I think Digby is being idealistic when she says
I have always been one of those who felt that the country would be better off if we just had a news media that did its job.
Obviously, that would be a good thing but it's not going to happen. Media, profits, and entertainment comingle freely and as long as we have low information voters the way the media covers things will affect elections and policy. That's why it's the job of campaigns and presidencies to manipulate the media in their favor. It's a repulsive reality, but that's the media reality in which we live.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at May 30, 2008 11:40 AM"...the Clintons have been exposed as less competent politicians than they once were...."
yeah, the Democratic party did so well under Bill "triangulate" Clinton
Posted by Gay Veteran at May 30, 2008 11:41 AMbut that was where the blogosphere was supposed to be different. digby isn't writing just about the media, she's writing about us.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 11:41 AMyeah, gay vet-
raising taxes to erase the reagan/bush deficits, then taking on the health insurance industry and the gun lobby didn't work out too well, politically. guess he shouldn't have tried. no one else will, now.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 11:50 AMYes, and when Obama becomes President, they will suddenly discover a pseudo-scandal to bludgeon him with.... same as it ever was.
Or conversely, MSNBC could become the left version of FOX, and the blogosphere some sort of version of right-wing talk radio, at which point we will have become all that we despise.
Posted by JB64 at May 30, 2008 11:52 AM"Hillary Clinton who is under attack"..waaaaaa. please excuse me while I go get a hankie.
Posted by T2 at May 30, 2008 11:52 AMI pretty much agree with Digby, MSNBC's coverage is stupid, boring and shallow -- fad and Nielson driven -- even though its coverage of the campaign is working to Obama's advantage.
The one thing I can say, though, is that this flavor of (bad) coverage wouldn't have happened if the pooh bahs at General Electric hadn't decided that there was a demographic out there -- liberals -- who would watch this shit (which is really just filler between commercials). And at the same time, the corporate overlords must've also made the decision that throwing a few bones to liberals probably wouldn't hurt General Electric all that much politically.
Though the initiative and the power is still in the hands of a war profiteer and criminal like General Electric, these decisions it made reflect -- at least in part -- a growing power on our part.
Back in the day when he was at MyDD, Chris Bowers posted a series of articles on polling about various demographics. Liberals were one of the largest demographics, they are a growing demographic, and they are, by far, the most financially well-off. The kind of money that the Obama and Clinton campaigns have been able to raise on-line have put this notion in bold.
I don't think this economic reality has completely sunk in to our political elites, nor to the media. At least not yet.
But I view the change in MSGOP's coverage to reflect at least a partial recognition of the point Chris made at least two years ago.
So although it represents sucky journalism as usual, the flavor in which is sucks is a reflection of our growing power. And I take a little heart in that.
Posted by kaleidescope at May 30, 2008 11:53 AMHere! Here! Turkana. The real problem comes from the fact that when we have such a dysfunctional press and punditry, we will never be able to solve real problems with some honest and objective criteria. The pundits are too full of themselves and their own sense of infallibility to be able to admit their mistakes or to stop piling on their next "victim" so they can be part of the "kool-kids". And now we know it is a big part of the blogosphere as well.
You don't have to hate someone to decide not to support them. The problem is that people have to see their opponent as "evil" or "fatally flawed" to feel justified in their choice. What this shows is that in the US propaganda works, and we will always get redirected to "gotcha politics" even while the world burns up.
Posted by Mary at May 30, 2008 11:54 AMthanks for proving my point, t2.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 11:56 AMBut even as the blogosphere grows in size and impact, it is growing ever more similar to the corporate media, both in its narratives and its tactics, and what was supposed to become more competent and more reliable than the corporate media has become, instead, but a pale reflection of its worst.
It's a human failing. Objective thinking is not natural. It's hard work, a skill that requires a lot practice to develop. Like most hard-to-develop skills (for example, skiing), you'll have to have a lot of embarrassing falls along the way where you realize that you just didn't get that point right.
Objective thinking is more likely to happen in an environment where the recognized leaders practice it -- modeling the behavior by example. The Media could play this role, and an entity like the BBC does play this role to a great degree. But in the US not even NPR and PBS play this role anymore.
