Now I know why several SENATORS want to TAX the NET to keep a lot of us away.
Posted on 10/30/2004 4:09:15 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The votes won't be counted until Tuesday night, and it may take weeks to find out who the final winner is, but one important loser has already been declared in the U.S. election campaign - the press. Or to be more specific, the mainstream press; the TV networks and large newspaper conglomerates whose dominance over the media landscape was virtually unchallenged until a few years ago. But now, Big Media, as it is sometimes called, sees its power and influence slipping away at a rate that has stunned both its critics and supporters.
Signs of trouble are not hard to find. A recent survey of registered voters undertaken by the Pew Research Center found that only a narrow majority of respondents (54 per cent) were prepared to give the press a favourable grade on its overall campaign coverage. And the discontent within Big Media itself is even more pervasive. The Committee of Concerned Journalists surveyed 500 of their members in mid-October, and reported that nearly 70 per cent graded their campaign coverage a C, D or F.
But Big Media's problems did not begin with this campaign, nor will they end with its conclusion. The American media have been in a prolonged and debilitating slump that goes back at least as far as the run-up to the war in Iraq in the winter of 2003, but can probably more accurately be traced back to the days following the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. It was then that the press, not wanting to be out of step with the nation's grief and anger, appears to have lost its ability to respond critically to the agenda of the Bush administration.
Indeed, it was Dan Rather himself, now widely viewed by the right as the poster boy for liberal media bias, who set the tone on David Letterman's show the week after the World Trade Center bombing. An emotional Rather declared that, "George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and - ya know, as just one American - um, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where." And Rather and others in Big Media not only lined up, they rolled over, as their president proceeded to lead them into a disastrous war in Iraq on the basis of over-hyped and misleading intelligence that never received the kind of scrutiny that a free nation requires from a free press.
And so Big Media entered the most closely fought and most divisive campaign in recent American history still reeling from its failures in Iraq, still under suspicion from both left and right, still apologetic about its behaviour and a bit nervous about sticking its neck out too far. And it was promptly blindsided by a series of very public scandals, controversies and charges of bias that kept it back on its heels throughout the campaign:
-Dan Rather's use of forged documents to try to prove Bush avoided National Guard service.
-Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron quoting John Kerry after the debate asking, "didn't my nails and cuticles look great?" and then admitting he made up the quotations.
-"The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," an anti-Kerry group whose bogus allegations helped sow the seeds of doubt about the Democrat's war record.
-ABC News political director Mark Halperin telling his correspondents that since the Bush campaign was less truthful than the Kerry campaign, they should hold statements made by Republicans up to greater scrutiny.
-What all of these examples have in common is that they were first exposed and/or most vigorously pursued not by Big Media outlets, but by representatives of the rapidly expanding "para-media" – bloggers, radio talk shows, cable stations and openly partisan TV networks like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting.
Members of the para-media practise some, but not all of the functions of Big Media journalists, but they long ago gave up the ghost of "objectivity." Instead, they proudly function as advocates of a particular party, candidate or issue, in much the same way as newspapers did back in the 19th century, when readers knew they were getting only one side of the story and were happy not to be confused by arguments from the other side.
In the Campaign of 2004, a bitterly and evenly divided electorate appears to be drifting back to a world where its viewing, listening and reading choices are based primarily on the editorial bias of its chosen media. The Pew Center survey found that 70 per cent of people who get most of their election news from pro-Republican Fox News plan to vote for George Bush.
This is bad news for Big Media, which has always prided itself on striking the proper journalistic balance. The problem is, fewer and fewer people believe that is what it is really doing. And besides, in a political realm so infused by "spin" from all sides, the traditional he said/she said reportorial paradigm seems increasingly anachronistic and counter-productive. It leads not to truth, but to confusion and obfuscation.
Traditional reporting operates on the principle that both sides have a right to have their story told, but too often in the context of the modern political campaign, that puts reporters in a position of acting not as filters for truth, but as stenographers for spin. The charges of the so-called swift boat veterans were duly reported by Big Media, even though they had little validity. It is simply what reporters do.
