all on his side of the fence. The success of Oberman is hartening; and there are other hopeful signs.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Alterman’s best book was his earlier “Sound and Fury” which examined the pre Limbaugh years.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Okay, I’m going to throw this out here. Consider it a litmus test: Does the “The Jim Lehrer News Hour” lean left, right, or sit squarely in the center? Warning: this is also a Rorschach test, of sorts. My predictions of some commenters’ answers below.
Woody, Roper: liberal!
jcummings: conservative!
most others: centrist!
P.S. The notorious 2005 UCLA study getting bandied about here graded “The Jim Lehrer News Hour” as… (drum roll)… centrist! Thank you for participating. Back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
“UCLA (a liberal leaning school if there ever was one) says there is left leaning bias in the MSM”
Really ? Interesting. Or was that a single UCLA political science professor (who happens to have his degree from the Stanford Business School.)
Alterman wrote a lengthy book that used a whole range of argument, analysis and evidence – Groseclose, a co-author of Roper’s linked study who teaches at UCLA, documented which think tanks were quoted in the media and compared them to which think tanks members of congress quoted, using the Congressmen’s ADA ratings as the base line. That’s not a serious political “science” methodology. Sorry…
I’ll also bet that neither Roper nor Woody have read Alterman’s book and thus have no basis for discussing its merits or lack of merit.
Ugh…gotta get the hell out of here.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
people hire others who think like them,
That’s nonsense, if one accepts that journalists are “liberals” (which they are only insofar as they report facts, and sometimes this bothers conservatives, but is largely moot)…The media is owned by large corporations, fiveo f them control most of the world’s media. The interests of the bosses of these corporations may well be described as “liberal” if that means a rational, pragmatic interest in say, racial equality or global warming and other “liberal” isseus given passable play in corporate media. This beign said, the media is ultimately an arm in the class war waged by these corporations, so it invests in ultraright product to build a base (R Murdoch, who also likes HRC and PRC) and falls into lockstep with state and corporate interests when either are threateend. There is so much statistical and anecdotal evidence for this that its staggering.
The problem is that many liberals, in laughing off conservative charge of liberal media, don’t realize that in many ways there is a liberal media, adn that this liberalism is just another arm of corporate supremacy as conservatism, as in Murdoch’s investments in Bill O’Reilly and Matt Groenig, not to mention Hu Jintao and others.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
My problem with Alterman is that he rails against the right in his book, yet is a self-appointed “elitist” – read Ken Silverstein’s stuff about him.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
s there any sort of analogy to the fairness doctrine operating in Canada?
No, there are laws – not as strong as they used to be, and not strong enough in my opinnion – to protect Canadian content and present Canadian points of view, a very importang goal for media ethics in countries in the Imperial periphery. Iam all for these laws.
The media has moved steady right in CAnada, but there is nothing to equal the radical right talk radio machine in the States.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
reg, every time you say something intelligent I think to myself that maybe reg gets it. Then you post somethink like the above and thinks that that is all there is to the methodology of the study and prove to me that I’m not only wrong, but that you are a complete idiot.
Are you so stupid as to think that the entire methodology of the study is based on two sentences? Really, that dumb?
Wanker was a polite term in that case!
September 6th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Can you tell me what methodology they used other than what they explained as their methodology.
Frankly, I’m stunned that all you’ve got is ad hominem against me to back up your assertions.
Put up or shut up. I quoted their explanation of their methodology. If I’m “so stupid” prove me wrong.
Or is it that you can’t because that is, as the authors state, what the study was based on.
You brought this in as proof of something or other. I just read what you offered and quoted it. That’s how “stupid” I am.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
One more hilarious quote from the study Roper cited:
The authors: “we estimate that the average New York Times article is ideologically very similar to the average speech by Joe Lieberman”
September 6th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Reg that actually sounds about right to me.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
The mediocre media, i.e. major metropolitan dailies, TV networks, big cable, show patterns of liberal and conservative bias.
On social issues, the coverage skews liberal. Much of the redneck resentment of “mainstream” media comes because it looks up to higher education, fine arts and civil libertarianism, while questioning religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism and traditional low-brow entertainments.
On military and geopolitical issues, the mediocre media skews right. No establishment institution can afford to be seen as rooting against the U.S. military. When right-wing fantasists accuse the media of tilting against the military, what they actually mean is that the cheerleading is insufficiently heartfelt.
The problem here has at least two causes and the most basic, and intractable, is simply that its profitable to print reports primarily based on White House and Pentagon press releases and government announcements. It is not profitable to independently develop inside information about what’s going on in the military and government.
Readers simply won’t pay enough to support that. Seymour Hersch makes very good money and deserves every penny. But how many liberals who whinge about mediocre media coverage are willing to cough up for a subscription to the New Yorker? If enough did, there would be no problem.
If readers won’t pay for investigative reporting, who will? Indeed, there are philanthropists and much of the decent journalism that gets done has some support from those quarters, but, in the main, America gets the media it pays for.
On economic issues, the mediocre media also has a conservative bias and here I think the issues of class do play a role. It’s much easier for editors and reporters at major dailies to interpret events from an upper middle class perspective, especially when they know, at the back of their mind, at best, that advertisers don’t want to a word about poor people anywhere near their ads for baldness cures and no-money-down Hummers.
Liberals should learn to live with this. It isn’t going to change anytime soon. The press we have is a pretty fair reflection of “mainstream” America’s consumerist priorities, convenient memory and economic arrangements.
Let rightwingnuts spin conspiracy theories about the liberal media. Without them, they can’t explain why Americans refuse to embrace their programs.
