Hoisting a white flag: Dean, Pelosi signal surrender

changed journalism from a profession

If you believe Watergate and journalism schools did that I invite you to go the Broadcast Hall of Fame and listen to NBC anchor H.V. Kaltenborn cover the 1948 presidential election returns. H.V. had better ratings than Cronkite ever did. Kaltenborn made the 2000 coverage of the Florida returns look unbiased and professional. He constantly predicted a Dewey victory, and openly rooted for Dewey to win.

I would invite you to read any issue of Time or Life Magazine from 1933 until 1948 and then tell me how unbiased the old print media was.

Then just for fun read the lead story of the Chicago Tribune the day after the presidential election in 1948. The first edition of headline read "DEWEY WINS" After reading the totally unbiased story about Dewey's great victory over Truman, come back and tell me it all started with Watergate.

If that doesn't do it go to the library of congress and read the press coverage of the Lincoln administration by northern papers. The media in the early 1960's referred to Lincoln as if he were a giant and very stupid sub human species. The cartoonists often drew Lincoln to look like a distorted primate.

My favorite is the 1800 election coverage of Jefferson. It covered Jefferson's relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings. There was no criticism of having sex or kids with a slave. Every southern gentlemen did that and few limited the sex to just one slave. The terrible accusation was that Jefferson treated the slave Sally Hemmings, and her slave Children as equals. It was reported that he was not content to just have sex with her, but he let her sit at his table and consume food with him. What was even worse was he sometimes did it when he had guests.

People who say the media was at one time unbiased, are only saying that at one time they or those they respect shared the media's biases.

A number of people on the right in 1972 felt that the nation was ripe for a Rightwing Republican Challenge to Nixon, But Nixon was more popular with voters than media coverage would lead one to believe.

My good friend, Ohio Congressman John Milan Ashbrook, challenged Nixon in the Republican primaries of 1972 through California. By the time the California primary votes were counted, it was certain that the nominee in 1972 would be Nixon. John dropped out and offered his support to Nixon.

My favorite memory of John, is from 1976. My former wife and I were attending the county fair. We had just entered the grounds and were looking at an exhibit. John and his wife walked up and spoke. We decided to tour the fair together. Everywhere we stopped John stuck up a conversation with fellow fair goers. He would ask questions about issues currently before congress and the nation. He never told them who he was unless asked.

I asked him why he did not tell the people who he was... after all that would be good campaigning. He said "Right now I am more interested in peoples views than votes". He said, "If they know who I am, they might not give me honest answers."

In the 1976 election the major labor unions set out to defeat Ashbrook. They spent a ton of money but their candidate lost.

After John's untimely death, the Ashbrook Think Tank at Ashland University was formed to honor his memory. It sometimes gets quoted here on FR.

It was interesting. In 1972 after all the biased media coverage, both the left and right thought Nixon was an easy take down. Watergate proves that much if not all of the Nixon administration believed Nixon was vulnerable too.

They were all wrong..... including me. In 1972 Nixon came with in 1 tenth of one percent of breaking FDR's victory record.

That was a good, spot-on analysis, CT, and I by and large agree with it.

However, I really think the Dem's problems stem from '68. That was when the New Left captured the apparatus of that party.

The Chicago riots were only a harbinger of things to come. The Hard-Core, Radical leftist press (Remparts, LA Free Press, The Nation, et al), which most Americans weren't privy to, were going full-bore with this stuff. And a surprising number of "respectable" Democrats were coming out of the political closet.

The late Gene McCarthy, of course, was the vanguard candidate, sort of a one-man shock-troop battalion that was given no chance of success at all. (The papers really played up the New Hampshire primary, which he actually LOST - 43% and 0 delegates does not equal victory, sorry - but that, apparently, was neither here nor there.) In fact, it often seemed he was in it just to be heard. (No, I don't mean his "message" being heard - I meant HIM being heard.)

A comment by McCarthy after RFK's assassination proved revealing: in so many words, he said, "All he had to do was wait until '72, and the nomination, and the election, would have been his". What he unwittingly revealed was the degree of greed and contempt for others that seemed to punctuate Kennedy's political life and fortunes.

I remember thinking how quixotic McGovern's quest seemed when he first announced. The Progressive thought it was the greatest thing since, well, life on Earth appeared! But for the life of me I couldn't understand what his appeal would be to the general populace.

You're pretty accurate with the post-1972 stuff.

That was a real good post, CT! My hat's off to you!

CA....

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