STRATEGERY: BUSH CHEERS DECLINE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA, RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PRESS

drudgereport/strategery ^ | 2/28/2006 | drudge

[Geronimo]

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FEB 28, 2006 09:00:01 ET XXXXX

BUSH CHEERS DECLINE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA, RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PRESS

**Exclusive**

ROVE SLAMS DAN RATHER: NOT A 'SERIOUS' REPORTER

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

[STRATEGERY was ranked #5 on AMAZON.COM's sales chart early Tuesday morning.]

For example, journalist Dan Rather left the anchor chair at CBS News after Internet reporters revealed he had used forged documents to criticize Bush’s military record in September 2004. The forgeries, which Bush now calls a conspiracy, ended up helping his reelection campaign, he acknowledged in the Oval Office interview.

“It looks like somebody conspired to float false documents,” the president tells author Bill Sammon. “And I was amazed about it. I just couldn’t believe that would be happening [and] then it would become the basis of a fairly substantial series of news stories.”

He added: “Then there was a backlash to it. I mean, a lot of people were angry that this could have happened. A lot of Americans are fair people and they viewed this as patently unfair. So in a funny way, I guess it inured to our benefit, when it was all said and done.”

The episode, known as “Memogate,” inoculated Bush against further scrutiny of his National Guard record for the duration of the presidential campaign.

“It also, frankly, gave us an opportunity, frequently, when things came out in the media that we didn’t believe or didn’t like, to say, ‘It’s another CBS story,’” said Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, who was the president’s campaign manager. “I mean, it gave us a serious response to bad news.”

Although Memogate was initially expected to harm the president, it ended up backfiring spectacularly on the press.

“The guy that it hurt most was Dan Rather and the executives at CBS,” White House strategist Karl Rove said in an interview for STRATEGERY. “It further disgraced a network which is third in ratings and, if you look at the demographics of their consumers, it’s like 70 percent Democrat.”

Rove said Rather’s eagerness to broadcast obviously forged documents proves he is “no serious reporter.” As for Rather’s insistence, to this day, that the documents are real, Rove said: “That’s really bias.”

Memogate has helped accelerate the decline of the mainstream media, generally defined as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times and other establishment news outlets.

“I think what’s healthy is that there’s no monopoly on the news,” Bush said. “There’s competition. There’s competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.

“And the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there’s a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody’s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It’s a very interesting period.”

Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.

“It’s the beginning of the twenty-first century; it also happens to be the beginning of—or near the beginning—of a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination,” he said. “Not in newsmaking—that tends to be pretty consistent.”

Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.

“The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the 'blogosphere',” he said in his West Wing office.

“Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,” he added.

Still, Rove cautioned that the Internet’s political potential has a darker side.

“There is so much ugliness and viciousness and fundamental untruths that the blogosphere transmits,” he lamented. “It also is a vehicle for ugly rumors, for scurrilous personal attacks, an avenue for the creation of urban legends which are deeply corrosive of the political system and of people’s faith in it.”

Rove said Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, were gunning for the president and trying to help his challenger, Sen. John Kerry, by broadcasting the forged documents in the heat of the presidential campaign.

“From her body language and his body language, their enthusiasm for this story was in large measure fed by the belief that they were playing a constructive and perhaps determinative role in the presidential campaign,” Rove said of Mapes and Rather.

“They made a decision in this instance – I think quite prematurely and quite unfairly – to pursue a story that attacked the president,” he added. “And I thought it was, to me, one of the most incredible examples of how fundamentally unfair it was.”

Rove expressed astonishment that CBS ignored the warnings of document experts hired by the network to authenticate the National Guard memos.

“It goes back to the failure of the mainstream media, in this instance, to honor their own experts,” he said.

Rove is not the only senior Bush adviser who considers the mainstream media biased against the conservative president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was outraged that the TV networks refused to declare Bush the winner on Election Night, even after all the votes were counted in the pivotal state Ohio and it became obvious Kerry could not win.

“Some of the talking heads,” Card said, “were rooting for a crisis in Ohio. It wasn’t just that they were afraid to admit we had won.”

Card became particularly incensed when Bush’s Ohio lead reached 120,000 votes, which was mathematically insurmountable.

“Nobody wanted to call it so that we had won,” he said. “It was like, c’mon, are they just afraid to say it?”

Developing...

[Steve_Seattle]

The Atlantic has veered left since the death of Michael Kelly.

[Taliesan]

I feel better knowing that the local paper is sitting at the meetings.

You worry too much, because you've never grasped Adam Smith. You honestly think that no bloggers will sit at those meetings and self-publish their accounts? and then other bloggers will publish their own accounts? And then you will be able to compare three (or more) sources for yourself and decide what the truth is?

And what will you be missing? The "objectivity" of the reporter? How did you know he/she was objective? Because the 'editor" cleared the story? How did you know the editor was objective?

