Letters to the Editor
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Media Memory Loss
Glenn,
I am tempted to fawn all sorts of praise on you for this and I really do appreciate you pointing these obvious hypocrisies and double standards out.
However, we have huge media conglomerates in this country with journalists, reporters, pundits and anchor people who get paid a hell of alot more many than you (I imagine) and yet they can't bring themselves to look back on the VERY THINGS THEY REPORTED less than ten years ago.
We kid about how people in the Bush administration can't remember what they thought they didn't know when they knew it. But they have nothing on the mainstream media.
And to think I wonder why you're never invited on the cable news shows.
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Well, this one is obviously about Power
Specifically the Power the Big Media still has to drive the stories that will be accepted as Truth by history.
As noted, the double standard regarding Newt (ever see Katie Couric interview her Darling Newty? Contrast that with the way she treated the Edwardses) versus Nancy is SOP.
But there is more to it. Nancy has had a pretty successful run as House Speaker, exceeding expectations, you might say. Newt, too, did well as Speaker, but he was widely supported in the mass media. Nancy has been subject to unending ridicule and constant sniping from the media. Nevertheless, she's handling her position very well, and making those who are whining and complaining about her... look bad.
So The Syria Gambit is another -- rather pathetic -- effort to denounce and disparage Nancy's role and the job she's doing.
I doubt the talking points even have to come from the White House any more. The Big Media itself is obsessed with Bringing Down Nancy (and once they've done that, they will return to their long time obsession with Stopping Hillary). So with a nod from the White House, they were ready and went after her with guns blazing.
Have they accomplished their task? Hard to say. Nancy looks pretty good all and all, but she has had a few missteps. The failure of the media to mention the Republican delegations to Damascus is -- of course -- deliberate. But it doesn't seem to be affecting Nancy negatively. In fact, despite all the whining and cat-calling, Nancy is far from destroyed by all this. If anything, she's coming out stronger, and the media hysterics are making them look terrible.
But they are still determining (most of what is) "news."
Soon, though, maybe not...
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Starwheel:
we have huge media conglomerates in this country with journalists, reporters, pundits and anchor people who get paid a hell of alot more many than you (I imagine) and yet they can't bring themselves to look back on the VERY THINGS THEY REPORTED less than ten years ago.
This is what happened: I hadn't been paying close attention to the whole Pelosi/headscarf/Syria hysteria because I've been working on other things the past few days. So I started reading around on it today and wondered whether Newt Gingrich had ever made a similar trip during the Clinton years (expecting that he had, given how he basically spent those years parading around, as I said, like the Prime Minister).
So I went to Google, entered "Gingrich foreign trip controversy" or something similar, and right away those NYT articles came up on his China trip. When I read them, they were so obviously relevant to the current controversy - I'm not saying they're completely show-stopping, but that incident clearly is similar --- that I was absolutely sure that it must have been mentioned by media reports.
So before I posted anything, I searched everywhere, not wanting to post something that's already been around, and I found nothing. That's when I posted it.
As you say, most of the journalists who covered that story are still journalists. Even if they are super slothful and don't do research, you would think at least one of them would remember what they reported on, make the connection in their brains, and then mention it. Yet they don't. It's like they can only see what is immediately in front of their faces and nothing else.
I had that same thought when the whole Executive
Privilege/U.S. Attorney controversy recently arose -- so many of the reporters covering that now were the ones covering Clinton's executive privilege assertions and the controversies it generated, yet it never occurred to any of them to go back and see what was being said at the time, or if it did, I guess they don't think things like that promote their function, however each of them perceive it.
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Memories . . .
I remember that trip by Gingrich. It was a minor flap that "some people" objected to but in general was not taken seriously.
Meanwhile, the WaPo editorial page grows more and more like that of the WSJ: divorced from the reality of its own reportage. It's really becoming like the Kremlinology of the 70s. You have to read between the lines of the lies to see the truth.
Thanks to sysprog for digging up the real story. When the WaPo comes out against something, you can be sure it never happened. Just like hearing about the "running dogs of American capitalism."
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@Media Memory Loss
Starwheel, Glenn,
I had a theory for a long time that the lack of memory in the media came from databases that went back only a certain length of time, but this is beginning to not be the case with old stuff, and as both of you have mentioned, they were reporting the newer stuff themselves.
I think they have a vested interest in ahistory (igh, a word?). Initially, this interest protected their pundits from accountability on their pronouncements. As time went on, I think they realized it also protected the "quiet pundits", the editorial boards, who also essentially make pronouncements by deciding which stories to push. And I come to realize, it also protects some of their sponsors, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on people having limited memory of reported stories about drug side effects, for instance.
No?
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How about one more update explaining why ABC was wrong about the anthrax
If ever there was a mystery that remains unsolved, and that hasn't been adequately questioned in the mainstream press, it's the story of where the anthrax came from. Your piece neglects to mention that most researchers trace the anthrax back to the U.S. Army, as well as Ames, Iowa, and maybe even Kansas City. Clearly, it came from within, not from Iraq.