Regards, Ivan
Posted on 09/11/2004 4:42:32 PM PDT by MadIvan
The two sides remain entrenched, their rhetorical sallies increasing in ferocity, their claims and counterclaims ricocheting through the political landscape. Democrats and Republicans? Nope: that’s so 2000. This time the war is between the new and the old media, between established pillars of journalism and a bunch of new, ornery and sometimes reckless upstarts.
It’s the subtext of the 2004 campaign and it has already begun to shape the American presidential race in ways that would have been difficult to accomplish two years ago, let alone four.
There are, I think, three genuinely new power brokers in American politics in this election season. They are cable news, the blogosphere — where online pundits provide a real-time “weblog” commentary on events — and new advertising/political groups called “527s”, named after the legislative subsection that helped create them.
Between them these forces have helped dilute and even, in a few cases, supplant the network news, mainstream newspapers and political parties as the critical arbiters of the course of this election.
Start with the cable news channels. Something truly remarkable happened in July and August: cable news eclipsed the mainstream networks in coverage of the political conventions.
On the final night of the Bush coronation, the right-leaning cable channel Fox News (owned by News Corporation, ultimate parent company of The Sunday Times) won more viewers than any other network — 7m compared with second place NBC’s 5.9m — and more than CBS and ABC combined. Yet Fox is available in far fewer households than the regular networks. This simply hasn’t happened before.
There was also a partisan tilt to the viewing. The more liberal CNN cleaned up during the Democrats’ confab; Fox News surged in viewers for the Republicans’ infomercial. The old model in which allegedly objective network journalists wielded enormous influence over the media coverage of politics has been exploded.
American television is now much less like the BBC and more like the British press — its biases more open, its competition more fierce, its ideological diversity more acknowledged. The political polarisation of the country has also found expression in even the television channels that viewers watch.
Added to this are the weblogs. In the last election cycle, blogs were a tiny part of the media universe. I should know, I was one of the relatively few who were blogging. But now the blogosphere has exploded — the traffic higher, the influence far greater, the leverage over news coverage more powerful.
In 2000 I was thrilled to have 4,000 readers. This year my review of one night during the Republican convention won 100,000 readers in 24 hours. In the old days network news producers would read The New York Times, decide on a couple of stories, spin them with liberal bias and put out a predictably stale broadcast every night.
These days the Times remains important. But it still hasn’t recovered from the chaotically biased editorship of Howell Raines who left when one of his top reporters, Jayson Blair, was found to have made up most of his stories.
Producers for cable news shows now consult the blogs as much as the Times for tips about upcoming stories, often pilfering the upstart websites for gaffes or scandals. Throughout the day, news managers consult the blogosphere for updates, while the mainstream media tread water. In this, the Drudge Report was the proud pioneer. But Drudge is now a big fish in an infinitely bigger and splashier pond.
And then the 527s. These groups with vast amounts of money to spend on political ads have more clout than blogs or cable news. Blogs and cable are influential largely because they are read by political junkies, insiders and nerds. The 527s, in contrast, can wield huge influence by buying advertising in swing states.
Each of these developments by itself would have made an impact. But it’s clear now that they have also catalysed each other’s influence, creating a new web of media that easily rivals the old.
Take the most important turning point in this campaign so far: the attacks on John Kerry’s war service. The original source was a book, Unfit for Command, published by Regnery.
But the ads accusing Kerry of lying about his war medals were financed by a group of Bush-connected operatives in a 527 called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The ads might have disappeared into the ether in the old media world. Much of the mainstream media investigated the claims and found them to be largely unproven hearsay and malice. In the old era the story would have died.
But this time the blogs took up the rallying cry. Instapundit.com hyped the claims relentlessly (while retaining some scepticism about their content). Drudge did the same, giving the vets star treatment.
* Fox News duly took up the story and kept on it night after night. As word spread, anti-Kerry forces sent in more money to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, allowing the group to ramp up its ad efforts. And within a few days the old media were forced to cover the claims — even if much of their coverage amounted to a debunking.
