Category: The Media

Because it’s no longer bias.  As Glenn Reynolds pointed out yesterday, the media is in the tank for Obama:

I promised some thoughts on what to do about the news media’s outright campaigning for Obama. (And that’s what it is. Media bias used to mean that they would slow-walk stories that reflected badly on their candidate; now they just flat out ignore them, or even try to shoot them down. They’re not just in the tank, they’re functioning as arms of the campaign, and Obama’s strategy shows that he knows that and is relying on it.)

Just this morning I had to turn off the radio, because the local propaganda mouthpiece of the Obama Campaign ran coverage which started out with an Alaskan commenting that she is not to be underestimated, and then following up with the various ways people think she’s not qualified, including polls showing that only 25% of voters think she’s qualified.  Even though she’s, you know, about as qualified as Obama is.  Prof. Reynolds talks about solutions:

There’s a vast underserved population out there, for news, entertainment, movies, etc., and if people start serving it, the current “mainstream” media won’t be so mainstream anymore. So if you’re unhappy with current offerings, put your money where your mouth is.

And if you’re one of the people with creative interests, start making alternative stuff. Not just news and punditry, but entertainment, documentaries, etc. If An American Carol does well this weekend, it’ll make it a lot easier for the next film of its type to be made. If Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary work does well, it’ll encourage a lot more of that kind of work.

Think of it like cultivating a garden: Starve the weeds, feed the flowers. Like gardening, it’s work. But like gardening, if you do the work you’ll see results.

I agree.  Make sure you get out to see An American Carol this weekend.  Even though we’re booked solid this weekend with election volunteer stuff, Bitter and I are going to make time.  We need it to do well.  That sends a powerful signal to the market.

This morning Glenn linked to a piece showing that the Boston Globe is still spreading lies about Sarah Palin that have been repeatedly debunked.  This is the worst I’ve ever seen a media.  We honestly don’t have a functioning Republic as long as these people continue to peddle their shameless propaganda as legitimate journalism.  Perhaps this will be the election where the voting public realizes the emperor has no clothes.  I certainly hope so.

Dave Hardy talks about how newspapers used to report the news.

Yup, reporters were more respected then. I recall reading of the Civil War … at one point Grant needs to get a message to President Lincoln, so he just sends it with a reporter who is going to DC. He adds a verbal message. The reporter only reveals that years after the event; Grant told him that it was for Lincoln alone. After Shiloh, I think, Grant for the only time gets blind drunk and passes out. A reporter (with whom he was riding) throws his coat over him to hide his stars if anyone rides by, and only reveals the event long after the war is over. A reporter is within earshot of Grant giving orders to his commanders, and is chastised — you’re not supposed to listen in at this level! Nobody thought anything unusual of a reporter traveling with army headquarters, it’s just that there’s an unwritten rule you won’t actually listen in to Grant and Meade giving orders for the day. No need for interviews: you’re there when everything is happening, out riding and drinking with them, etc.

Read the whole thing.  I suspect a lot of the trust afforded the military of journalists had to do with the fact that information was just much harder to disperse back then.  It’s much much harder to control information these days.  That probably tends to create less trust than you could instill in people when information was much more difficult to spread around.

I also think part of the problem isn’t so much bias, but people’s perception of the media as providing accurate and unbiased information.  Blogs are certainly biased, but we don’t claim to be anything other than biased.  I think journalism would be better off if papers were just up front with the biases in their reporting, and everyone knew about them.

Mark Morford, who introduced us to Obama the Lightworker, has a new piece out on Sarah Palin:

It’s more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign — that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.

It is absolutely amazing anyone, including a major newspaper, takes this guy seriously.  Hat tip to Volokh.

Caleb points out this piece of garbage article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

It has been years since groups such as the Montana Militia, the Posse Comitatus and the Sagebrush Rebels, and individuals such as Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have made us wonder why so many “angry white men” populated our rural regions.

Maybe it’s because ignorant and prejudiced academic pricks like Catherine McNicol keep consencending and thumbing their nose at rural white men.  I know this sounds crazy, but that tends to make people angry.  I’ve run into just as much intolerance and racism in urban areas as I have in rural areas, and to be honest, some of the most ignorant and provincial people I know don’t occupy America’s heartland, but our coastal urban centers.  Tolerance has to be a two way street, and it’s a shame that obviously well educated academics like McNicol don’t understand that.

It’s even more disturbing that the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper that serves a city that should understand being looked down at and spit on, would print such utter bigotry.