Posted on 11/08/2004 3:38:21 AM PST by pjsbro
Mainstream journalists did a poor job of addressing issues that the electorate really cared about, like Social Security, and instead allowed President Bush's focus on "values" dominate their coverage, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs said at a journalism conference at the Kimmel Center Saturday.
"Most of us thought the campaign was about moral issues, but as journalists we failed to understand that it wasn't," he said, adding, "I've never seen the national media be more accepting of the word of politicians and the government. We allowed candidates and parties to set the agenda ... and failed to cover important issues."
Dobbs' critical tone reflected the general mood at the 12th-annual New York Press Club's Conference on Journalism, at which the "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host was the featured speaker. While the media luminaries who gathered in the Rosenthal Pavilion Saturday morning were supposed to discuss the overall state of the U.S. media, most couldn't help but dissect coverage of the 2004 campaign.
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter contended that "a fact-based media is in retreat from coverage that shows a distinct sense of right and wrong."
"You have to address media that puts political partisanship in front of facts," he said during a discussion titled "Assessing Presidential Election Coverage."
Yet James Pinkerton, a Newsday writer and contributor to the Fox News Channel, argued that the quality of news reporting is not always as important as the quantity. Addressing the role of blogs in covering the campaign, Pinkerton and Fox News Channel's Eric Burns argued that blogs served a "fact-checking function" for the mainstream media, whether or not they always posted accurate information.
The panel discussion was one of four at the conference, which began with a speech by NYU President John Sexton about the struggles of the modern-day media.
"The press will be a determining factor in the workability of civil society in a democratic system," Sexton said. "It is necessary for the media to work against the shrinking attention span of the American public."
During a discussion titled "Terror Threat: Preparedness and Intelligence in New York City," the New York Post's Murray Weiss questioned how Bush was able to rally citizens from relatively "safe" states like Ohio around the issue of terrorism.
"It may be that the result of media coverage makes people in Ohio more nervous," New York Times reporter Ben Weiser said.
Myron Kandel of CNN and Burns joined Daniel Okrent, public editor of The New York Times, for a discussion of media conglomeration just before Dobbs' speech.
Burns said he found the increasing corporate monopolization of the major media outlets troubling, but suggested that new technologies added new voices to the news.
"There are more independent voices than ever, in part due to the Internet," he said. "They do not have the power of established media, but they serve as checks and balances."
Okrent also praised smaller-scale media outlets.
"As you reach a larger audience," he said, "the refinement goes down."
And let's not forget the time they gave to Kitty Kelly (remember her?... what was it, three days on NBC!!!), CBS' phony stories about Bush's National Guard Service...
The amazing thing about the media coverage of the campaign was that Kerry's record (and I'm not even talking about his war record) was never seriously addressed by any of the MSM.
And that is sad.
I'm feeling the same way. It's like I'm in bizarro world.
The coverage was about values? I thought it was about the Iraq War (from Abu Ghraib to "missing" explosives to no WMDs), and the "bad" economy (from outsourcing to "millions of lost jobs" to "tax cuts for the rich").
I heard very little about samesex marriage (after the SF and Massachusetts brouhaha calmed down months ago), NOTHING about abortion, NOTHING about family values, etc. The media didn't cover any of these things.
How can they say that they focused too much on values?
I don't think lou dobbs is a good spokesman for independent media thinking. lou dobbs is a yellow dog democrat who spent a lot of his air time chastizing President Bush and President Bush's policies, especially his handling of Iraq.
I quit watching Lou Dobbs last year when he started focusing on "Outsourcing American Jobs" -- I wrote him a couple of times pointing otu that they were not American Jobs, they belonged to the people who owned the companies -- but finally just gave up on him. I actually find Peter Jennings to be more objective now than Lou Dobbs or most people on CNN.
"independent media thinking"=oxymoron
Aboslutely....to me your point is the gist of all this media angst...since the media was led astray as to the real issues, they were unable to formulate an effective anti-Bush attack.
Funny, I don't remember any coverage of the "moral" issue. I DO remember coverage on (phony) TANG documents, SwiftVet slamming, "missing" explosives, the Iraq war, etc.
Perhaps the voters DID consider Social Security when they voted for President Bush. Maybe they were tired of hearing everyone talk about fixing SS but not actually doing anything about it. President Bush has been the only one who bravely put out some ideas to actually DO something about Social Security. THAT is why I voted for President Bush. He talks about getting things done and then he does it.
Translation: Values was cited as a determing factor that allowed the wrong candidate to win; we should've ensured the stupid electorate was persuaded by the important issues (i.e. those issues that support John Kerry).
I'm sorry, but the main theme of Bush's election plan was the War of Terror and Iraq. Yes there was values talk but no where near the WOT issue.
So I think Lou should STFU.
And, I can understand why Bush43 spent a lot of time in the election talking about the WOT, not only from a political advantage but also we are in the middle of the conflict and if we lose the war on terror there will be no social security.
You hit the nail on the head, the MSM now are showing who they were supporting and what their real agenda is.
What a good idea! The next time I'm trapped in an airport waiting area, I'll unplug CNN. It's time we get pro-active and show the airport propaganda centers that they need to change to a local offering, if they can't abide Fox.
Indeed, it was and is...
Do not think they have changed one bit.
Except they have lost millions of viewers. (sigh)
Then he left the network but later came back. He returned because he missed the fleas he got when he laid down with the CNN mediawhores the first time around.
Leni
Apparently, they got hold of Dobbs and shipped him off to the liberal brainwashing Gulag Jane Fonda runs. This is truly out of character from the one sane voice at CNN.
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