Posted on 10/25/2008 10:40:40 AM PDT by perfect_rovian_storm
Just how bad has the presidential campaign coverage been this year?
So bad that popular online columnist Michael S. Malone, aka ABC.com's "Silicon Insider," wrote Friday, "I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a 'journalist.'”
So strong were his words that they should be required reading for all the Obama-loving media members that have disgraced themselves as well as their industry this year, especially if Malone's assertion that they're doing this to protect their own careers via a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine that will "crush the alternative media" is correct (h/t LGF via NBer Paul Wright, picture courtesy Santa Clara University): Story Continues Below Ad ↓
The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist. [...]
But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. [...]
No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate. So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.
Yet, potentially most fascinating was Malone's explanation for this shameful behavior. In his view, the drive-by media is "a dying industry":
The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.
What's the solution?
[A]n attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.
Here’s a link to the article they are speaking of there...
I should have just posted that, but realized after I’d hit the submit button.
Actually, I embrace the fairness doctrine. That means Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, and the others will have prime time slots on CNN, CBS, ABC, MSnbc and ABC. Tit for tat? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander? The people will see these people on the news each and every night
The piece was quite devastating and a serious indictment of the Free Press, which will no longer be free if 0bama and his Goons come into power.
...We will then be treated to a constant dose of phony "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" stories of how wonderful the New Economy (Socialism with a Smiley Face) is and that all is well with our Global Friends...all being produced at gunpoint with roving surveillance cameras.
You’ve got to be kidding. You can’t actually think that this will apply to the mainstream media.
One can only hope that fairness really means fairness. But in the Fascist world the Democrats thrive in, most likely not
The only solution to this problem is to treat the mainstream “media” as what they really are: a form of organized crime. Some enterprising prosecutor should proceed under RICO statutes.
If you lawyers can indict a ham sandwich, you should be able to indict MSDNC.
;-)
He should have said he was a piano player in a bordello - he would have gtten more respect.
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