Many years ago, in usenet days, I participated in a variety of message boards -- some technical, some sports-related. The sports-related boards were a good study of objective thinking in groups -- when it worked and when it didn't. This is because with Sports the biases are obvious. Most participants on the board identified themselves as a fan of a certain team(s), and perhaps an anti-fan of other teams. On some boards the leading commenters tried to stay objective and did a pretty good job of keeping each other, and the other commenters, honest. On other boards the conversation would quickly devolve into an endless series of woofs and insults.
The key differences between the good and bad board were these. First, the leaders of the good board had to be adept at understanding, and promoting, the concept of the neutral point of view (NPOV). Second, they had to be willing to get rid of the problem children, what we now call trolls, quickly. That second point is a real challenge -- if you pull the trigger too quickly you are stifling dissent, but if you wait too long you'll lose some of your best contributors.
Wikipedia has done a pretty good job at applying these concepts today -- the articles that qualify for their highest quality ratings are generally excellent, objective, detailed, and fair.
The lessons are that we can't expect an unmoderated entity like the blogosphere to produce objective analysis. It is something that comes from dedicated teamwork (people need to police each other) and active moderation of the discussion.
Posted by Anonny at May 30, 2008 12:02 PMThe very first question from the audience turned out to be an admonition from a woman who did not believe Clinton's personal behavior was deserving of the hysteria. She was off-script, and was quickly told so. One of the TV foofs (I want to say Jeff Greenfield, but, again, I could be wrong) calmly and condescendingly encapsulated his industry's attitude, explaining, in essence, that the forum had not been convened with the intention of allowing the little people to tell the important people their irrelevant opinions, its purpose was for the important people to explain to the little people why this manufactured crisis really and truly mattered! I don't know where the discussion went from there, because I turned it off. But the little people never did buy into the media's narrative, and Clinton's attackers, including the media, suffered for it.
A decade later, little has changed, except that it is now Hillary Clinton who is under attack, there is no single concocted crisis with which to attack her, and many Democrats are now siding with the media.
Citations? Please?
If you're going to compare what's happening to HIllary now to Bill, then, you owe us that.
Posted by dj moonbat at May 30, 2008 12:07 PMOutstanding post Turkana. Really outstanding.
(Not that most of your Obama commenters will get it. What do they care about ojbectivity or journalistic integrity? They are blinded by Clinton hatred and use it willingly to distort and mislead. By any means necessary will the Unity Pony win, including divide and conquer.)
The issue of journalistic integrity is much much larger than clinton v. obama, or right v. left. As you said, the left is now largely exposed as the stoopid mirror image of the right - best exemplified by that tabloid rag DailyKos. Really, is DK anything but the lefty version of Drudge? I don't think so. Crashing the gates to what end? To assimilate and become the same freaking thing, that's what.
Besides digby and Greenwald, please add to your list of those few with integrity remaining intact - the incomparable Bob Somerby.
Posted by Reality at May 30, 2008 12:11 PMi've looked, moonbat, but it was 1997 or 1998.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 12:11 PMreality,
somerby has been doing it better and longer than anyone!
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 12:13 PMYour article is exactly right at all points. The media have been disgusting and still are.
But, when you talk about "1/2 the Democratic party" you fail to see why there is so much dislike of Hillary among Democrats.
1. She voted for the war and has never been willing to apologize for it. Instead she's invented endless excuses and gone so far as to say that knowing what she knew she wouldn't change a thing about her vote.
She lost me right there. We anti-war Democrats feel that Hillary is our enemy. She's been running AGAINST us as much as against the Republicans and there's no reason to think that her administration would be any different than Bill Clinton's triangulating disaster, which enabled the right-wing coup that was the 2000 election.
2. Hillary's endless complaint about victimization strikes us as self-pitying at best and disingenuous at worst. She was fine with the rules as they are until it appeared she would lose the nomination. Suddenly "every vote must count" became her mantra. You can bet that if Obama had won Michigan, she'd be explaining how only FLORIDA'S votes "must count."
