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

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...

Maybe internet news sites will begin to get press passes and cover news.

I'll read lib stuff on lib sites, but the difference is I know its lib-leaning. They cover it from their POV, and I think its interesting, in a "looking through the microscope at ants" sort of way.

Its the lying and claims of unbiasness that bug me.

I think it was Powerline, they went to the press hoopla at the USSC nominee hearings, asked one of the Dem senators, something that was so funny, but I can't remember what it was. But it was during a press gaggle, and the senator said that he didn't know who they were, and looked absolutely taken aback.

That's what will happen. But-

As websites begin to grow, and then hire staff to cover beats, and you'll have to pay them eventually.

Of course, that means they have to make money, hence where does the advertising work? Not so much on the internet, IMO. Too easy to ignore or not believe. People like paper ads, something they can hold in their hands.

Big papers will stay around. The NYT isn't going anywhere. Maybe Murdoch'll buy it also, and apply his current winning business model to it.

They are going to have to change though.

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?

I subscribe to the Sunday paper only, primarily for the junk coupons, the NYTimes crossword puzzle, and the weekly TV guide, and I am about to cancel that. I was going to last year but when I called they dropped the price so much that I relented. I don't mind paying the same as I would at the news stand but they want quite a bit more to deliver it.

From a business point of view I understand but as a customer I don't have to agree so I will be calling again to cancel it.

They, like some others, have become a little more balanced lately and I suppose it is because of the back lash. In order to cut cost many settled on AP and Reuters as their wire services and cut staff. Much of the news we get is from that small leftists group. Look at most any paper and the national and international news items make them look like a clipping service. It is all AP or Reuters.

Remember Katrina?

The Stone Age Press is facing a disaster of historic proportions and do they strengthen their levies of credibility? Of course not, they report this natural disaster as if it were Abu Grabass or their George Bush club of the Month. This was by far the worst case of news reporting in the history of this country. Within 24 hours of the breaking of the levy the Samestream press were reporting this as President Bush was willingly killing New Orleans.

They are like skydivers w/o parachutes who rather than flap their arms they have decided to do a delta tuck into the deck and make a dramatic splash of self importance. There could not been a more cut and dry story about a natural disaster than hurricane Katrina, yet they could not put away their extreme politics for a day. Most people wanted to see the disaster and witness as much of the rescue as they could possibly see. Nobody expected to have the worst hurricane to hit America be without suffering but we knew that Americans would come together to help the victims. It was a very simple story to report yet from the minute the levy broke it became a story about the reporters raging hated of President Bush.

The only question left with PravdABDNC is whether they are getting their marching orders from HilaryCare’s war room or the DNC’s war room? Anyone who is in business knows that if you are offering a product to the consumer you must make it attractive or useful. They obviously know that you must put attractive people in front of the camera, but that has not translated into the actual product which has become unwatchable.

Most people would rather spend a night in the Super Dome than watch Spitball or Shepard Sheep & Georalldo. While watching Smith and Whereswaldo’s metro sexual hissy fit we were waiting for a chair to come flying across the stage. Did he get divorced and married again while he was down there? The only people who were not going nuts were the people in the stadium who kept nervously looking for the Rubber Truck to take the 2 kooks away. And they were the best of the reporting.

When there was the Big 3 monopoly these clowns could get away with their agenda, however those days are long gone. Now, Rush is America’s anchorman while he and Drudge reach millions of Americans who are sick of this diet of hatred. We can go to the same sources the reporters have and get the information that would have never seen the light of day. These Dinosaurs’ time has passed and this story was the final nail in their glass coffin. From Franken to Russert they walked lockstep with a message that was so far removed from the story as their credibility is from reality. In their world you have the execution before the investigation, when all we want are the facts since there will be plenty of time for reflection. They want everyone who made a mistake Fired, well ok; look into your over used mirrors.

Finally, these knee jerk; heavy on the jerk reactionaries had to go to the race deck. President Bush is trying to kill Blacks because everyone knows that Republicans are racist, sexist, xenophobes as opposed to the all loving Democrats. You know that they are running out of evidence when they have to drag a Black behind a pickup again. Prove to us you are not a racist! Well since I am a racist, although not as racist as most Blacks, Hispanics or Democrats; I will say that this hurricane was not a racist hurricane. No it didn’t hit Boston, it hit Louisiana and Mississippi which are predominately Black. You could make an argument that God is a racist yet since he made Blacks it is a hard one to make. We know much of the rescuing was of Blacks by Whites in the hurricane that should mean that this was a non-racist event. If they were using dogs, batons and water hoses to push them back into the water, THAT would be a racist event.

The fact is that there were thousands of Whites risking their lives and reaching out to these people because they were people who were suffering. This was a colorless disaster where people didn’t ask who was who but are you hurting? America is the most caring and giving Country in the World no matter which part of the racial gumbo you are. Why anyone would bother to reach for this card just a desperate an attempt to damage a story of inspiration and courage that will last throughout the ages. It will be up to The Space Age Press to report the truth, while the Stoneage levy pours over it’s banks of hatred once again. Enough braying.

Pray for W, New Orleans and Our Freedom Fighting Troops

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