The Powerful Powerlessness Of The Liberal Media

[babylonsister]

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/

The Powerful Powerlessness Of The Liberal Media
Filed under: Big Media, Election, General, Propaganda — Mark @ 12:28 pm



Mark Halperin is a political analyst for Time Magazine and runs “The Page,” a political website, for Time.com. Prior to that he was the political director for ABC News for ten years. It’s important to know this about him when considering what he said at a conference on the recently concluded election this past week at USC. He was expressing his opinion on the performance of the media during the campaign:

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

You can’t get more mainstream than Mark Halperin. Yet this exemplar of institutional media is taking his colleagues to task for failing to adhere to standards of objectivity that presumably he employs. So you have to wonder why Halperin didn’t bother to sound the bias alarm until two and a half weeks after election day. If he noticed what he now calls a “disgusting failure” in campaign coverage, why didn’t he bring it up when something could have been done about it? For that matter, why didn’t he bring up the failures with regard to Iraq before this? Seeing as he had a prominent platform in both publishing and broadcasting, but was absent with regard to these issues, what does it say about his credibility?

You also have to wonder how Halperin ranks failures with respect to their disgustingness. Does he really think that a candidate bias is equivalent to the utter professional neglect that the media exhibited while cheerleading for the war in Iraq? Even if there were a slanting of political preference, does that compare to inventing mortal enemies and printing lies about their imminent threat? Does he rate the consequences equally now that 4,000 plus Americans have been killed and perhaps more than a million Iraqis; now that we know the truth about WMDs and our leaders dishonesty; and now that our nation is approaching bankruptcy having spent $2 billion a month in Iraq for five years?

It strains the imagination to explain how he could place those two events in the same sentence. But what makes it even worse is that he doesn’t bother to offer proof of his contention that the media was pro-Obama. He seems to be jumping on the right-wing, Republican bandwagon that is flailing around to manufacture excuses for why they lost. It certainly couldn’t be because the people preferred the Democrat. Much of the noise about an alleged bias for Obama actually amounts to a realistic appraisal of events. Every report of McCain’s more frequent use of negative ads, a fact documented by independent studies, is regarded by conservatives as anti-McCain. Likewise, every report of Obama leading in the polls, which was the case for most of the last six weeks of the campaign, is regarded by the same right-wingers as pro-Obama. Under these circumstances, the only way to be considered neutral would be to distort the truth.

snip//

Bottom line: According to conservatives, the all-powerful liberal media is directing the votes of a pliable electorate. And they are doing this despite the fact that voters don’t trust the media and are tuning them out. So somehow the media is able to sway public opinion even when the public has stopped listening to the media. That’s a neat trick. It’s also a failure of logic on the part of rightists who are desperately searching for an explanation for their loss that doesn’t include the phrase, “We suck!”

[FrenchieCat]

1. Halperin and Drudge and Tapper and Fox were all on the same page.....

and so it makes one wonder which bias Halperin was actually referring to, since from where I sit, he was and evidently is still more guilty of bias leaning towards McCain and against Obama than so many other reporters. He should ask himself if maybe he's the wrong one in the lot.

[babylonsister]

2. I don't know if his high opinion of himself would allow

him to even consider he might be wrong.

I do know bloggers are having a field day over this, so he must be hearing about it.

digby has a righteous rant going on:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/disgusting-failure-by-digby-mark.html

[grasswire]

3. worthless POS

I blame much of our trouble squarely on Mark Halperin, who nannied the Washington press corps into accepting his narrative on Bill Clinton, on Al Gore, and on George W.

He's worse than worthless. He betrayed his profession and, ultimately, his country.

[Cha]

6. Exactly,

grasswire.

[Doctor_J]

4. Yes, I remember the 24/7 coverage of Keating 5,

serial adultery, Rev Hagee, calling Cindy a cunt in public, 11 homes, the Alaska Independence Party, Troopergate, witch doctors, and on and on.

Halperin is a talentless hack who is going to be really uncomfortable after we lock up all the seditious bastards in Big Media.

[Cha]

5. I'm sorry I'm too late to Rec'd this.. It

spectaculary, fantastically nutshells this whole whining Halperin episode.

It outs him as nothing more than a tool and a not very sharp one.