This self-serving hypocrisy combined with the feeling that Hillary is really operating from a sense of entitlement so immense it rivals George Bush's, makes it extremely difficult for us to feel any sympathy whatever for her when she's attacked -- often unfairly by the press.
Of course this same press DID enable Bush's war. Digby is right when she points out that the same thing will happen to Obama. It's just difficult to support Hillary when she's been so obnoxious throughout this campaign, praising McCain and heaping abuse on Obama.
Now she's complaining about the RFK remarks being blown out of proportion. She thought the media piling on was perfectly fine when they were savaging Obama unjustly over Rev. Wright. That situation was even WORSE than the Hillary RFK fiasco, since Obama himself never said any of the incendiary remarks. He was pilloried because his former pastor was an "angry black who hates America."
The damage done by that sad affair has yet to be undone and Hillary gleefully rode that racist wave to victory in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
I'm not going to lose any sleep over Hillary being unfairly criticized in the press. Perhaps we should, but it's just too emotionally difficult to care after watching her these past 6 months.
Posted by Cugel at May 30, 2008 12:15 PMTurkana, I'm less concerned with cites to the woman in '98 than I am with cites to what you think are parallel examples of the press today pillorying Hillary in ways that the public isn't buying.
See, the (unfair, but politically salient) thing about the Big Dawg is that he was No Damned Good on a personal level, but was so charismatic, people didn't give a rat's ass. HIllary just is not -- and has never been -- possessed of that sort of charisma.
So if you're going to try to tie efforts to hunt down Bill with efforts to hunt down Hillary, you need to do more work to explain why they're actually parallel, and account somehow for the fact that Bill was in fact no damned good, and Hillary is in many ways better, but less liked. It's NOT just the media's fault.
Posted by dj moonbat at May 30, 2008 12:24 PMoh..you had a point? Here's a point for you...50% of the country hates the Clintons. That is why the GOP would be thrilled to run against her. That and the fact that, since she joined McCain in authorizing Bush's War built on Propaganda, it takes Iraq off the table in the campaign. I just heard Alan Greenspan's wife on MSNBC going on about another Obama preacher....but in your tepid world, I guess that's somehow an attack on Ms. Clinton too. I guess my question is: what doesn't constitute an attack on Ms. Clinton?
Posted by T2 at May 30, 2008 12:26 PMagain, t2- thanks for proving my point.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 12:27 PMThere several points worth mentioning that were not mentioned above:
- We should expect journalist, as oppose to pundits and hosts, to be objective, fully informed and deal with the significant problems of the day. A simple way to do it in a democracy is to always assume that your responsibility is to criticize the government no matter who is in power.
- Pundits and hosts of radio, TV programs and columnist are personalities and we should simply ignore them. I do, i never listen to any of the clowns on TV and only to NPR on the radio.
- This is not a typical election year. The scorched earth campaign employed by Obama (my understatement) has successfully split the party into two Sunni and Shea like factions with all the hatred, victims and battlefield present. The sad part is that some of the blogs, especially on the Obama side, decided to play the Moqtada Al Sadr part.
- It all related to the Clinton phenomenon. This country and especially the media and the Moqtada Al Sadr blogs owe a huge apology to this family who has done a lot of good for the country and in return is hated the way Nazis hate Jews and Gays.
- (Small aside) Your comment "...the Clintons have been exposed as less competent politicians than they once were...." serves as a counter example to the spirit of the post. No one ever said that Hillary campaign was perfect, so why demonstrate that you too are "somewhat" against them. By the way, considering the odd, the opposition and the racist Obama campaign one could claim that the Clintons showed immense competence in this campaign. Hell, she lead in popular vote and clear has the majority of Democrats on her side.
Posted by koshembos at May 30, 2008 12:43 PMTurkana, thanks for writing an excellent piece on the media, blogs and the Democrats.
One thing I find sad is that prior to Hillary Clinton running for President, this very Blog fought for Bill Clinton constantly against the trolls, singing his praises and defending his Presidency. My how things have changed.
