Just think* – this week in boardrooms across the industry, media executives are meeting with media experts to hash out yet another strategy, and yet more innovations to address their falling fortunes, every last one of them invested in the unshakable belief that the internet is burying them because it’s faster – as though the only difference between shit and sunshine is the speed at which they travel.
The Edwards mess is the most recent and visible, but hardly unique, example of the mainstream media’s hear no evil/see no evil approach to newsgathering. How many other stories has the MSM missed, denied or avoided? From Rathergate to Reverend Wright to the success of the surge, the pattern is the same: MSM stalls, shuffles its collective feet, and doggedly ignores information for as long as possible until they can no longer do so with a straight face. The fact that these stories without exception work to the detriment of Democrats is apparently a grand coincidence.
And the notion that they are upholding some “journalistic standard” is rendered absurd. Edwards’ story wasn’t important on Thursday, but it was on Friday because he confessed? No, the level of proof changed, but the story’s relevance did not. If it wasn’t worthy of investigation before the ABC interview then it was unworthy of mention afterwards. Their explanation for their editorial decision-making is no more credible than . . . well than Edwards himself.
Related – Howard Kurtz.
And Stephen Green agrees – “If you treat a Republican one way and a Democrat another and it isn’t liberal bias — then what is it? A Sulzberger family suicide pact?”
“as though the only difference between **** and sunshine is the speed at which they travel.”
Absolutely CLASSIC!
“Absolutely CLASSIC!”
YUP!
This is just the tip for Edwards. This guy is clearly gay, it won’t be over for him until he comes out of the closet.
And some more about the impending death of the NYT:
http://caraellison.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/new-york-times-collapse/
BTW, if you travel at the MSM speed of sound, is it easy to get browned?
Oh, and the above via Conservative Grapevine.
Where’s Cereberus Ted to tell us (again) that liberal media bias doesn’t exist and that we’re paranoid?
One of Hillory’s campaign guys has come out and said that if this story had broken when first rumored, Hillory would have won Iowa as many of his supporters would have gone to her, and she would be the nominee. It could still happen. There is no unity in the democratic party. When Bill was campaigning, Hillory had said, electing Bill and you get two for one. Seems with O’s wife getting the keynote speaker spot, US voters will again be offered two for one.
The newspapers just don’t get it.
(Unless they go to web-publishing) They cannot compete with the speed of internet just as they could not compete with speed of Telebroadcast. Not that TV and radio are necessarily better.
Where they could have competed (and still can) are in thoroughness and investigative JOURNALISM. Not just spinning and re-hashing the crap that AP or others spew out. They need bring to full light all the crap and GOOD that are happening locally, provincially, federally and internationally. Not what they think the public wants to think, nor meet the agenda of the editorial or publisher.
They can give a better picture than a 10 second sound bite and the reader can better digest it. But because the reader can think about it more while reading, they need to be more neutral and better researched.
To the Canadian lefty wackaloon internutter contingent there really is no media bias. As long as the media is not completely state-controlled and devoted to communist propaganda it’s all just a fascist blur in their feeble little minds.
Looks like unity and Liberals have parted ways on both sides of the border. Too many Prima Donas.
Edwards has to be one of the worst cads in recent memory to drag his arse around in politics.
The shame he puts on his wife and family has to be close to unbearable.
The beauty of these on-going MSM disasters is that they will notk stop to save themselves. They are liberal progressives and they are convinced that they know what’s best.
With Liberalism already known as a mental disorder, they have no choice but go with their insanity and bury themselves and their friends.
If they actually had any brains they would know that the first order of any business is survival. That is one of their problems is that they have not groked the separation of business and state.
The MSM in the USA is counting of a fairness doctrine of some sort to legislate them back into a viable business model … like the CBC.
Douche-bag Pelosi and that POS Harry Reid are hot after that one. They would love to shut down the on-line INDY media and most of all, that horrid Rush Limbaugh.
Great entertainment Kate.
What, no trolls? Amazing! Somebody just turned on the kitchen light and they all whipped under the baseboards.
Somewhat related: I was in the used bookstore during lunch and there was a great big stack of Linda McQuaig’s “It’s The Crude, Dude” marked down from $35 to $4.99.
At that price it’s still a rip-off.
O’Reilly is also starting to pile on in his feud with Edwards, a feud that apparently dates back a while.
Edwards had claimed it was a national disgrace that 200,000 veterans were now homeless and O’Reilly called BS on the number.
He then played an Edwards clip from May where Edwards lowered the number to 150,000.
He then played a clip of Edwards on the Letterman show where both Edwards and Letterman both called O’Reilly a liar.
O’Reilly then said that in his research, there were 125,000 homeless in the US, of which 13% are veterans and that 90% of the homeless had either mental or addiction issues.
Multiply it out … 16, 250, which is considerably less than the original claim of 200,000. Who’s the liar now?
Excellent post and spot on. I stopped subscribing and even reading or listening to MSM long ago due to the constant lies, distortions and rubbish. Why would anyone pay for such rubbish? I did make one exception with Macleans due to their refusal to cave in to the Islamo-fascists and HRC thugs, and I must admit they have improved from what they were many years ago when I dropped them.
SYF- Simple answer?
They’re both lying scumbags, and both for the same reason. It’s all about advancing their personal agendas, by whatever means they can get away with. Edwards is an embarassment to his party, and to me so is O’Reilly. Either one of them would switch sides in a second if the political landscape were to indicate an advantage to do so.
