Edgelings.com » Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions: "But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press"
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From a journalist.
2 comments:
Well, you can believe what you want to believe, but I direct you to the study done by George Mason University shortly before the conventions that showed negative coverage for Barack Obama far exceeded negative coverage for John McCain.
Since early September, there has, for the first time, been a modest, but I emphasize modest, overall bias towards Obama. Why? Largely because McCain, under Steve Schmidt's nefarious influence, declared war on the press, and if there's one thing the American media likes more than conservatism, it's being schmoozed, and they will turn viciously against those who suddenly withhold schmoozing. The decision of the McCain campaign to close off free access to the candidate was one of the most foolish political moves in a long time. But all too often the protege forgets the wisdom of the teacher, and just as John Major played the role of "Tumbledown" Dick Cromwell to Margaret Thatcher's Oliver, so has Steve Schmidt to Karl Rove.
Your read of so-called media bias is the same as the dead-end worldview of Steve Schmidt that has gotten the McCain ticket into such trouble. Schmidt assumed the media were out to get McCain, so he herded them all to the back of the plane. Then, and ONLY then, did they turn on him. Even then, it took the form more of berating McCain operatives than McCain himself, despite the fact that McCain and Schmidt have very centralized control.
The longer the Republican right goes on believing in this chimera of media bias, the longer they will spend in the political wilderness. Periodically, smart conservatives have admitted there's no such thing as liberal media bias, but rather that alleging such bias is simply a useful political strategy. Certainly it has been a very effective strategy for the Republicans; Bush's capture of the White House in 2000 would never have been possible without the ruining of Al Gore by biased media coverage in 1999 and early 2000. Schmidt has undermined all that.
If Republicans are truly more serious about conservatism than they are about delusional fantasies, they will disown the reactive, tactical, power-oriented politics of today's Republican Party, and go back to their inner Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan. But unfortunately, I doubt that they are serious about anything other than getting elected. And until they change back, they are doomed to one electoral failure after another.
I guess MM doesn't watch the news in my hometown, where a reporter gave us this interview of Joe Biden:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXcImQfubM
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