I'm with Cugel. This post levels a competent point at the "liberal media." But its first half sets up and kills a strawman. The reason there's vitriol coming at Clinton today is because she's behaved like a Republigoat in a Democrat's skin. You don't go around the country insisting we count an election in which the opposition wasn't even on the stinking ballot and not raise the ire of a whole bunch of progressives. Do not assume that the people who are cheesed off at the Clinton campaign are doing so in some sort of vacuum. There are genuine, legitimate, quantifiable reasons to say that Hillary Clinton is an a**hole, reasons that have absolutely no connection to the get-the-Clintons bloodlust of the '90s.
Posted by Brady Bonk at May 30, 2008 12:53 PMI'm fan of Somerby's work, but I don't think it's fair to say he's been doing it longer and better than anyone. Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman were pretty right-on in their book, "Manufacturing Consent", as was Mark Hertzgaard with his, "On Bended Knee." Both of these books were published almost twenty years ago.
Susan Faludi also did a pretty awesome job in her ovular, "Backlash".
And Ben Badikian did a fine job, very early on, in his, "The Media Monopoly."
What Somerby does so well is the day to day grind of showing cringe-inducing examples of what's at work here. Atrios, Greenwald and Digby are also pretty good at that.
Posted by kaleidescope at May 30, 2008 01:01 PMVery excellent post. The media is one of the biggest - if not the biggest - obstacles to obtaining liberal goals in this country because people cannot make informed choices if the media lies to them constantly. And that's what the media does. Even worse, our politicians listen to them. They base decisions on what will get them good coverage. Is it any wonder our society doesn't work?
For the media, it's all about the selling. Iraq, Obama, whatever. It has a product to sell and sells it for ratings. Digby's right, next week it may very well be McCain or the invasion of Iran. Whatever they think will get them ratings.
And that's why even if the media is being nice to you - especially if the media is being nice to you - the media critique is so important. Because if we give that up, then where are we when they decide McCain's the man? And a lot of blogs have given that up because the media has helped Obama. They've decided an Obama win is worth embracing the media and that's a huge mistake. First, it's a mistake to let the media trash two of the most popular democrats in the country. That's bad for the democratic brand, which is bad for Obama if he's the nominee. Republicans would never do that. Second, where are you when the media turns on Obama? When they use the same tactics they've used against Clinton against Obama, what do you say? Good job? Because embracing the media does encourage them and encouraging them is bad for anyone who cares about a reality-based politics. And given that reality has a liberal bias, all liberals should stand against the current media. But then all liberals should embrace feminism, too, and search "bitch" on Daily Kos and weep at what comes up. This has been a very depressing campaign season on the blogs for liberals.
Posted by BDBlue at May 30, 2008 01:03 PMpoor turk. using me to prove your points.
Posted by T2 at May 30, 2008 01:19 PMWhen Obama wins the nomination the press will have been vindicated for all the vile hateful smears written about the Clintons for the last fifteen years. The saddest thing is that so many democrats will have thought this is a good thing.
I have never liked Obama. I believe him to be an unqualified con man who embraces bigoted values I find repulsive. So as far as I am concerned Obama deserves the worst the republicans and the press can throw at him. I will not defend him. I will in fact feel a bit of shadenfruede as I sit back and enjoy saying 'I told you so' to my fellow democrats as they whine about how unfair it all is.
Posted by at May 30, 2008 01:38 PMkaleidoscope,
i meant in the blogs. the others wrote excellent books, but somersby's been doing it online, five days a week, since before there were even major blogs.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 01:53 PMI loved Hillary when the primary season started,but after she brought up the commander in chief threshold bunk she lost this loyal democrat. She went "Rovian" imho. She took Obama as a lightweight and she got burned by it. I think they call that POLITICS!Its a tough world out there, make mistakes and you lose. Right or wrong thats how the games played. Quit acting like Hillary is the first candidate to ever get attacked, they all do.Damn I'll be glad when this primary is over, and Hillary supporters, if you need to vote for McSame then you can explain to parents of killed Iraqi War American GI's, why you needed to vote the way you did, blood will be on YOUR HANDS.
Posted by joe at May 30, 2008 01:55 PMPutting aside for a moment the same sentiments towards Clinton that get repeated ad nauseum here by me and others (not that I entirely agree with the more vitriolic ones), I have two thoughts that come to mind in reading this.