There are two sides to most stories, but the two sides are not always equally valid, and they don't necessarily warrant equal attention in the press. Steve Lovelady, the managing editor of The Columbia Journalism Review's CampaignDesk website, thinks reporters are so afraid of being perceived as biased that they are reluctant to make evaluations of controversial, partisan attacks like those from the anti-Kerry veterans. But Lovelady thinks that is a big mistake. "It shouldn't just be he/said she said," he argues. "It should be he said/she said/we say - and here's why we say it."
What Steve Lovelady is advocating, of course, is precisely what thousands of political weblogs do every day. Which is why they have emerged as the big media winner in this campaign. They have broken the stranglehold that Big Media once had as the exclusive gatekeepers of what is a news story and what isn't.
Not everyone in Big Media is happy about it. Veteran Washington Post columnist William Raspberry recently complained that these days, "anyone with Web access can run any cockamamie story up the flagpole - and if enough people salute, prompt the mainstream press to deploy its resources." William Raspberry may not like what's happened, but he'd better get used to it. Big Media must now share the stage with the blogosphere, and campaign coverage will never be the same.
"We're losing respect because we're not attacking conservatives." Keep on believing that, MSM. Please keep on believing that.
Reep what you sow..commies.
Now I know why several SENATORS want to TAX the NET to keep a lot of us away.
"Swift Vets bogus allegations"? I can't believe CBS NEWS has the audacity to say that. They are truly despicable.
huh, and what exactly do we call their recent musings? supportive?
also notice how the msm were "blindsided" as if they had no part in filling the sewer in which they are drowning.
Columbia, huh? [vomit]
This is CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or as I call them, Communist Broadcasting Corporation. I'm Canadian. These people think Pravda was too right-wing. I caution you not to read this drivel without permission from your doctor. Don't let the headline mislead you. This guy is on The Other Side.
The can't even maintain intellectual honesty when confessing.
"It was then that the press, not wanting to be out of step with the nation's grief and anger, appears to have lost its ability to respond critically to the agenda of the Bush administration."
You see, this is why I can't trust liberals.
How can they possibly know, since they've never bothered to do any investigating into the subject!
This is bad stuff. It's the second sucker headline I've run across, followed by a story that says people are losing faith in the press because they aren't liberal enough. Complete bunk.
Ohhhhhhhh. OK. I'm feeling pretty stupid right about now.
I am not Canadian but I do have a cottage in the Haliburton Highlands, Ontario (where I am at this moment). For years, the only radio station I could pick up was CBC-1. The announcers would frequently say "this is CBC-1" but would not say what the letters stood for. Given the content of the programs and the spin of the news, I just assumed the letters stood for Canadians Broadcasting Communism. Thanks for clarify this for me.
This is incredibly funny! I can't believe the author actually believes what he wrote...
This guy obviously never looked too carefully into the SBVT because sKerry has NEVER refuted anything they have said directly, and he has changed several parts of his "heroic war hero" story in order to comply with exactly what the Swifties have alleged.
It began with watergate -- when a crazed press stopped at nothing to throw out of office a man that they hated in the 1950's and 60's. The presses backlash stemmed from the McCarthy Senate trials where the alligence of many of their ilk was exposed.
Their hatred of Reagan hammered more nails in their coffin.
Their Hatred of Newt Gingrich did more even damage
Their carrying water for Clinton and using everything they had to protect him put them in deeper.
The demise of the media has been a slow suicide over since Nixon. The press have been in denial over this for three decades. But now that they can no longer ignor the eventual shut down of their news networks and news papers they admit they have royally screwed up -- howbeit only since 9-11.
There have been polling numbers ever since watergate that the press was just above lawyers
In the 1940 's and 1950's members of the press were crusaders for truth, they were viewed as hero's -- In the late 60's they became activists and they boasted for decades that were able to form public opinion.
It over! Your day has passed!
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