You didn't. The reporter took the government's version, and wrote his own. The blogger takes the government's version, and writes his own.

The ONLY difference in all this is that the editing process is out in the open, and subject to scrutiny. That editing process was the single proprietary product of the MSM which they sold for value. Now, it is not that it is being DISCARDED (that is what they want you to believe) but that it is being DECENTRALIZED.

The real struggle is that They don't understand decentralized processes. That is the real intellectual struggle going on in newsrooms across the country, and it is political: conservatives understand the invisible hand and believe in it; liberals don't.

[rockthecasbah]

Time to throw some punches and put the MSM on their heels. It's great to hear the leader of the free world saying this and validating the New Media.

[GOPJ]

Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, believe it could come to this? Hats off to you -- once again.

[USS Alaska]

Here is where they are going

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Still some pretty good writing, tho.

[CedarDave]

The post and the threads:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts?page=47#47

Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard [post 47]

THE "New" CBS BUSH DOCUMENTS: Let's do some investigating

[Not A Snowbird]

I don't read either one (in fact, I don't read any print media), but they have a ways to go to pass The Stranger for moonbat weirdness.

[Southack]

"If the big dailies continue to lay-off and go out of business, where will bloggers and forums such as this one get their national and international news?"

You've got it backwards. The old media already goes to the bloggers for their scoops.

The bloggers are there...in Washington, D.C...in Iraq...in Afghanistan...in their living rooms exposing the Old Media's forged National Guard documents, etc.

It wasn't the old media that "discovered" the firebombed cars in France; it was bloggers who were *there*.

We're transitioning from a system that had a few "elites" interviewing witnesses to events...into a system in which the witnesses report their news directly to the masses.

Notice that a certain elite middle man is getting "left" out of the above chain of events.

The Corrupt Old News Media Elite won't be able to manage this paradigm shift very well, either.

[CedarDave]

Whoops!! Link went to #4, not #47. Here is the correct one:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts?page=47#47

[Steve_Seattle]

My sister works for the Times, and her husband did before taking an early downsizing-induced retirement, so I have to watch what I say at family gatherings. But I cancelled my subscription the day it was impossible to believe the Times was acting in good faith. I had always given them credit for that, even when I disagreed with them, but what I was seeing on the editorial page could only be explained by bad faith or extremely low intelligence.

[cubreporter]

It's OK...we don't need them anymore. There is enough news from real people getting around and the networking is working. To hell with the MSM ...everything is about them. Well, we have shown them that it is NOT about them. They are supposed to be out there WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC...thye are NOT CELEBRITIES. They report the news is all..at least they USED to report the news. Now they have others who are REALLY reporting the news. :)

[GOPJ]

The funny thing is that the MSM thinks it is destroying the Bush agenda by continuing the wave of "bad news" for the President. What the MSM doesn't realize is that constantly being in "get Bush" mode, is actually helping the President advance part of his agenda, namely, the destruction of the MSM.

You're right. The MSM bias is so unfair, American react against it. The MSM understands their bias is working for conservatives, but they're afraid to be fair because in the short run, it would hurt their liberal friends. This time the "in the short term it feels good, but "in the long run it's a disaster," works in our favor. Love it.

[red irish]

When I am not really watching anything in particular on tv I will just put fox on so they can get the ratings.

[Carolinamom]

I am thrilled that I was there on those threads that night when Buckhead, Howlin,TankerKC, and other freepers did the work of exposing those Rather/Mapes lies......an exciting night! Later, it seemed that LittleGreenFootballs got the credit....but Sammon has now corrected that perception w/the FACT that it occurred first on FreeRepublic.

[princess leah]

Re: cartoon in post #77 - I see from looking at the NYT dinosaur that it is SMOKING something from that volcano!

[Republican Red]

GWB may be a freeper. LOL

At least a lurker, and I'm sure Rove is here everyday

One of the best conspiracy theories out there is from Mapes herself. She believed that Buckhead is part of the Bush Administration. Her uncanny journalistic instinct tells her that because the time stamp showed that Buckhead's post was 3 hours before the show aired, Buckhead was a White House insider.

Even when presented with the fact that the time stamp defaults to Pacific Standard time when one is not logged on she thinks she was set up.

[Grampa Dave]

Just don't feed them to dogs. That would be cruelty!

[GOPJ]

Even when presented with the fact that the time stamp defaults to Pacific Standard time when one is not logged on she thinks she was set up.

Facts don't matter to the Mapes of the world...

[Milhous]

If the big dailies continue to lay-off and go out of business, where will bloggers and forums such as this one get their national and international news?

Allow me to tout one of New Media's brightest rising stars - Michael Yon : Online Magazine

Former soldier draws praise for frontline blog

Despite the odds being what they are, there are three Pulitzer submissions for my 2005 work. - Michael Yon