Let liberals get to work building alternative sources of information and reforming education in a way that will boost literacy and analytical thinking. We’ll get the press we want when we demand it and pay for it.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Richard. I went back through the Vanity Fair piece a couple of times; made my margin notes and reviewed them. What I came away with, in a nutshell, is this:
Gore’s campaign treated the press with a whip and a chair. The press was indignant; they were looking for charm which Gore couldn’t/wouldn’t deliver but Bush did. Any remark made by Gore or his associates was washed, spun, rinsed, spun, and repeated cyclically. And, Gore, understandably, distanced himself from the whole noise machine. It’d have been clear to me, too, that he was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. There’s all kinds of equivocation in retrospect among the chief perpetrators of the slime machine. And, finally, we get this, In step with the new enthusiasm for Gore, Dowd, in a February 2007 column, described him as “a man who was prescient on climate change, the Internet, terrorism, and Iraq,” a sentiment echoed by many. And, many in the media are reassessing their 2000 coverage. Gee, that’s nice isn’t it. File under, Better Late Than Never?
I’m not sure this offers a whole lot more than the last four grafs of the Rittenhouse Review piece I linked to above. I’ll reproduce only the 2nd to last graf here:
If you’d agree that the activities of the latter are detailed in the former, then it’s a nice affirmation of Glenn Greenwald’s affection thesis.
I suppose the last few questions I asked at the end of my last comment are somewhat addressed by Peretz. It doesn’t, however, feel like a full answer. It tells me about the 2000 election, and it’s a pointer to the 2004 election – ie, the media gave Bush a big leg up for sure the first time, and probably the second time as well. Still, an awful lot of people saw through the noise. Even poor, un-savvy, formerly apolitical, non-student of history, waste of pixels me.
The thrust of Rosen’s essay seems different to me:
I’d agree with you if you argued reporters exercised their imaginations plenty imaginatively given their contortions in attributing claims to Gore that Gore never claimed for himself, and the endlessly imaginative way they painted Gore the person. They wrote bull crap, all of them. And, the affection thesis can, and will, get traction again as we go into 2008. Although, I do take Peretz’s piece to be a tentative stick one’s finger in the wind to see which way it blows, you know, just in case.
Still, a lot of water has gone over the dam since 2004. The voters made their position known in 2006. And, a year later the M$M still goes merrily along, transcribing the same bilge that goes through their ear buds from the White House dictaphone. Some are so invested in everything they’ve written to date, I assume it’s too costly for them to reconsider that investment. They’ll throw good money after bad, because they can’t – for whatever reason – imagine their original investment was in pure junk. But, what about the rest? Are they stupid people? Do they like being suckered? Do they enjoy having bloggers chase their behinds and bite them? I suspect many of them don’t. What’s that euphemism – the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results. I credit Rosen for asking the question, Should we keep doing the same thing, the same way? I’d argue that by asking the question, he’s already decided the answer is, No. Whatever the outcome of his ruminations, and the ruminations of others, maybe his students, at least, will have a better set of tools to use as they work their way up through the ranks. I choose to be hopeful, but will continue to keep my own counsel. And, if the American public doesn’t at least try to generate a little friction among their billions of brain cells going into the next election, they deserve precisely what they’re bound to get. That assumes, of course, there is a next election. I remain unconvinced of that.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Thank you Bunkerbuster!
September 6th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Vince Van Patton= way better president than Thompson.
Mike Sexton= Vice Prez
Gabe Kaplan = Sec. of State. Czar of witty one liners.
AJ Benza= National Dog Catcher
First person against the wall: Jamie Gold.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
If we want make a political issue out of media bias, we are put in the vulnerable position of assuming that the average American voter is dumber than we are and therefore incapable of detecting bias.
When I read the NY Times on Palestine, the stench of anti-Arab bias is unmistakable. I’m confident that the aroma doesn’t escape the average American voter either. It’s not analytical ability that sets me apart from the average NY Times reader, it’s that I’m disturbed enough to take issue with it, while Mr. Average reader either isn’t, or actively supports the bias.
I do know people who will say the NY Times is actually anti-Israel, but all of those people are heavily invested in Zionism. It’s not that they’re just too stupid to rationally analyze the content, it’s that they look at news coverage as yet another opportunity to exercise their ideology. Declaring the NY Times biased in favor of Arabs is simply a way of asserting their political view, not a failure to correctly analyze the content.
I know only a few people, personally, who are either too dumb or too uninformed to detect the NY Times pro-Israel bias, or the pro-abortion rights or pro-U.S. military or pro-free market biases the paper has. The average American is well aware that newspapers print stories, not scripture.
The number of people fooled by biased coverage is probably far, far smaller than the number who seem convinced that media bias the only thing preventing the final political triumph of their ideology.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
“Reg that actually sounds about right to me.”
Yeah – even using a research method that appears to be a parody of “social science”, I guess you can still get some things about right…
What I thought was hilarious was that coming off like Holy Joe Lieberman – who is currently a big draw at far right “Christian Zionist” rallies and the DeadEnders’ favorite “Democrat” – somehow indicates a “left” bias in the elite media.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
There’s an uncanny symmetry between liberals and conservatives, each blaming the bias of the media for their respective partisan frustration.
Neither side, of course, has any reasonable explanation — or evidence– for why an entire industry of newsgatherers would be contaminated with one bias or another.
The real bias that poisons the news media is conventionality, laziness, fear of breaking with the pack, lack of imagination etc etc. I find the notion that the media is somehow more anti-Dem than anti-Republican to be as laughable as Limbaugh’s denunciation of the Liberal Media. I covered the Clinton campaign in 1992 and let me tell you — without hesitation– that the national media was absolutely smitten with him. They hummed him better than Monica could dream of and only turned against him later when he became such an easy mark.