I think that to the typical liberal, there is no media bias, because it is hard for them to contemplate that there are vast numbers of people who disagree with their worldview.
From an individual perspective, bias is difficult to detect.
From the conservative perspective, the bias is obvious, because conservatives do not believe their worldview is shared only by a insignificant minority.
The fact that so much of the media comes out of New York City (and in Canada, Toronto) does not help.
if papers would tell the truth and not distortions of same, if they would drop the liberal socialist slant, if they would understand that most people don’t really want some bozo’s opinion all day everyday then sales might pick up. i for one still like to have the written word on paper in my hand. but i spend far more time reading on the net.
Meanwhile the left-leaning MSM are silent on McCain’s adultery. No doubt they’re plotting an October surprise. Because otherwise the left-leaning media would have no difficulty giving McCain’s adultery the same prominence as that of a former candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Right?
MsMew,
You aren’t that bright.
The MSM did report it until their baseless allegations were proven to be false. They ran the story and looked for a confirmation later and didn’t get one. No appology was offered for their deliberate slag.
Compare that to their ignoring a Proven (with pics, etc) story about the other party.
Warwick,
MsMew likely is plenty smart enough. It’s willful blindness, the same problem afflicting most of the MSM. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Times New Roman takes a licking, but keeps on ticking.
“…..The speed at which they travel ……”
heheheh!!
Double plus good one 🙂
MsMew, if that’s the best you can come up with to make your case it’s pathetic. Last week a Rasmussen poll result showed 55% of Americans are sick of Obama’s media over exposure. It reflects the obvious. We aren’t idiots. How blatant can it get when the LA Times instructs its journalists to ignore Edwards’ emerging scandal. Do you think Los Angeles is some backwater little village down here? That’s a major city newspaper. Only after Edwards went on the airwaves did the MSM wall of silence break down. And, this is a guy that had a chance at a cabinet or court appointment if Obama wins.
Obviously you’ve ingested every line of the MSM’s fixed metanarratives without ever noticing the pathetic brain deadening sameness of it all. Anyone attempting to deny media bias at this point in time is grossly uninformed or has an incurious mind that has suspended all skepticism and logic. Get your head out of the sand. Coming up with some not even equivalent case to be made against McCain misses the point.
On a related tangent … Riel Hunter’s Disappearing Website …
Link to The Riel Hunter thing
People will read NEWSpapers. People will visit NEWS web sites. It’s rather startling to go from cbc.ca/nl to the Blubb and Wail.
CBC NL just reports news, with very little spin. I suppose that it is so far from Toronto the Great, so far out in the boonies, that CBC national
(rightly known as the Communist Broadasting Company) leaves them alone.
CBC NL reports more news in a day than the Blubb does in a week. Mostly local news, of course, but news all the same.
Newfoundland news tends to be interesting
if not downright hair-raising.
Mark Steyn commented about a year ago that the British newspapers mostly have held up their circulation, because when presented with
a juicy scandal involving a politician they’d print it first and ask which party he belonged to afterward.
My wife doesn’t follow the blogosphere. From the time I read about the Edwards affair (first on Ann Coulter) to when my wife read about it, was
a full week. A long time, in politics.
The MSM will come up with some fake story just before the election to try to hurt McCain. If they have dirt on a Republican, they hold it until the election is imminent. Remember the DUI story about Bush before his first win, and the phony one about a “missing arms cache” in Iraq just before his second victory. They are too stupid to be subtle, too.
DP, you’re probably correct but I’d like to gloat for just a minute, ‘kay?
Listen up: Go to the John McCain or GOP web site and COUGH UP NOW! It is absolutely worth it to get McCain in this year just to hear the mumbling, aghast jackasses at the networks and print press react in dismay yet again. DO.IT.NOW!
I’ll apologize in advance for the resulting torrent of campaign junk mail but do it anyway.
McCain more or less admitted it. it.
CNN’s Shaw said he asked McCain about his first marriage after reading press accounts in which the senator acknowledged his infidelity.
Not that I give a damn. But if this stuff is important, then an even-handed approach is called for. Instead, Penny splatters irrelevant nonsense about a fellow who isn’t even in the running to be President any more. And then this:
“Wilful blindness.” “Not that bright.” “Your case is pathetic.”
So let me get this straight. The current GOP hopeful is a self-confessed adulterer. One of several unsuccessful Democratic candidates for the nomination boinked a campaign staffer. “Not equivalent,” bleat the ditto-heads. Well, I guess I’d have to agree, come to think of it.
Better you should run to earth the rumour that Barack fathered two Black children.
Or how about, lets see baracks birth certificate.
MSmews
lets go with the Lieberal usual, “that was a long time ago”
in reality, if you had read the acomaning piece you’d be aware of what was written about about McCains “afair”, and me thinks your story about his comfession is just that, your story.
I think sf hit the nail on the head, the bias is not seen as bias by the MSM because they actually think they are reporting honestly
but, in the last 5 years I’v read several articles on this, tho 2 of them written by self confessed democrats, stated that there IS a left dias in the MSM
Good response to Mo Strong’s little column in McLeans to be found at china-e-lobby.blogspot.There is a link to post at SDA prev.as well.Link to blog posted at Canadian Sentinel.I guess the blogs are the only answer to the msm bs.
MsMew – there is a great deal of difference between an ancient adultery, followed by decades of faithfulness…
…and wallowing about in present infidelity.
There is also a great deal of difference between a post and discussion of MSM malfeasance and the question of who is the bigger poopy head pol…..