GregsOpinion.com

I swear, I thought I was done with this whole "blog payola" pipedream of the right, but a few more pithy thoughts creeped into my consciousness ...

One is a quote that Digby raises in pointing out how Matt Drudge has been doing this for years. Among the more salient points is this:

Suellentrop's take on this shows once again that just as the Right Wing Noise Machine is the Democrats' enemy, the SCLM is our enemy too. Indeed, they are mutually dependent. They play ball to get their stories and their gossip and their access (and their promotions from their Republican bosses.) They are not looking out for our best interests and we should not get defensive about our honesty or our integrity. After all, look at how well they've protected the political system from being polluted with years and years of Republican lies and propaganda.

Dead on ... in fact, I think a case can be made that one of the Kerry campaign's tactical errors was in hoping that the mainstream media would take care of the Swift Boat crap with the ease that it should have been taken as. But that wasn't the case until Kerry started swinging back. That wonderful "liberal" media was merely following the footsteps of 527 partisan Harold Ickes who witheld his own Media Fund from fighting back because the target of the ads was "so personal" to Kerry that every was waiting for his lead. And even when the truth REALLY started outting itself about the smears, there was queasiness over flat-out calling it the bullshit it was for fear of being branded "liberal." For the so-called right, that's what's known as a virtuous cycle. For thinking individuals, it's called the willful perpetuation of a lie.

The lesson here is that any Dem candidate would be wise to treat the press with the same sense of adversity that the GOP does. I say this with a particular aim at those Texas pols who might stumble upon this advice. While the editorial boards may seem like your friend when they point out what crooks DeLay, Craddick, et al truly are, they are under no set of circumstances to be considered "your friend." That doesn't mean one should sidestep the media alltogether, but rather to keep a healthy distance. The press loves a challenger, they love a spirited race, they love an underdog. But the nanosecond it benefits their career, a Dem candidate is just as toast as a GOP candidate in the eyes of the media.

Stepping off my soap box a bit, there's another take on this matter that's worth mentioning in the vein of "Rather-gate." Let's call it Stossel-gate. I mean, if it's really a partisan media that the right is out to get, why has this guy gotten a free pass?

This is as big a part of why I maintain the argument of a liberal media is totally full of crap ... the goal posts shift WAY too much. Aside from a complete case of amnesia of the NYT during the Clinton years, we usually get the following types of argumentation:

1. They're liberal on issues, moreso than candidates.
2. Bias is inherent in any reporting that comes out, left or right. We just want them to acknowledge the fact.
3. 75% of the press voted for Al Gore, Mike Dukakis, etc, etc, etc ... WHAMMO! That makes em liberal!
4. So-and-so is a liberal columnist on so-and-so paper ... and have you READ that Dowd chick's work?

In order ...

1. A complete nonstarter. We're presuming some sort of equilibrium that any and all papers can attain, persumably a 50-50 bipartisan split. And somehow, when I read a crime report in the local rag, I'll get a better product as a result. But journalism is a profession ... just as health care is, just as criminal enforcement is, just as military service can be. Yet in each of those three categories, we get: GOP doctors, GOP cops, and GOP enlisted men and women. Each of those groups have their tilts due to the backgrounds that go into determing why one goes into the job. Why is journalism expected to be any different? Yet instead of demanding a stricter maintenance of journalistic standards, the so-called right tries instead to DICTATE new standards ... standards that shift depending on the argument.

2. Again, this shifts with the winds. Yeah, we want the reporter covering our beloved congressman to reveal their bias so any negative story might have doubt cast upon it. The entire premise is that there is no such thing as objective truth in the world ... or at least none that human journalists can possibly realize. A rather peculiar stance for partisans who tend to run with a fairly conservative religious bunch who believe in just such a thing as objective truth. So yeah ... which goal post does the so-called right choose on this? Why, whichever one suits them at the moment, of course.

3. My favorite, as it tends to turn up a lot. Notice how many of the so-called right will use this argument RIGHT after making up some complete work of fiction on explaining the NYT during the Clinton years. From previous debates, my favorite explanations were that the NYT had it in for Clinton because he wasn't liberal enough for their tastes, or because of the aforementioned issue-liberalism rather than candidate-liberalism menitioned earlier. Well, the latter pretty much negates this entire argument. I mean, you can't offer as proof something you claim elsewhere to be irrelevant. Though they try. The first is just a complete fabrication invented from wholecloth. Not that such tactics aren't handy when you really never had an argument to begin with.

4. One of my favorites ... the confusion of columnists and reporters. For one thing, columnists are columnists ... there's rarely any misperception on their leanings whether the writer states them or not. Much like bloggers, many a columnists wear their worldview on their shirtsleeves. So it's real convenient to use Krugman and Dowd as examples for the Times when you ignore Safire and Brooks as the GOP apologists. Or the Dionne vs Will dichotomy at the Washington Post. Now, does every paper offer such a split? No ... nor should that be the gold standard unless one attempts to carve out a national audience for their paper.

And yet, the entire debate is over opinion columns anyway. So when you hear a complaint over commentary substituting for news, you might do well to recall the last person who tried to tell you how liberal the NYT was because of Maureen Dowd. In order to determine the difference between the two, it's often best to discuss it with the very types who know how to tell the difference. There was a lovely article in the National Review's media bias issue this past summer that detailed many a comment by the Washington Posts' Dana Milbank. Statements said on television interviews about him gloating about the confrontational nature of his relationship to the Bush White House, for instance. Only one problem with the article, unfortunately entitled "The Opinion Journalism of Dana Milbank" ... unfortunate because it referenced not a single quote from an actual Dana Milbank-filed article that made its way to the Washington Post. That's the very sort of disingenuity that warrants a complete lack of respect for the case being made ... unless you just wish to keep believing fairy tales, I suppose.