Salon: Busting Big Fat Liars (Brock Interview)

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David Brock talks about why the media seems embarrassed to report on Bush's failures, why TV pundit shows are stacked to the right -- and his new media watchdog group.

(snip)

What's your take on how the press has covered President Bush?

There's no question in my mind that a similar record with a different president would have resulted in different media treatment.

How do you think the press has treated John Kerry over the past few months?

Clearly there's already some evidence of a phenomenon I describe in the book of the ability of the right-wing media to project a caricature. For instance, that Drudge wrote an item about a hairstylist being flown in for Kerry before his appearance on "Meet the Press." There was no sourcing, so one didn't know what to make of it. Then I believe the chain was that Jay Leno mentioned it in a joke, which is fine. Then the AP and Reuters reported the Leno joke. Then Linda Vester on Fox the next day claimed that Fox News had independently confirmed the story, but her story didn't provide any sourcing, so we didn't know what to make of that. And then Brit Hume asserted the same thing later in the day.

So this is the kind of problem we are already seeing for Kerry -- that's the climate a candidate has to live in. The right can distort anything it wants. The playing field is so unlevel; there's a systematic disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the Wall street Journal last Thursday had a Page 1 piece on its latest polling, and not until the 14th paragraph on the jump page did it report that Bush's approval rating had "slipped to 47%, the lowest of his presidency ... By a 50%-to-33% margin, voters say the nation is headed in the wrong direction." The press seems to be almost embarrassed -- or thinks it's impolite -- to report that Bush may be in serious trouble or that he often tells lies. How does the Republican noise machine fit into that dynamic?

The Republican noise machine has an echo effect. It sets a climate and helps set parameters and helps form impressions -- and because there is so much noise coming out, there's no way that doesn't seep in. The absence of a liberal noise machine pushing back in an accurate way has to have some effect in there somewhere.

more…
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05/11/right/index.html

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