The first is the one that dj moonbat has already shared. I think sometimes the idea of Hillary's campaign bringing back feelings of nostalgia of Bubba's 8 year term to her supporters is both understandable and slightly suspicious to me. No doubt she would run a very similar presidential style and policies as her husband. The problem, however, is that they are two different people, and while we can certainly look for similar (if not identical) patterns of policy and philosophy, she may very well perform differently than Bubba would. Furthermore, times today are most certainly different than they were back in the 90's on a multitude of levels, and it's a bit difficult to know exactly how Bubba would govern now.
The second problem I have is your statement here:
aising taxes to erase the reagan/bush deficits, then taking on the health insurance industry and the gun lobby didn't work out too well, politically. guess he shouldn't have tried. no one else will, now.
No doubt, this is true, and no one should ever deny the positives that had come from his Administration (I've often defended it vigorously in other forums). The big drawback that I believe Gay Veteran was alluding to, however, was the obvious loss in political races for Democrats and the hurt that resulted to the party secondary to cozying up to DLC and erroneous Beltway consultant advice. This was a time of a major blow to our party, which thankfully began reversing ship not just because of the failures of Bush, but in large part also to the 50 state strategy of the DNC (which, BTW, had everything to do with electing Nancy Boyda, my Representative here in Kansas and a major upset victory of incumbent GOP sleezebag Jim Ryun).
The other thought I have is in regards to MSNBC and the criticism that Digby and others have taken to it for becoming more pro-Obama as of late. I disagree, but only to a certain extent with their analysis (as well as yours). While I would concede that MSNBC has been a bit more pro-Obama as of late, and that their media heads may have been that way after Super Tuesday and his 11-state victory dance, there was a time in between now and then when they were anything but pro-Obama (exception: Olbermann). When the whole Wright and "bitter" controversy blew up, I recall MSNBC trouncing on top of Obama just as eagerly as the other stations, and playing up the possibility of a come-from-behind Clinton victory as well.
But to me when I did watch MSNBC (I don't watch hardly any TV now), it really seemed like a tale of two different times. In fact I would state that MSNBC was more ahead of the curve than anyone back in February when they apparently became more pro-Obama to suggest that it was increasingly unlikely for Hillary to catch him mathematically. She needed a big showing on Super Tuesday and came up short. While most stations continued to play up the "this-is-too-close-to-call" bullshit line, MSNBC media heads saw what nearly everyone sees now (and what Obama supporters saw way back then too).
But when the Wright, bitter, Ayers crap came up before and after Pennsylvania, don't tell me that tweety and the rest were jumping up and down on Obama and joined the fray of a Clinton comeback, because they were all too gleeful to join in. It was seemingly only after Indiana/NC did they come back around and put a fork in Hillary for good.
Lastly, I note this "bias" through the editorial media heads only like Olbermann, Tweety, etc., and not through the news anchors on MSNBC whom I have not seen any differences with any other news station.
All just my opinion, of course.
Posted by MisterOpus1 at May 30, 2008 01:59 PMYep. And more yep.
Thing is, the media gives us what sells, which has become what we want to hear. With increasing ability in blogs, for example, to target not just marketing but the entirety of content, we have wound up with a whole lot of spaces out there who have entirely competing views not just in terms of analysis anymore, but in terms of fundamental facts. The level of outright spin and intellectual dishonesty is truly a thing to behold, and any interest in cutting through it has been sacrificed on the altar of campaigning.
Information is being replaced by inculcation, I fear. And the base desire of so many people to be told whatever supports their points of view is something that IMO hasn't changed from, say, early coverage of the Iraq war, even though the points of view themselves have.
Sadly, looking at it from this point of view, I find it hard to lay the entirety of the blame at the feet of the media. The media reports what sells, what keeps their credibility with the largest number of people -- and heck, in terms of blogs, the media is often the consumer as well. Until a large enough number of people stop uncritically buying what they're selling, we're going to have a problem -- and I think what this cycle has revealed to me, personally, is that a lot of the left also simply wants its feelings and perceptions validated by the media (including blogs), rather than wanting a media that doesn't exist to validate feelings and perceptions at all.
