Letters to the Editor
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Not a Republican / Democrat Issue
If news media collapses, 'failures' and errors tend overwhelmingly to the hawkish side, especially regarding foreign policy, then without counter-examples it doesn't directly matter which is the party in power. Explanations which depend on the party in power would apparently predict huge swings in coverage for the subjects discussed here.
Where are the foreign policy examples where either party is in power but the news media fell down on the job by favoring a dovish policy?
I don't disagree that party dominance does affect coverage, but I don't recall any hint of a time period in which in any systematic way the media made any huge errors or failures or collapses in coverage in a liberal direction.
Regardless of the past few decades's worth of screaming by the right wing, terms like "Democrat" or "Clinton" are not substitutes for saying a 'liberal' policy. Clinton backed NAFTA, and so did all the major media, and NAFTA was a Republican / Big Business policy all the way, both in terms of where the policy was generated and in substantive terms. The fact that the news media completely and utterly fell down on the job in reporting this debate from 1993, in the early days of Clinton's Presidency, is a pretty good test.
Democrats are more than able to pursue hawkish policies, particularly in foreign policy where the US is nearly unlimited in how hawkish it may be. Whatever the degree of debate in U.S. domestic policy, you're apparently not allowed to carpet bomb the red states, nor are you able to hire covert operatives to overthrow a governor you don't like, imprison him, and impose a new dictatorship more to your liking.
The major news media chatted a lot about JFK's presumably beneficial "Alliance For Progress" programs for Latin America (yes I've read through the archived coverage of newspapers and newsweeklies, dreadful, dreadful, dreadful for people who think there was a golden yesteryear of news coverage), yet they didn't investigate (a) how harmful the strings tied to that economic 'aid' was for Latin America (for example destroying native production in favor of US-subsidized imports), nor (b) how those policies went hand-in-hand with the US' building up of dictatorial national police state forces throughout the entire continent. Hardly an example of news media failing in a liberal direction, unless by definition anything JFK did was 'liberal'. Such coverage was entirely left to the 'alternative' press outside the major U.S. media.
Note also that from the point of view of the 3rd world society being bombed or overthrown, they're rather unlikely to care as we try to convince them that it really matters that the people ordering them attacked & killed are Republicans or Democrats. Supporting IMF/WB policies which strangle the domestic economy of many Latin American nations in favor of US and Western investors is hardly going to seem 'dovish' or 'liberal' to the unlucky recipients of such policies -- thankfully that IMF/WB creditors' cartel is now broken thanks to Nestor Kirchner of Argentina and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who either refused to abide the disastrous economic programs of the IMF/WB (Kirchner) or who provided alternate funding with almost zero policy ties (Chavez).
Yet again, I don't feel like I can recall any of these examples where there were systematic failures of news media coverage which favored dovish or liberal foreign policies.
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Bunk
"every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio."
I don't recall where I learned all of the following things, but BEFORE the invasion of Iraq:
I knew the aluminum tubes for centrifuges lie was bunk - I knew about the DOE footnote in the NIE casting doubt on the tubes for nuclear bomb making
I knew the Iraq seeking to purchase uranium lie was bunk
I knew the Iraq had viable drones for exploding WMDs on US soil lie was bunk
I knew that the CIA warned that regime change in Iraq would likely destabilize the region.
I knew Colin Powell was full of shit
I knew without a doubt that Saddam Hussein was the least threat on Earth to the US.
So if the entire media completely failed, how did I know these things BEFORE the invasion hint, I am not prescient.)
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the lowdon on the ot
"Time's Ana Marie Cox reports on a "brown bag" talk...",
Sure it's ot, but I just blundered in at the end, since my script doesn't work anymore and I'm not a multi-click motherfucker, monotony gets on my nerves, click click click, I don't thnk so. It ain't a rational world, you know.
fetsh: "An abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation."
Anal fetish Ana Marie was a gutter gossip "blogger," who by her own admission loathed real political knowledge and tactics and chose pure emotional sling for her work. When that fuck machine intern went public with a blog Ana Marie took her under her wing pronto.
Interestingly, she has a fetish for anal sex. Out all of the possible human acts to write about as an author, she would at least twice a week scream "Assfucking! Assfucking! in her text at something or other. She always has it on her mind, man the way people behave in public sometimes, eh?
"Is this too much for you?" She sneered at Chris Bowers, I'm pretty sure, on the Dem 2004 convention floor after describing bloggers, a wave she freaking rode on herself, as "geeks," just like freaks. She pissed Duncan Black off again later, I forget about what, 'cause I already knew she was a fetishist asshole. She recently pissed me off again by saying Markos said those mercenaries deserved to die.
But you know I've been wrong in the past'n all, an' being mean to a human soul is not something I should be doing casually. I hear a from a firsthand account many of the knife throws from the left have hit home pretty hard with anal fetish Ana Marie, I'm not exactly into inflicting pain on humans.
I also won't take shit from some home girl or see her denigrate my people. That was a really shitty untrue thing to say about Markos.
Hmmm. Others seem to respect her, I wonder if I should know why, doan whup me.