An anyone who believes that George Bush is currently getting a free ride from most large American newspapers mustnt be reading them. Did they play footsie with him for years? For sure. Are they still doing that now? You gotta be kidding.
My experience tells me that, generally speaking, you’re going to find a lot more Democrats than Republicans in the news business, just for starters. There are, of course, intervening pressures — sometimes commercial, sometimes ideological– thay more than flattens out that advantage.
But I have NO intention of convincing those who disagree otherwise — it’s about as useless as arguing with bible-thumpers about the existence of God. Take away the media scapeegoat and you’re left to confront your own failures and shortcomings — wouldnt want to do that!
I will also take exception to what Jcummings says and I wonder out loud with what sort of clairvoyance he can claim to be able know what is actually taught in Jschools. Move over, Carnac! His round denunciation is but the mirror image of David Horowtiz’ blanket assertion that the Humanities teach Marxism. Both assertions are based on ignorance and political pre-conceptions and belief systems (the same thing).
American journalism schools today, at least the good ones, are hotbeds of fervent discussion and innovation, desperately searching to re-invent the profession. I know of no serious Jschool where Konventional Kool-aid is served up. (And by the way, in my case, I demand two things from my students: the utmost in critical thinking AND strict adherence to high standards including, yes, an understanding of the Inverted Pyramid!) We need go no further than the case of Jay Rosen who teaches at NYU (following in the footsteps of the great Neil Postman). Victor Navasky of The Nation is now a major force at Columbia and at the Columbia Journalism Review. The new Dean at Annenberg where I teach has been a contributor to Josh Marshall’s TPM blog and former Assoc Dean Marty Kaplan is a regular blogger for HuffPost. It’s Annenberg that hosts our Justice and Journalism Center as well as a number of other institutes and centers with similar social justice missions. And so on and so so on.
Gawd, it must be great to just KNOW everything without knowing anything.
Back to the main point: I suggest that professional media critics take a close look at Russian history in order to challenge their own views. Twice in less than one century, the Russian people revolted against overthrew oppressive political systems at a time when the oppressive state controlled almost all the media. Once in 1917… and once again 80 years later. Amazing what people can do even if told to act otherwise. Provided, of course, they really want to do it.
P.S. To Reg: Actually, Reg, the Washington Post has been a ferociously great newspaper in reporting on Bush and Iraq. It’s EDITORIAL position has sucked, for sure. But that hardly reflects the sentiment of the newsroom. If anything it underlines how the ownership of the paper has failed to bring the newsroom around to its pro-war line. The Post’s reporting from Baghdad has been among the best there is, sorry. You think Tony Shahid’s reporting on the war has been in the tank for the White House? You think Dana Priest’s stories on the CIA black prisons was somehow part of the Republican Noise Machine? (I show my class a 2 hr PBS doc from last year Democracy on Deadline which celebrates Priest’s work as among some of the best investigative stuff in the world!). You think the Post’s stuff on Walter Reed or its recent series chopping up Cheney was pro-admin puffery?
Maybe some of you armchair critics ought to go out one day and TRY to do 1/4 the quantity and quality of reporting you so haughtily dismiss. It’s a fuck of a lot harder than it looks. In any case, I’ll take CNN’s Michael Ware;s reporting (formerly of Time magazine) from Iraq over any single commenter’s contributions here over the last 4 years.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Perhaps my j-school experience was uncharacteristic, as were who I was in school with….
see http://www.counterpunch.org/cummings0427.html
September 6th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
September 7, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Time to Take a Stand
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.
Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.
There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.
First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.
So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.†So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.
Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.
Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.
I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress†in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,†that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward†and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.†A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.â€
But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.â€
Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass†in Iraq. Enough said.
Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.
In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal†for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.
And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.
One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election†in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:43 am
“they hummed him better than Monica could dream of”
Well, do we need to read more? This far down the line, Marc Cooper is incapable of writing on these issues beyond the seriousness of Mad Magazine, and I probably slander the old “Mad.” I await Cooper’s exchange with Alterman, however, when it explained to Eric that he’s just a left wing Brent Bozell. Yes, it only took Iraq and Katrina to get the national media to rail against Bush to the degree they labasted Clinton over those 13 blow jobs. Such critical thinking! What Cooper does here is equate some of the kissy early campaign coverage Clinton got as new kid on the block (while of course, ignoring the later Gore bashing he participated in) with the years of free ride and promotion Bush recived in office. No soap, my critical thinker.
I take issue with Bunkbuster’s leveling of the scales as well. Looks up to civil libertarianism? Examples please. I’ve gone through this with conservatives many times. Examples of liberal bias generaly come down to diversity (which corperations actually love) and T.V. shows which do in fact portray homosexuality as more normal than a lot of people (conservatives) see it. Global warming also gets a favorable hearing; so I guess they are sucking up to those scientists.
I’d take a look at Brian Williams today in the Huffington Post, if you want a good laugh/shutter. Here the story of the desion to disband the Iraqi Army is dismissed a “finger pointing”(!), the journalist tells a falsely modest tale of his reporting under fire; and the Iraqis are given a spank to spare the White House further examination. All from a reporter who couldn’t get enough of those blow jobs. Opps, their goes another level playing field.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:46 am
“They hummed him better than Monica could dream of and only turned against him later when he became such an easy mark.”
Marc applies this to Clinton, but it really belongs as a description of coverage of all presidents.
Newspapers print stories and as such, they need themes, narrative. How do you back up a story that says Clinton’s a bad president when his polling numbers are through the roof? How do you back up one that says he’s the Messaiah when he’s just been caught having sex with an intern?