In the short term, we have to win in November, so we should use that as much as we possibly can, but in the long term, we've got a problem right down at the core of the thing that I think is hugely destructive. And IMO it goes way beyond what I thought about it back in '03 or '04, when I viewed it as a problem with the top-down media -- it's not just "them" anymore.
Posted by spit at May 30, 2008 02:03 PMLooks like this may all be neither here nor there very soon:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/5/30/13333/0744
She concedes that rules were broke by Florida and Michigan, unlike Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. As BTD says, it makes tomorrow's meeting look more like a "mere formality".
IOW, this sucker's thankfully over very soon.
Posted by MisterOpus1 at May 30, 2008 02:05 PMThe media was decidedly anti-Gore, which lead to Bush being President.
The media was overwhelmingly pro-Iraq war, which lead to that mistake happening.
The media was decidedly anti-Kerry, again leading to more failed Bush leadership.
Now again, the media is anti-Clinton, leading to you know who.
Just look at all the damage and harm the media has done to our country.
To me, when you look at just how f'ed up this country is right now, the logical choice for President is Hillary, as her husband was without a doubt the best President of my lifetime.
But the media, as a whole hates the Clinton's guts, so they are making sure that Hillary will not get that opportunity. They've been writing her obituary since before the New Hampshire primaries.
For the media, it's all about them and their precious little feelings.
One thing Bush did get right was the way he treated the media with disdain and how he knew that all he had to do was have them over once a year for a pool party barbecue at the ranch, and they'd all be eating out of his hands.
I can't wait to get my electric bill this month because my televisions have been off for weeks now. I have better things to do than to watch those lying liars. I also canceled both of my newspapers.
misteropus,
msnbc didn't just call the race for obama, their clinton hatred had them rooting for obama, and they became the case study of the media's misogyny.
as for the democratic losses during the clinton presidency, it was precisely the taxes, the health care plan (and the $100 million the insurance industry spent on harry & louise), and the assault weapons ban that were used to achieve them. which explains why both clinton and obama are running to the center, now.
and finally, yes- the media began to turn on obama once he was the clear frontrunner. wright and ayers have always been out there- why did the media wait so long to discover them? i guarantee you'll see a lot more of them, and possibly rezko and everything else they can dredge up, too. because getting rid of the clintons was only step one.
Posted by Turkana at May 30, 2008 02:10 PMmisteropus --
But when the Wright, bitter, Ayers crap came up before and after Pennsylvania, don't tell me that tweety and the rest were jumping up and down on Obama and joined the fray of a Clinton comeback, because they were all too gleeful to join in.
I don't see this as a point that is counter to at least what I'm thinking about all of this (I can't speak for Turkana, and won't try). The actual direction of the bias is fickle, they just want whatever is most dramatic. Aside from any philosophical arguments we want to have about truth or fact, on a practical level, what you've brought up is actually a perfect illustration of why the left can't afford to trust sources just because those sources are sometimes temporarily telling us what we want to hear.
Their slant can spin on a dime, and empowering their ridiculous dishonesty when it might be helping the candidate we prefer also winds up empowering it when they're hurting that candidate.
We don't have to agree on the details of when or how that stuff has taken place, that's fine. But I do worry that a lot of people around the blogs have set themselves up for problems when we get to the fall, should the media pivot (as I suspect they will). Most blogs IMO have about zero credibility now for calling that out if or when it happens.
Posted by spit at May 30, 2008 02:10 PMTurkana,
msnbc didn't just call the race for obama, their clinton hatred had them rooting for obama, and they became the case study of the media's misogyny
Again, if we're talking about Tweety and Olbermann, I'll concede this point. But Tweety's group also pounced hard once Obama came into the lead for good, as you mentioned.
Why did the media wait for so long? Well who exactly leaked out the Wright tape and began pushing it hard to the MSM? No, I don't believe it was the Clintons, but it was certainly members of the Right Wing Noise, an unfortunate machine that still holds the MSM in the palm of their hands. And MSNBC saw the political opportunism just like the rest of the media twits and jumped all over Obama as expected.
