Letters to the Editor
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Hmmm...
Will the shelf life of the capitulation caucus be any longer than the victory caucus? Perhaps someone should form a caucus to find out...
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sexism plays a role
While male Democrats have had to endure a lot of media abuse over the years, the storms aimed at Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are noteworthy for their evident blind hypocrisy and level of vitriol. I cannot help but think that the forces of sexism play a role here. Sure, part of it is the willingness of reporters to uncritically pass on Republican talking points, but not all of the noise comes from the usual suspect of GOP shills.
But I think it is important to keep in mind that the origin of these stories is entirely partisan. While it is difficult to understand why reporters and pundits buy into the bizarre Republican framing of the issues, including ignoring Gingrich's trips to Colombia and China and the simultaneous trips of several GOP congressmen, there is no doubt that the origin of the story is pure GOP.
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Glenn
But there are multiple explanations for why the press operates as it does and all sorts of motivations that explain every individual journalists' and editor's decisions. That the largest corporations own the largest media outlets is undoubtedly a factor in how they function, but it doesn't explain everything, and even that factor has multiple aspects to it beyond "corporations love the GOP" (e.g., viewing newspapers and news divisions as profit centers places an emphasis on reporting that is cheap, gossipy and easy over substantive investigative work that requires far more resources ).
Well said. I couldn't agree more.
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looking leftward
Just when public opinion ought to be moving the media narrative to the left, there seems to be some sort of chinese firedrill in the media orchestrated to provide cover for the administration in the little amount of time it has left. Just when the journalists who seemed most reliable and trustworthy when it wasn't popular should be administering to the fringe's last breath, they seem to be the ones donating blood to keep it alive.
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The Andean Condor Among The Hawks
Credit is due, Glenn, to Elena Benador and Benador Associates:
According to Benador's web site, Benador Associates is a "Public Relations, Media and International Speakers Bureau." Benador was founded by Eleana Benador. Offices are "located in New York City as well as in Paris and London. However, the activities of the firm are expanding throughout the American continent, as well as in Europe and the Middle East."
Jim Lobe describes Benador as follows:
"When historians look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group of mainly neo-conservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the US media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been… But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months."
— Jim Lobe, The Andean Condor among the Hawks, Asia Times, August 15, 2003.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benador_Associates
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Case in point
This morning we were treated to Matt Lauer discussing, with Tim Russert, Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria. Lauer, on NBC, was using the standard Fox construction, "Some are saying that Speaker Pelosi blew it". It was a completely unsourced GOP talking point, irresponsibly and unconsciously injected into the national discourse over breakfast. And I'm sure that Lauer had no idea that that's what he was doing. I doubt that he was intentionally propagandizing for the right. He's isolated from the realities and concerns of most Americans and he's buying the deal. Unfortunately, he's listened to.
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Media dishonesty
Some of the reporting we see is probably simply governed by the corporate bottom line. If all we had to watch was attractive teleprompter readers reading from a vanilla to beige digest of the news, we would see a lot of bankruptcies in the financial pages.
But what we get instead, is a sexed up version of actual events because the media needs it to survive. We all know about the dozens of right wing think tanks and the millions of dollars that funds them. It might be important to take a moment and reflect upon what they actually do, and what their mission really is in our democracy. It is to persuade the public and the press of their version of real time events, and to sway public opinion by twisting the facts to suit their agenda.
It appeals to the various talking heads because it is an extremely easy, but lazy way to come up with an angle to make their individual report distinct from other reporting. In Suzanne Malvaeux's case, its to protect a job that pays well into the six or even seven figure income. The real question is how to turn this dishonest nonsense around.
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pundits
Speaking of Krauthammer, did anyone read his piece today? He is using the fact that Iran released the prisoners as evidence that negotitiatons do NOT work, and the only way to deal with Middle Easterners is through force.
A tour de force of converted logic.
He is beyond shameless.
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Macho media
As I mentioned in a previous post to Glenn's excellent Gingrich article, I think the White House spin machine and its cohorts in the fringe media love this story because it fits so nicely into their favorite narrative: Democrats are wimps and cannot handle the macho-world (as they see it) of foreign policy. Their focus on the headscarf reveals the trick. Look! A woman is trying to negotiate with murderous assassins! She's already capitulated her hair! That Pelosi's comments and purpose match those of other Republican delegations is beside the point. The not-so-subliminal message of this story is that Democrats have sent a woman to do a man's job (again, see, e.g. Gore, Kerry, etc).
It's a message (in its hundreds of incarnations) that has long played well with the fundamentalist base. What's strange is its consistent appeal within the MSM.