You can call this laziness on the part of journalists, and it is certainly partially that. But really, it’s what readers want, even demand. Hardly anyone will read dry dissertations on the facts behind this or that president. People want a story with a beginning, middle, end, climax, drama, tension, and so on.
Those kind of stories are extremely difficult to produce AGAINST the grain. So when a president is popular, he gets positive coverage. If he falls out of favor, the daggers come out…
Perhaps the Internet will begin to erode this formula by allowing readers to directly support the kind of reporting they crave. Perhaps Americans are really smart enough and sophisticated enough to demand real news sans bent-fact storytelling by paying for it directly.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Marc,
As for Columbia, in addition to Navasky, you left out your buddy John Dinges.
As for party affiliation, it’s worth noting that Bob Novak is a registered Democrat.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Knardy: I didn’t mean to imply I thought the scales were level. On balance, I think the news media tilts right on the more critical issues of geopolitics and economics.
But I think the certainty with which conservatives assert that the mediocre media are liberal needs a better explanation than simply that they are insane. I think that at the cultural level, the big dailies and networks talk up to urban sophisticates and down to undereducated rural readers. I could come up with examples, if you anyone’s unconvinced…
September 7th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Hey, Natasha! Nice to see you here.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:48 am
Yeah, but I had to Google most of her references. (I’m not part of the intelligentsia. And obviously don’t watch enough cable.)
September 7th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Yours is an interesting perspective Bunkerbuster. I’m not sure it tip nicely towards addressing Marc’s observation, There’s an uncanny symmetry between liberals and conservatives, each blaming the bias of the media for their respective partisan frustration. Each is happy about 50% of the time. Each is appeased along a major dimension of concern, and each is outraged at the very same treatment that appeased the other. I’ll borrow that set of lenses from you for awhile.
As for the print media that rural readers are subjected to, I keep my own daily close to stay current on the local AKC dog shows.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:59 am
True, Reg. Me, too. But I loved her designation of the major offices.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Note: New York Times “star” reporter Judith Miller is currently moving into her new digs at the right-wing Manhattan Institute.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Manhattan Institute was Giuliani’s go-to think tank.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Marc’s denunciation of the pack mentality is on the money. While this mentality exists in any professional or social setting, it’s especially dangerous in journalism where the whole goal is to steer clear of the pack’s conventional wisdom in order to dig out the truth. There are now many different pressures (economic, social, sociobiological) which push at the pack and herd it together, till it barks as one. Were there fewer pressures years/decades back? Was it easier then to break from the pack?
September 7th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Reg, this old fogie only gets a small percentage of Natasha’s references. Ah to be young again!
(Maybe McCain was right when he called that HS student a “Little Jerk” – he’s beginning to seeming better to me!)
September 7th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Well of course Marc is right and there is a lot of good reporting in the media. Trouble is its next to some terrible reporting.
The WaPo has some great reporters in Baghdad. But the people in DC read Fred Hiatt’s ed page and they make the decisions. One reason the Dems are so chickenshit is they still think Dave Broder and Jim Hoagland Matters. And lets not mention Dave Ignatius.
Oh, and their in the tank for Clinton? Does the name Sally Quinn ring a bell? Remember her famous article in the WASHINGTONIAN describing how Randy “Nasty, Naughty Boy” Bill had lowered the tone of Washington? (this from a gal who broke up a marraige while sleeping her way to the top?) And Dave Broder saying the Clintons didn’t belong in “His Town” because they trashed “His Place?”
Dave’s still at it you know. Just the other day he said the people will have to decide if they really want Bill back in the White House. You know all the lack of class. Well actually Dave the computer says “Yes” There are at least four polls that say by 55 -70% that the public sees Bill being there to help Hillary is a good thing. But then the poor unwashed outside of the Beltway liked a guy who knew what he was doing.
The NY TIMES? Sure some great reporters. But Jeff Gerth is a twofer. He screwed up Whitewater 100% (see every report) and, with the aid of that Alabama moralist who edited the editorial page enabled Ken Starr and the GOP. And speaking of enablers how much did Judy Miller and Mike Gordon contribute to Iraq? How much is Gordon contributing now to Iran? How much did that oped by the Brookings twins (O’Hanlon and Pollack) contribute to the new meme that the surge is working. Yes I know there are plenty of articles showing what nonsense that is but those opinions by the great and the good set the tone in Washington. Don’t want to look like a chump at those Georgetown soirees now do we?
Anyone who thinks Bush didn’t get a bigger hummer – to use our genial host’s clever repostes – didn’t read very closely or watch or listen too closely. See Maureen Dowd, See Broder. Remember the claims after 9/11 that the boy-emperior was the second coming of Churchill – if not prince Hal, Lincoln, or the sugar plum fairy for all I know!
J schools are great I’m sure. And I’m glad you’re teaching them the inverted pyramid – maybe you can give the people at the LAT a refresher course in it so they won’t bury so many ledes – but when they get on the job they’ll learn the cold hard truth. Don’t stand out because if you do like the nail you’ll get hammered! Don’t believe? Ask Bob Perry, ask Robert Danner, and find a pschic and ask Gary webb.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
“How much did Judy Miller and Mike Gordon contribute to Iraq?”
Little.
Not nothing, but little.
In the broadest sense, they delivered the pizza readers ordered.
Sure, we now know for certain the pie was topped with ptomaine-laced salami, but most readers already knew it stunk. And what can you say about those who didn’t?
Who back then, or now, takes at face value what’s printed in the New York Times?
There are a some people, our serially disgusted host, for example, who swallow the rancid NY Times turds about Ahmadenijad or Hamas or whoever the evil brown guy d’jour is like they are tootsie rolls.
But that’s the turd pizza they crave. If they didn’t, the NY Times would take it off the menu.
