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...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's...

[BigSkyFreeper]

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?

Where they always go. The internet.

[Geronimo]

GWB may be a freeper. LOL

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

[A message]

Peter 2:22

22 But the word of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog turning to his own vomit; and, The washed sow to wallowing in the mire.

[BigSkyFreeper]

GWB may be a freeper. LOL

LOL!  Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?

 

[johnny7]

Now I 'gotta buy it!

[sport]

I do too. In fact, I would cheer louder if main stream media organizations would go completely broke.

[DBrow]

A good example of bias is the continuing story that the Coast Guard raised flags on the Dubai port deal, when the Coast Guard online says they were misquoted.

If you only get the disinformation from MSM, you will believe one thing; if you see it online you'll get corroboration before you decide.

I agree with Bush and Rove: the "new media" phenomenon is good, but there is a dark side too. Comes down to personal responsibility, IMO.

[sport]

They can't do more "hit pieces". They are already doing "hit pieces" as fast as their presses can print.

[teddyballgame]

I gotta get this book, I've loved all the excerpts. One of the bisggest stories over the last couple of years has been the absoluyte fall of the MSM. Their influence and reliability and their blatant bias has caused the rise of alternative sources like the internet, Fox News, & Talk Radio.

[squarebarb]

Nature abhors a vacuum.

[M203M4]

Hey, upper right hand corner, the one with the tiny head - is that Buchanan?

[Youngman442002]

This week in Orlando Florida is the big media advertising buyers convention...it should be interesting to see the numbers....afterall I think most of the circulation numbers the media uses are false...here in Denver the two papers give out free ones to up their numbers..and hence higher ad costs

[Mind-numbed Robot]

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?

If all else fails, the blogs can get the news the way it is done now, make it up. :-)

If there is a market for print media there will be print media. The problem with it is with the internet by the time you get your paper in the morning you have already read nearly everything in it. However, several new magazines appear each year and some stick around.

[SittinYonder]

Where they always go. The internet.

But many of the articles posted here come from large daily newspapers. By and large, bloggers don't go out and do reporting. The news stories have to come from somewhere initially, and this is something that I've wondered about many times while watching the decline of traditional news media.

I'm not saying I'll miss the liberal bias, and I won't miss editors attempting to set their own agendas. But I do wonder what will replace the Chicago Tribune or the Washington Post or the New York Times, for that matter.

Someone is going to have to put the news on the internet.

[BlueStateDepression]

an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media

That is exactly why the MSM hates the blogosphere so much. They have held the position of being the ones to look over other's shoulders for so long that they have forgotten about people looking over their own shoulders.

I find it hilarious that they claim to be defending the truth as a check and balance to the government when it comes to information......but then they abhor any check and balance directed at keeping them as 'honest' as they think they keep the government.

[RayChuang88]

If you really want to know where the first person who suggested that as communications technologies improve the MSM will suffer greatly, go read Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave. Toffler--even way back in 1979 when this book was published--prophesized that changes in communications technologies will change everything; note back then he saw the beginning of the rise of online services, 60+ channel cable TV, cheap desktop computers and home video systems, all over which have evolved into today's pubic Internet, 100+ channel digital cable TV and 200+ channel small-dish satellite TV, the modern desktop and desktop computer access the public Internet at over one megabit per second download speeds, and the rise of videocassette recorders, digital video recorders and DVD players.

All these changes have devastated the MSM; people can now time shift their TV programming, watch movies at home only 4-5 months after theatrical release, and get information that the MSM can't cover or ignore for political reasons. The really scary part for newspapers is that the likes of eBay and Craigslist are starting to devestate classified ads, one of the few remaining moneymakers for the newspapers.

[Beagle8U]

"GWB may be a freeper. LOL"

Thats not as far fetched as you may think.

I'm sure that the RNC reads FR often.

[txroadhawg]

Has Dick Chaney personally informed the press? Or are they still in the dark.

[SittinYonder]

Do any of you subscribe to newspapers? If so, is it a community (small daily or weekly in your hometown) or is it a major daily newspaper?