Lefty blog Crooks and Liars captures this little nugget of election analysis. From Fox News’ Sheppard Smith, no less.
“DiPaolo:...the MSM being so in the tank for Obama...
Smith: Oh, please. That's preposterous. The MSM reflected what was happening in this nation. It did not drive it. The blogs didn't drive this movement, the media didn't drive this movement. Barack Obama did not lose this election. It was his to lose. It was not John McCain's to win. The Republicans had no shot unless the Democrats gave it to them and they didn't and to blame the media is a cop out and ridiculous....
DiPaolo: The MSM has been liberal since its inception. It's years and years of pounding...
Smith: How did George Bush win twice?
DiPaolo: I don't know. Karl Rove is a genius.”
And there you have it. “I don’t know.” If the media has a liberal bias why is the entire AM band of the radio home to raving right-wing attack dogs like Rush Limbaugh? I don’t know. If the media has a liberal bias why do cable news networks put conservative hosts like Dobbs and Beck and O’Reilly on in prime time? I don’t know. If the media has a liberal bias why is MSNBC the only place where you can find any liberals who aren’t doormats to people like Sean Hannity? I don’t know.
Maybe the media doesn’t have a liberal bias. You can argue that newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post tend to be liberal on their editorial pages, but so what? Conservatives have their editorial pages (Wall Street Journal, Washington Times) as well.
Journalists—and I don’t include cable news pundits in that term—have a job to do. They are trained to do it without injecting their personal opinions. There is a lot we can criticize our modern media about, and we should, and we should hold them accountable every single day if they mess up or let some bias slip in. But to continue whining and complaining about liberal media bias when the majority of our TV and radio pundits are white male conservatives seems a little ridiculous to me.
Fox News was in non-stop Attack Obama mode for the past six month and it did nothing but freak out a bunch of people who were going to vote Republican anyhow.
If I were to give a piece of advice to conservatives on how to stop losing elections, I would say: Fire Your Media. Fox, Rush, O’Reilly, Rove, and whole happy gang are a bunch of delusional ideologues who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on their sizable asses. They are telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. And you have lost the majority of American voters along the way.
3 comments:
I think one thing to say about the new york times, is that it is the paper for New York City, and last I check, at least Manhatten Island votes 85% democratic, so I would be surprised if it weren't liberal. Anyhow, the old liberal MSM argument does have some interesting angles which I would be interesting in discussing some day.
What I would like to propose today, however, is a retrospective of the 2008 Republican election. Can we call the post "The Liars, the Rich and the Wardrobe?" I don't exactly know who I am going to cast as the Liars just yet (maybe the MSM could get that role), but I have an idea of who might be the Rich and the Wardrobe. Anyhow, it's sort of a dumb pun, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Did anyone catch the documentary on Frontline about Lee Atwater. Very interesting. I felt real sympathy for the guy by the end. But the one thing that struck me, was how the Bush family destroyed two very honorable, decent Republicans: Bob Dole and John McCain. I wonder if the Bush dynasty is over, or if some day we will see Jeb, who by all accounts would have been a decent president.
Random musings.
I didn't see the Atwater thing but I heard it was very good.
Getting into discussions of media can be difficult because it's really a vague term and means different things to different people. I think the Right sees the "media" as newspapers and TV news to some extent, tho as I mentioned much of cable news has been dominated by right-leaning pundits, who don't really fit in my definition of journalists but are definitly media. But I think you also have to throw in AM radio talkers, who are overwhelmingly conservative. And of course bloggers and internet sites, which can be conservative, like Drudge, but many of the most popular ones are liberal, some very liberal.
So it's a mixed bag, and it's just lazy, in my opinion, to keep talking about "liberal" media in this country.
By the way, many of the lefty sites are noting today's political talk shows:
(from Atrios)
"... on the teevee on Sunday we have:
7 Appearances by Republican current elected officeholders
3 Appearances by Democratic current elected officeholders.
2 Appearances by Republican former elected officeholders.
1 Appearance by a Bush Cabinet Secretary.
T. Boone Pickens
Ted Turner."
Fair and balanced.
Yes, I've read stuff about the Sunday Morning talk show one. I think there's something there. Let's watch and see if it's still that way 3 months into the Obama administration (after they actually take office). I think the "Republicans eating there own / Obama is guaranteed to overreach storyline" will be overwhelmed by new facts on the ground, where they may be forced to invite some people actually leading the policy creation process in critical times (otherwise they would look kind of stupid).
Another theory, Democrats may be staying off the shows at the moment until they have a clean message and plan in place.
But let's watch that one, I found it very interesting.
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