Sure, we could hope for a press that doesn’t demonize every brown skinned dictator that doesn’t conform to our geopolitical needs. And I absolutely share the regrets that we don’t have one.
But what we do have in America is at least a slice of the public that can see right through the likes of Judith Miller and, indeed, Marc Cooper. I certainly can and I have no reason to believe I’m any smarter or better informed than the average NY Times reader.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
And I do acknowledge that Richard points to some glaring weaknesses in reporting and that it is certainly worthy to make such distinctions. I share his disappointment, for sure.
But where we part, perhaps, is in expectations for any establishment media. Where on earth, in what country, in what place, what time has there been an establishment media that did not, at some point, help market and rationalize the host regime?
Where is the model press?
I would argue the American press comes as close as any. I’m a fan of British newspapers, but they, in the main, printed the same Iraq garbage and are now printing much of the same trite, mass-marketing exaggerations about Iran’s regime.
But do take a look at newspapers around the world. I promise, the more you do, the more you’ll come to love the NY Times.
All I’m saying is that we need to stop spreading the idea that we should rely on the press to boost our immunity to government bullshit. For that, we have to rely on ourselves and fight like mad for an education system that promotes literacy and critical thinking.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
BB try the British press both before and during the Iraq war. And check out the BBC and ITV’s World Wide TV News. The diffference will astound you.
I’ll take the guardian over the Times any day!
September 7th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
And let us consider one more enabler. In his new book on the Decider “Dead Certain” Draper writes about Achmed Chalibi and his soothing fictions of an Iraq waiting to shower flowers and sweets on their liberators while he would installed as President by acclamation.
The CIA thought it was bunk. So did State and both Powell And Dick Armitage wanted to know where the money the US had given to the Iraqi National Congress had gone. It looked to them like Chalibi was pulling another con – like he did in Jordan with that bank of his that got him convicted of fraud. So they asked the State IG – Clark Kent Ervin (what a name! Mild mannered?) to investigate.
And then Ervin got a call. Why don’t you meet Achmid. And an invite to do just that – at Christopher Hitchens’ house!
See Christy Hardin Smith at today’s FIREDOGLAKE for the gory details. Plus a compendium of Chris’s articles praising both Chalibi and Achmed’s favorite “Spy” the guy they called “Curveball.”
Yes, a fearless and independent press!
September 7th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Richard: Were you fooled by the NY Times?
I’m going to assume you don’t take Hitchens seriously now, but did you then?
Shame on Hitchens and shame on the NYT for relaying such garbage, but let’s not forget, shame on anyone for allowing themselves to be deceived by them.
As Lincoln famously noted, you can fool some of the people all of the time. But in the case of Iraq, I know of no one who was sincerely persuaded by what the read in the NY Times by the likes of Judith Miller.
People who supported the war–and will do so next time–reliably referred to the NYT for backup for their arguments. Those who opposed it, immediately and vehemently pointed to the holes in the coverage and the overwhelming stench of bad, partisan journalism that emanated from so much of the coverage.
I doubt you were fooled by it, Richard, and I know I wasn’t. Who was?
September 7th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
And yes, the British press does outperform the American on occasion, but by no means in every case.
I’m not certain, but I don’t believe they broke the Abu Ghraib story, or the Haditha massacre or the Halliburton overchargings.
On the whole, the UK press can “get away” with better Middle East coverage because it’s not as vulnerable to the Zionism lobby as is the NY Times and other key American papers. Beyond that, there’s not that much distance between them that isn’t accounted for as a matter of style.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
BB you miss the point. Inside the Beltway the people who matter do Listen to these people. Why do you think in 2000 Gore didn’t talk about Global Warming? Or avoid campaigning with Bill? Because his advisors told him those were losers. And why? Because the Great and Good all said they were. They said there was “Clinton Fatigue”. Was there? The polls sure didn’t show it. But the pundits knew bewtter.
Checked the polls on the war? People want out. Checked the reason for low ratings for Congress. Polls say people think the Dems are too timid. Now check what Dave and Maureen, and Fred, and all the rest say. OH dear all this rancor! We need Bipartisanship or “Post partisanship” or whatever.
It is there and it works and not realizing it we got what we deserve.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Inside the Beltway the people who matter do Listen to these people.
Richard, I get your point, But, can we for the moment, compare apples to apples. If those inside the beltway listen, what’s to be said about that? If you don’t listen, and I don’t listen, and a whole lot of other voters to include bunkerbuster don’t listen, can you suggest a way that the three of us – and others – plug the ears of the beltway? To what extent are you, I and Bunker (plus others) responsible for those who suck this shit up like it’s Godiva chocolates?
I see two separate groups of individuals here. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’d like to think that those inside the beltway have crap detectors equal to the rest of us, if not more finely tuned. So why do they (appear?) to listen? Have we got the direction of causality so secured that we can say, “Maureen Dowd writes, and Hillary Clinton listens.” Or, is it just possible that causality runs the other way? And, do we really have any way to know?
If we’re talking about the average reader, who is not inside the beltway, then I get stuck on my earlier premise. How come you, I, Bunkerbuster, and others knew what we were reading was highly suspect? And, it’s that skeptisism that we’d like to bottle so as to innouculate the ROW (rest of the world). And, are we so sure that innoculation wouldn’t need an IRB consent form?
September 7th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Marc, hope you don’t mind but I excerpted some of your 9/6 11:05pm comment into the comments section here. Will be happy to relay back to you whatever related feedback is shared there if you like. (And BTW and just FYI, another one of our regular commenters loves your GTO.)
September 7th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I find it very hard to believe that Al Gore made the tone-deaf political decisions he made because he was persuaded to do so by the NY Times.
But suppose he was. That has to be a failure of education system, not, primarily, of the press.