Talk radio added to the chorus. Suddenly a huge story was breaking; and the Kerry campaign seemed caught like a rabbit in front of a pick-up truck’s headlights. The new media were running the show.
Last week the old media tried to fight back. The Boston Globe reported a story that documented how President Bush had won preferential treatment in the Texas National Guard because of his political and family connections.
CBS News ran an interview with the former head of that guard, who claimed he had pulled strings to keep Bush out of Vietnam. CBS then ran with a story that was based on newly discovered military memos indicating that one National Guard officer was irritated that political pressure had been brought to bear on him to excuse George W Bush’s erratic attendance record. The supporting evidence seemed far stronger than that behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign — and so the new media struck back.
A blog called Power Line immediately claimed the documents were hoaxes; within hours Drudge had picked up the story. CBS defended its story, then experts came forward to say the memos had been written on a modern computer. We’ll see. But whatever happens to this new twist in campaign news, it’s impossible to understand the dynamic without absorbing the new and varied media landscape American politics now operates in.
The upshot is that the politicians and the big parties have seriously lost control of the process. The race is therefore assured of several new surprises in the weeks ahead. Will a new 527 campaign detonate yet another scandal under Bush or Kerry? Will The New York Times, The Boston Globe and CBS get even more aggressive in their scrutiny of Bush — or will the blogs and Fox News pioneer new blows to the Kerry campaign? Sometimes the political professionals have a clue. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads were organised and financed by a bunch of Bush cronies; and many of the advisers and consultants behind liberal ad campaigns have connections to the Kerry camp. But unpredictability is the game here.
The downside is that sleaze is far more easily parlayed and smears more effectively deployed. The benefit is that the new system is also porous.
The competition between new and old media can help both get stories right; media bias is more openly admitted so that the reader or viewer can make up his or her mind; new information emerges that might never have been known before.
It’s not perfect and it can lead to some ugly moments (besmirching someone’s war medals or possibly faking documents). But it’s real, dynamic and open. It’s democratic. And if you’re interested in politics, it keeps you looking forward to opening your laptop each morning.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
They forgot "snarky".
Andrew Sullivan joins John Kerry in the Liars Club.
Hey, at least he didn't talk about his gayness!
Andrew just doesn't get it.
It's not just the Blog o sphere it's EVERY ONE on the net!
Any way Freerepublic was way ahead of him and still is.
The above is where Sullivan slipped over the other side of the River Styx. Yep, dissappointing. Sullivan isn't the guy you want to be with in the fox hole, and I mean that irrespective of whether the other guy is homo or hetero, just so I am not misunderstood. :)
Matt Drudge got the ball rolling for the "new media" with the blue dress, Lucianna Goldberg was the catalyst.
Sullivan needs to do his fact checking a little better. Barnes was hardly the former head of that guard.
Considering Sullivan was happy to report the connections from the Swift Boat Veterans to Republicans in Texas, you'd think he might have mentioned that Barnes is a major Kerry fundraiser and working with the campaign.
That's right Andrew....those reckless upstarts nailed Rather in 12 hours.....how long did it take your buddies in the Old Media to even get around to covering the Swift Vets..
"CBS News ran an interview with the former head of that guard, who claimed he had pulled strings to keep Bush out of Vietnam."
Doesn't this mistate who Barnes is?
Evolution, Mr. Rather, evolution..like the dinosaur. Look out that window...you had your time. The future is our world, Mr. Rather, the future...is our time.
Sure does. I just sent an email to Andrew Sullivan pointing that out.
I really have a major proper with Sullivan's disrespect for the Swiftees. Sullivan's own pet politics have blinded him to the fact that honorable men have spoken truth about a dishonorable man.
Andy really doesn't get it. He also doesn't give enough due to talk radio.
Cool.
Sullivan is spending too much time in Provincetown these days, and just isn't doing his homework. He's lost his edge. He's becoming something akin to a flabby old man.
Good read.
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