Was that what you were referring to, or did you have something else in mind when you asked me that?
As for getting rid of the Clintons being step one, I disagree with your thought on this because I believe that having a Clinton as a nominee would have been more ideal for the media and the Right Wing Machine. It would have been terrific to have another Clinton target, which many of us Obama supporters have suspected why the Wright crap came out in the first place, as well as keeping the Clinton campaign on life support this whole time in hopes for a comeback. Granted, that's entirely subjective, but we seem to be just giving opinions on the matter right now anyway.
Posted by MisterOpus1 at May 30, 2008 02:23 PMSpit,
You bring up some good points, and I couldn't agree more that the blogs should be wary of the media's pivoting roles. No doubt that will happen (has happened in numerous instances already).
Posted by MisterOpus1 at May 30, 2008 02:27 PMmisteropus -- the Wright stuff in particular had been getting floated around like mad around the right wing sites for at least a month before the broader media picked it up, and I think they probably did so because it finally was released in video content. I both agree and disagree with your take -- I don't think it was necessarily "life support" for Clinton, but I think the media just flat out loves itself some good faux-controversy, and hitting the perfect trifecta of politics, religion, and race is something I could see making them salivate in just about any context.
The mainstream media gets a lot of its tips from sources like Drudge. That's a problem. But the blogs IMO haven't helped combat that in this cycle -- in fact, some have transitioned into also getting tips from Drudge etc. I don't think either "side" is guilt-free in that regard, but I will add that the rightwing loathing of all things Clinton has played more of a role in left-wing reporting than I'm personally comfortable with.
As for who the media would prefer to bash through the general, I find it pretty impossible to say; I think it's more a matter of figuring out how to deal with the crap than it is about finding somebody who is immune to it, and we've sucked at that, historically. They have tried and true ways to go after Clinton, but they'll have a field day floating new ways to go after Obama, too -- they're already building the narrative to piece it all together, you know -- and we'd best get prepared for that, because it's going to be fugly. At a minimum, they're going to "Gore" Barack and "Hillary" Michelle. Bank on it.
Posted by spit at May 30, 2008 02:44 PMmsnbc didn't just call the race for obama, their clinton hatred had them rooting for obama, and they became the case study of the media's misogyny.
This is a perfect example of the nonsense that permeates the pro-Hillary portion of LeftBlogistan.
The media ISN'T pro or anti-Obama. They aren't even pro or anti-Hillary.
They are simply PRO-Republican and ANTI-Democrat. Period.
When Hillary looked like she was the presumptive nominee they couldn't attack her hard enough.
But, when it looked like Obama was pulling ahead and might win, they immediately went 24/7 on an "all Rev. Wright, all the time" rampage.
Hillary thought that was perfectly fine! She issued statements piling on instead of defending Obama.
Then Hillary started to make a comeback and won the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries. The media blow-hards started thinking SHE could wind up winning.
So, they switched back to full-time "Hillary-Hate" mode.
Now do any of you notice a trend here? Whoever the front-runner has been they've gone out of their way to destroy them.
All the time, they've been giving a total pass to McCain -- endlessly talking about what a "war hero" he is and what a "maverick" he is -- despite the unreported facts that:
1. The "Maverick" voted 100% with George Bush in 2008 and 96% in 2007.
2. He goes to Iraq and makes a total ass of himself. Despite his "foreign policy expertise" he can't even tell Sunnis from Shiites without Joe Lieberman whispering in his ear.
None of this is reported at all.
Now, imagine if Hillary OR Obama displayed the kind of abysmal ignorance that McCain displays on every occasion. How long would Obama's candidacy last if he didn't even know that Iran is run by Shiite clerics who HATE Al Queda and that Osama refers to Shiites as "Heretics" (apostates who can and should be killed to purify Islam)?
Now kindly get off the B.S. wagon that the media "favors" Obama. They hate all Democrats with equal fervor and fine impartiality. If they seem to favor one over the other that's because they're trying to tear down ANOTHER Democrat.
Just wait 15 minutes and they'll turn on Obama.