We absolutely have to get away from the idea that there can or should be one, objective view of events presented in a news media format. It’s never happened and never will.
We can and should rail against egregious reporting like Judith Miller and silliness like Maureen Dowd, but let’s not pretend its a fundamental political problem or issue.
The Beltway mentality is a creature of American business and culture, not of the press. The news media reflect it. They don’t create it.
September 8th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Incidentally, Marc – it’s a stretch to say the WaPo has been “ferociously good” on Iraq. Sure they’ve got some excellent reporters who’ve gained ground with their stories. What sentient being hasn’t seen for years that Iraq is one of the worst – and worst executed – foriegn policy debacles in memory. But here’s WaPo on WaPo when it mattered most:
Kurtz – 8/12/04
An examination of the paper’s coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration’s evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.
“The paper was not front-paging stuff,” said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. “Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?”
In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., “we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn’t be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration’s rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part.”
Across the country, “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones,” Downie said. “We didn’t pay enough attention to the minority.”
When national security reporter Dana Priest was addressing a group of intelligence officers recently, she said, she was peppered with questions: “Why didn’t The Post do a more aggressive job? Why didn’t The Post ask more questions? Why didn’t The Post dig harder?”
Several news organizations have cast a withering eye on their earlier work. The New York Times said in a May editor’s note about stories that claimed progress in the hunt for WMDs that editors “were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.” Separately, the Times editorial page and the New Republic magazine expressed regret for some prewar arguments.
Michael Massing, a New York Review of Books contributor and author of the forthcoming book “Now They Tell Us,” on the press and Iraq, said: “In covering the run-up to the war, The Post did better than most other news organizations, featuring a number of solid articles about the Bush administration’s policies. But on the key issue of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the paper was generally napping along with everyone else. It gave readers little hint of the doubts that a number of intelligence analysts had about the administration’s claims regarding Iraq’s arsenal.”
(end clip)
If that’s “ferociously good”, god help us.
September 8th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Massing has summed it up – “Now they tell us!”
Do you think that the WaPo reporters would be hard on these stories if Iraq had turned out even a little bit better and Bush’s poll numbers were higher but the WMD hype, the lack of any national security rationale, the renditions, the trashing of the constitution, Cheney’s machinations, etc. etc. were happening nonetheless. 2007 is a bit late to do a take-down on Dick Cheney. I believe they’ve mostly turned on Bush as a failed President on his own terms, not as a dangerous President who’s led the country down a fundamentally flawed path. Woodward is the bellweather of WaPo’s relationship to Bush. WaPo invested (mostly via it’s chickenshit editors) after 9/11 in a guy who turned out to be an incompetent and a loser. They hate that.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Instead of fretting about how and why the mediocre media got it so wrong, we should be thinking about why the media that DID get it right–from lefty Web sites to Knight Ridder and The Nation (presumably)–are STILL so widely ignored.
I’ll give the horse another kick, because I still see some twitches of life in it:
The biggest, best dailies are by of and for the establishment and we cannot forget that the establishment bought this war, wanted it bad and knew perfectly well the truth was being stretch–even if most weren’t quite aware how far–to sell it.
I think even Shillary has ditched her talking point that she was FOOLED into supporting the war. We shouldn’t allow ourselves or anyone to take that ridiculous position.
Everything from doubts about WMD to egregiously fanciful planning and bad intelligence were published across America for any intelligent American to absorb freely, well before the war. Anyone who says they didn’t know any better has only themselves to blame.
It wasn’t the lack of good journalism that caused this war, nor was it even the surplus of BAD journalism. Ultimately, it was the public’s insistence on buying into bad journalism, of ordering it up, even, and chowing down on the turds it delivered.
How to prevent the next war? No amount of good journalism will put a cork in it, as we saw with Iraq. Rather, it is simply a matter of good old fashioned politics. Peace activists just have to make their case harder, faster, smarter and more comprehensively than they did last time.
And the target needs to be Euston Manisfest liberals like Marc. There will always be a militarist right wing that is beyond help. They will buy any war they can, at any price–it’s just part of their emotional make up.l
But maybe this time, before the next war, we can get to the people who bought into the over-the-top demonization of Saddam and allowed themselves to be whipped into such a precariously high dudgeon or moral narcissism, they dispensed with common sense and let the propaganda wash over them.
I promise you, the Wapo and NYT will NEVER deliver on that.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:14 am
BB I mostly onside with you but there are some serious issues with what you are saying here:
Knight Ridder reporters and The Nation are no longer ignored, for the most part. It is the peace movement that is ignored by The Nation, which often promises to stop supporting Democrats who are pro-war only to stab the Left in the back. See Cindy Sheehan interviewed at the Fourth International’s World Socialist Website (WSWS.Org)
In terms of knowing better, one can’t underestimate the power of fear, manipulation and “awe” even on the part of those who were twisted into being temporary war supporters. I know Chomsky-reading black bandannad leftists who for a bout a month supported the war, and are now back to local anarcho-syndicalist communiities. Thus it wasn’t the public’s “insistence” on bad journalism, it was capital’s insistence on manipulating the public in order to continue to curry favor with the state.
I do believe that good journlaism about an upcoming Iran war will turn the public against it, as it already presumably is. I expect the Democrats and the netroots to sell out on that one though (I hope I’m wrong.) Fundamentally I don’t tihnk there will be an attack on Iran, btu already there has been great coverage in mainstream media of what could happen.
Finally I think Marc was only a temporary Eustonite, realizing quickly but quietly that he may be not a cross the board anti-imperilaist, but he is also not a fellow traveller of Ledeen and Peretz.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Chomsky to Cockburn:
“Yes, I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. They’re desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They’re even in danger of losing control over Middle Eastern oil — to China, the topic that’s rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec’s mind, if they’re sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — from which the US was pointedly excluded. Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast. With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble.
