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Glenn, you talk about the media's role as passing on official government propaganda. Their role is really to pass on the propaganda of the right wing power structure. . . .The media doesn't suck up to any sort of power--just the power of their corporate masters.
I don't really distinguish here between those two things because they're one and the same -- and has been for the last eight years. I think it remains to be seen how the media will treat the Government if the Government is controlled by the Left (or something other than the Right). Still, I have two questions:
(1) Other than the tawdry and scurrilous scandals of the 1990s (Lewinsky and Whitewater), in what ways were the media so adversarial to the Clinton administration? Particularly before 1998, were they critical of his military actions, his domestic policies, scrutinizing of how the White House worked? I don't recall that being the case, certainly not in any pronounced way.
(2) Was the Clinton administration actually hostile to the interests of the "corporate masters" who you say dictate how the press behaves? Do you expect an Obama administration to be? You might want to look at whose campaigns those "corporate masters" fund.
I certainly agree that, as a result of the partnership the media formed with the Right during the Lewinsky scandal, and because the media swooned at the feet of Right-wing power in the Bush era, they are far closer to the GOP than Democrats (I talked about some of the reasons why in an interview I did with Harper's a few months ago - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002466).
But I'm far from convinced that during the Clinton administration, we had some aggressive, adversarial press on meaningful policy issues (as opposed to tawdry scandals, where the press was beyond "adversarial"), and I'm even less convinced that the press will become so in some future centrist Democratic administration. I'm not disagreeing with you - just saying that I don't think it's as simple as "Media-loves-GOP-and-hates-Democrats." That's part of it, but not the only part.