Posted by Cugel at May 30, 2008 04:00 PMThe possibility that Clinton *deserved* negative coverage appears not to have crossed the minds of the dedicated Clinton supporters. I think she got bad coverage because she ran a noxious campaign. All that this whining is going to achieve is to ensure that to prove "balance" the media will spend extra time bashing Obama on trivial garbage.
Posted by Marc at May 30, 2008 04:33 PMThe possibility that you *deserve* to be ignored for such an ignorant and dishonest comment crossed my mind immediately. Yeah, the bitch deserved it. Asshole.
Posted by at May 30, 2008 06:01 PMI don't see how this can be fixed. I also had great hope for the blogs to act as a reality-based counterweight to bias and laziness and corporate control. I was certain that the system of ratings would work--that places like DK had a built-in self-correction mechanism.
That's over, if it ever existed.
What I take from this is that the things I love (digby's brilliant writing and relentlessly fair mind, e.g.) are just not ever going to be popular.
What's popular is what's always been popular: the joy of mob violence. DK has become, more than anything, a home for those who get a kick out of virtual blood lust.
I think the analogy to right wing radio is apt. And sad.
Posted by hitchhiker at May 30, 2008 09:29 PMWhat a load of crap.
Hillary LOST.
The people DON't want her
QQ moar
Posted by getaclue at May 31, 2008 09:07 AMGosh Turkana, a whole lot of Obama supporters are making your point here.
Just keep attacking the Clinton's with Republican talking points, asshats, and when the tide turns, and the Republican slime machine is in full motion, at least you will be able to fight with yourselves in an echo chamber over at DK, or TPM, or where ever, and you still be playing bloodsport. I think Obama is conning all of us.
When Obama loses us this election, I hope you are proud of yourselves.
turkana, you need to go back and look at how the Democratic Party fared under Bill Clinton's triangulation
the people here who state that they will not vote for Obama or Hillary if they get the nomination are stone cold stupid or right-wing trolls
Posted by gay veteran at May 31, 2008 12:36 PMRest assured Nutroots. The American people well understand where the Socialist Party disguising themselves as "Progressives" stand.
Socialist control of the media so no one else's message is heard. As it is now you have all the corrupt Left Wing Media, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, The New York Times, whew, where does it end?
At one point I had hoped Hillary would win. But now, since the vetting process has FINALLY started to expose all the hate, bigotry, America Hating, terrorists and Chicago underworld supporting B. Hussein Obama, he needs to be front and center. With his policy to disarm America and all his terrorist friends, this could be a landslide.
I've seen a number of rumors that there are several other tapes B. Hussein Obama being held for just the right time.
Are we having fun yet or what!
Posted by Markle at May 31, 2008 09:25 PMBoth candidates are "deeply flawed"? As far as I am concerned, they are two of the strongest candidates we have seen in a long, long time. That the media would never give Hillary a break, that there was already an extraordinarily high level of negatives against her among the general public, that there might be too little time and opportunity for her to whittle those negatives down to the hard-core Republicans, and that it might -- might, yes -- be harder for the right wing and complicit media to find something against Obama that would gain traction, have all been part of the calculus that caused many of us, on balance, to choose to go with Obama. The media have been grotesquely unfair to Clinton for a long time, but that became a reason not to vote for her. (And the bad guys haven't even needed to blow up the Marc Rich matter yet.)
There's a crazed minority we hear from on blogs, but most Obama supporters I know have been pro-Hillary, too. Of course, even though I can defend it better than she did herself -- another reason to doubt whether she would be able to weather the storm -- the war vote was a huge vulnerability that made it possible (and conceivably necessary) for Obama to decide to run in the first place.
So cut out the anti-Obama whining. It's a cold-hearted calculation, period. I'm not sure she isn't correct that, in the end, she would have made the stronger candidate, but the nomination is based on delegates, not popular vote or guesswork about who would be best. We have the first viable female candidate, and the first viable African-American candidate. Asking the superdelegates to go against the leader in delegates through the primaries process under such circumstances, either way, would be a recipe for disaster, possibly even for the destruction of the Democratic Party.
Posted by urban legend at June 2, 2008 09:57 AM