Under these circumstances, they’re unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population — there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the CIA, which the US can “defend” from the evil Persians), and then they can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who’s boss”
September 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am
The Gore question is complicated and I’ll save discussing it for another day. But look. Big Al was the subject of a vicious press. His handlers convinced him that the Country suffered from “Clinton Fatigue” and was bore by all that environmental stuff. And they got that from the media. And, as Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his book on Florida 2000, even though polls showed the public willing to mtake its time and get the count right the media was crying that bclosure was necessary to avoid a “Crisis” (what crisis was never specifified but I guess it was Dave Broder’s nerves if he didn’t find out that afternoon). So ithe onus was place ond Gore to capitualate rather than be a sore loser. Check it out.
September 8th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Someone’s eating my postings again!
September 8th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Yeah, well, they’re fairly yummy, Richard. Stingy Marc just wants to save them for himself first.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:42 am
“And they got that from the media.”
Absolutely. But ask yourself: which media? You mean they don’t subscribe to The New Yorker, or the The Nation or the U.K. press or even, read blogs like this one?
Of course they don’t. Sure, the NY Times and Wapo furnish the service of providing and echo chamber for the disastrous misunderstandings Richard cites. But no one forces Gore and his ilk to base their understanding of the world on NYT and Wapo.
There is a degree of enabling, in the way that social drinkers enable alcoholics by providing a kind of cover for harder drinkers, but no one thinks stopping or curtailing social drinking is the key to preventing alcoholism.
Americans freely chose to nourish themselves on a steady diet of “total standard view” from the mediocre media, just like some people nourish themselves on McDonald’s and Big Gulp sodas.
It’s as if some people want to believe that America would become of nation of health conscious vegetarians if we could only get McDonald’s to serve tofu on whole wheat instead of beef fat on white.
The fact that McDonalds, the world’s biggest restaurant chain, doesn’t serve the healthful food doesn’t mean it’s their fault so manhy people are overweight and undernourished.
I challenge anyone to find a major metropolitan daily newspaper with a long-term track record surpassing that of NYT or Wapo in terms of providing the most and best news and analysis.
If what’s going on there is so egregious, where’s it being done right. Nowhere? Well then, let’s think about why…
September 9th, 2007 at 5:51 am
JC writes: “I know Chomsky-reading black bandannad leftists who for a bout a month supported the war, and are now back to local anarcho-syndicalist communiities. ”
Like Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time. Apparently, their reading habits are no more thoughtful than their sartorial sense.
JC writes: “Thus it wasn’t the public’s “insistence†on bad journalism, it was capital’s insistence on manipulating the public in order to continue to curry favor with the state.”
Capital? Who’s that?
No doubt some people were “manipulated” into supporting the war, but there simply is no helping the kind of person Lincoln was talking about.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Capital? Big money.
People weren’t fooled. They just – like even Perry Anderson for a while – thought the least worst option was getting Saddam.
September 9th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Bunk, I could have it wrong; but it seems to me polls showed the public were against the war (without U.N. approval) right up until the invasion, when they slipped into “back the boys” mode.
Sorry, the public took the posistion those dread Dems who voted with Bush took; get U.N. approval first. They wanted more inspections, just like those Dems. Blumenthal’s convincing work last week, by the by; sharply mitigates the “Dems as enablers” line.
September 9th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
“The public took the posistion those dread Dems who voted with Bush took; get U.N. approval first.”
There you have it. The masses weren’t manipulated by the media. Most Americans saw right through the spin campaign.
The GOP pulled out a political steamroller and simply ignored the polls and, indeed, a segment of the public will always take the position that once a war has begun, the argument is over, we have to root the team on to victory.
I challenge anyone on this blog to explain why they bought into the NYT/Wapo distortions on Saddam, when so much information was available totally demolishing the premise that the only way, or even a good way, to neutralize Saddam was to invade.
Jcummings blames “big money” for “manipulating” someone but whom? Clearly he believes he wasn’t manipulated, so who was? Does he really believe his analytical abilities are that much better than the average Americans?
If you know anyone, JC, who was fooled, bring them on and let them explain why they ignored all the reports–many of them within the Wapo/NYT–that pointed to political and intelligence fraud in selling the war.
Remember, even the mediocre media’s critics admit that reporting challenging the Cheney view of Iraq was in the papers, it was just put way back on page A14.
So that’s what the real complaint here boils down to: The straight dope wasn’t on the front page.
The lesson here isn’t: let’s scold the press to do better, it’s: READ PAGE A14, and don’t let the NYT/Wapo front page decides what’s important for you to read.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Francis Fukuyama is one establishment example. Even Juan Cole supported the war at first.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Even Juan Cole supported the war at first.
Proof?
September 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Here’s Cole in August 2002:
How is that support for the war?
September 9th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
read this from the day the war begun:
*My mind and heart are, like those of so many Americans, focused on the Gulf and Iraq tonight. I am thinking about all those brave young men and women in the US and British armed forces whose lives are on the line, and send them my warm support. And I am thinking about all the innocent Iraqis in the line of fire, who fear what awaits them. I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides. The rest of us have a responsibility to work to see that the lives lost are redeemed by the building of a genuinely democratic and independent Iraq in the coming years. ”
Informed Comment 3/19/03 (accessible through Marc 03 archives)
I read him at the time and admired the good will behind the sentiment but thought it to be naive.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I stand corrected. Every time I clicked from the 8/02 archives page on to the 3/03 archives, I was taken to his main page.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Major media’s coverage of Gore- ’99-’00 was disgraceful. The RNC would doctor a Gore quote in the form of a press release, and significant segments of the media would then use those fabrications as starting point proof of Gore being “delusional”, and “mentally imbalanced”. It was an effective enough tactic that, to this day, clueless rubes years later still recite the fabrications as “factual” bullet points.
