Tag: media

Marginalizing the debate

In an otherwise interesting piece on the economic approaches being taken by Democratic candidates, David Leonhardt in The New York Times offers this example of how the national press acts as a limiting force in national politics:

Given the odds that the next five weeks will turn one of the two candidates into a presumptive presidential nominee, it’s worth thinking about these ideas while there is still a campaign going on.

He’s talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, of course, ignoring that John Edwards has been running neck and neck in Iowa. True, Clinton and Obama have the money and the national support, but the votes have yet to be cast and Edwards has run a spirited campaign.

This reminds me of something Glenn Greenwald wrote a few weeks back, which I blogged on at the time. He was writing about the war, but his analysis could easily apply to the economy or to the mainstream wisdom on the primaries:

Anyone who disrupts Beltway harmony in order to hold the Bush administration accountable — anyone who seems actually bothered by the rampant lawbreaking — is thus easily dismissed as an annoying radical or a self-promoting fraud.

Basically, Beltway coverage is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you marginalize Edwards — or Dodd or Richardson or Kucinich (who was missing from the Times’ chart on the candidates’ positions over the weekend — the full chart is available online) — you limit their ability to get their messages out, pushing them to the margins, which then justifies the press’ marginalization of them in the first place.

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Bad news for a free press

The Seattle Times explains why the FCC was wrong to rewrite ownership rules and why it is important that we put pressure on Congress to reverse Tuesday’s actions. In sum: Consolidation of media shrinks the number of voices, reducing diversity and further marginalizing dissenting views.

Media consolidation is not the remedy to any real or perceived ills that afflict the press. What is needed are laws that encourage an independent press and turn back the consolidation that has occurred during the past 40 years.

The public, Congress and the courts must right the colossal damage wrought by the FCC.

Check out Free Press to see what to do about this.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Random thoughts on the liberal media

You know the media is liberal when interviewers like Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America go after Michael Moore, questioning his contentions about media coverage in the run-up to the Iraq War, but allow Ann Coulter to run at the mouth unimpeded.

Consider this comment from Moore (from Crooks and Liars):

“My point is that had ABC News, NBC News, CBS News been more aggressive in confronting the government with what they were telling us back in 2003 about Iraq, you might have prevented this war. You, this network, the other networks,” Moore said. “Those 3,500 soldiers that are dead today may not have had to die had our news media done its job. … My point is that the media didn’t ask the questions.”

Moore’s point was pretty simple. The major news media didn’t approach their jobs with the proper level of skepticism. Was he impolitick about it? Perhaps. Was he wrong. Of course not.

But that did not stop Cuomo from going on the attack:

The simple fact is that the major media — both broadcast and print — allowed the Bush administration to control the debate, failing to question their assertions about Iraq’s weapons programs or links to terrorists. Basically, they failed us.

As for the Coulter appearance, which came about a week later, read this (from Raw Story — scroll to the bottom for video):

At the start of her appearance on Monday’s Good Morning America, Coulter briefly spoke about having been denounced by all three top Republican candidates over the Edwards slur, claiming that it didn’t show a “shift to the tolerant among the GOP,” since she was “denounced all over” for her words. The Godless author then blasted the media for focusing on statements by her, and not criticizing others when they make controversial statements such as the HBO talk show host and comic Bill Maher.

“Though, about the same time, Bill Maher said…and, by the way, I did not call John Edwards the ‘f-word,’ I said I couldn’t talk about him because you go into rehab for using that word,” Coulter said.

Good Morning America News Anchor Christoper Cuomo, a former political policy analyst for Fox News Channel, interrupted, “You said you were joking.”

“I wouldn’t insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards,” Coulter continued, “that would be mean. But about the same time, Bill Maher was not joking when he said he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack.”

Coulter then added, “So I’ve learned my lesson, if I’m gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he’d been killed in a terrorist assassination plot,” but Cuomo had no reaction to Coulter’s latest “threat.”

So, just to be clear, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” about as mainstream a news-magazine show as you can find, challenges Michael Moore when he criticizes prewar reporting, but allows Ann Coulter to blather on.

So what exactly is liberal about our media establishment, anyway?blogger Eric Alterman: “Waht liberal media?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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