Given the state of our largely smug, lazy corporate media, it’s only fitting this country would so easily be lied into a disastrous war as an eventual consequence of the 2000 election. As mentioned earlier, Bob Someby’s “Daily Howler” has some great takes on media failures in general, and the 2000 election in particular.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
So are you suggesting Juan Cole was fooled by the NY Times?
It sounds to me like he, like a lot of other liberals, bought into the demonization of Saddam because it suits their worldview–specifically the “Evil Men” notion that places like Iraq get that way because evil geniuses take control. Thus, getting rid of the evil strongman saves the day.
History shows again and again that doesn’t happen. Evil is far more widely spread and people like Saddam stand on the shoulders of layer upon layer of enablers and co-despots.
Surely the mediocre media shares some portion of blame–10 percent??–but who could really say.
How about Hollywood?
Look at the way a lot of liberals–Marc being a spectacular example–and you can see a worldview based more than anything else on screenplays about evil villains out to destroy the world and heroes sweeping in to save the day.
But again, Hollywood is really just one of the messengers, not the message maker. Our misunderstandings about Saddam and what was going on in Iraq are deeply embedded in our consumerist, amnesiac culture. We can’t help but see ourselves in a messaianic role.
It’s not that the damning evidence isn’t out there, it’s that it’s ignored again and again.
Blumenthal’s Salon piece is yet another example. Bush wasn’t in any way denied evidence that the WMD were NOT there. It was handed straight to him and ignored it.
Juan Cole and others were not in that much different a position. The arguments for not invading Iraq were there for anyone with six brain cells and an Internet account to see. If Juan didn’t get to them, it’s because he didn’t want to, not because the NYT didn’t frontpage them.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I’m not talking about intellectuals being fooled. I’m talking about the public, and the capitalist reasons behind media manipulation. Why was Donahue fired for being antiwar? Remember the mass treatment of the Dixie Chicks? the suppression of dissent? Do you forget all of this Re Donahue An internal MSNBC memo warned ofn egative repercussions. It was sound business for the media to support war and lie for the regime. Capitalist media does this for obvious reasons, as the war, like all wars, is being fought on behalf of the US ruling class.
The public was manipulated into believing that Iraq was connected with 911. This, far more than WMDs, was the real manipulation, with the smoking gun mushroom cloud talk a close scond.
I realize and somewhat agree with your contention about Cole and other progressives initially backing the war. And your statements about misunderstandings about Saddam being deeply embedded merely prove my point about capital.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
What is your point about capital? Are you suggesting that a newspaper paid for and therefore directly controlled by the government would be LESS inclined to serve turd pizza to the shit-hungry masses?
Dissent was suppressed indeed. You, apparently, and me, for certain, took this as a sign of the government’s desperation, not as a reason to agree with the rationale for invading Iraq.
I keep coming back to Lincoln: You can fool some of the people, all of the time.
If we want to prevent the next war, we better base everything on the assumption that these people WILL be fooled again and set to work narrowing their ranks and expanding the ranks of people who WON’T get fooled again, rather than expecting the NYT to do it for us…
September 9th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
BB
Lincoln was wrong.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Either that or Americans aer incredibly gullible. I think the best theoretical explanation for this comes in Joe Bagient’s work, and Anatol Lieven’s America Right or Wrong. There is a strong tendency, going to the history of the nation state, of backing your liege no matter what he does.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
I didn’t say a thing about the Times. In fact I think future wars will be harder because of the growth of information sharing online.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
The mistake you make about public versus privately owned media is that in bourgeois society, therei s very little distinction. The US state is as per Marx, a holding company of the bourgeoisie. While there are certainly contending interests within the establishment, and ability for working people to achieve some redress sometimes through struggle, the state is capital personified. The propaganda is outsourced, as it were, by people happy to spout the administratio nline and scare people into shutting up.
September 9th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
JC, I see. So where is there or has there even been a non-bourqeois news media?
Where in any place at any time has there ever been the kind of news media you seem to be fantasizing about?
If it has never existed in any society at any time, what makes you think the problem is specific to capitalism?
September 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Instead of asking why NYT/Wapo don’t present a realistic enough worldview, you should be asking why newspaper that do haven’t been as successful.
September 9th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I’m a PhD track intellectual, pal. This is theorizing not fantasizing. Fantasizing is for undergrads
The “when has it existed” notion is a fallacy. Broadly speaking the news media operates when the public wants it to, since that becomes marketable to the bosses. I admire the media ecology of Great Britain far more than the States or Canada.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Perhaps you can explain why Britain plunged straight into Iraq as well.
There goes your “theory” that the U.S. media “manipulated” all those non-Phd track voters who lack your ability to sniff out turd journalism.
Since you “admire” UK newspapers, perhaps you can explain why they too failed to head off the debacle…
September 10th, 2007 at 7:08 am
I never said that the media can head off the debacle. They can simply inform the public. The British media did a better job, pre and during the early days of wa, in informing the public. Both Tony and George had their minds made up.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
[...] posting I placed the other day that linked to Jay Rosen on this subject turned out to be most the most [...]
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
White Bread or Whole Wheat Bread?…
For any kid who grew up eating doughy, thick Wonder Bread for lunch, the encouragement by dietitians and nutritionists to switch to whole wheat bread can be a tough transition….
December 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
exemplary work. You have gained a new reader. Please keep up the good work and I look forward to more of these absorbing posts.