How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election:
October 26th, 2006 | by Craig R. Harmon |1. Glowingly profile Speaker-Inevitable Nancy Pelosi, with loving mentions of her grandmotherly steel (see last night’s 60 Minutes), and fail to describe her as “ultra liberal” or “an extreme liberal,” which would mirror the way Gingrich was painted twelve years ago.
2. Look at every attempt by the President to define the race on his terms as deluded and desperate; increasingly quote Republican strategists saying that the President is hurting the party whenever he enters the fray.
3. Refuse to join the daily morning Ken Mehlman-Rush Limbaugh conference calls, despite repeated invitations. LINK
4. Imbue every Democratic candidate for whom Bill Clinton campaigns with a golden halo.
5. Paint groups that run ads or do turnout for Republican candidates as shadowy, extreme, corrupt, and illegitimate; describe their analogues on the left as valiant underdogs, part of a People’s Army (with homage to Rich Lowry).
6. Care more about voter disenfranchisement than voter fraud.
7. Take every Republican quote expressing some trepidation about the outcome and banner it.
8. Drop any pretense of covering good news from Iraq (uhm&.) or good news about the economy, including some upcoming positive macro numbers (Quick, Note readers: name the current Secretary of the Treasury.). LINK
9. Amplify Obama-mania as a metaphor for the Democratic Party being the party of excitement and the future.
10. Fail to follow Bob Novak’s analysis of the difference between Democratic and Republican oppo plants. LINK
11. Lock in the CW (which, shockingly, could be wrong) that the winner of two out three Senate races in Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri will control the Senate.
12. Carefully document what appears to strategists in both parties to be the case — while a few incumbent Republicans are clawing their way back into contention (including and especially, perhaps, Tom Reynolds), the number of endangered Republican-held seats is growing, not shrinking.
Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t say this, ABC did. I couldn’t have made that up in a thousand years. So tell me. Is this a joke or is this an admission by big media that big media is biased and it no longer cares who knows it?
8 Responses to “How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election:”
By Paul Watson The Cranky Brit on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
Craig,
I thought you wanted the media to admit it’s biases. Make up your mind, will you?
By Craig R. Harmon on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
Paul,
I do. This is not a complaint. It’s a questioin. I can almost not believe that this is serious. I don’t know if you are familiar with The Onion or scrappleface. These are sites that write political humor, satire. I guess I’ve just been so used to the media’s pretense of objectivity that these sorts of blatant admissions still floor me. My surprise is not of the “Who knew?” variety but of the “Who’d have expected they’d admit what’s been so obvious but denied for so long?” variety.
By Jersey McJones on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
This is an odd link. If it’s true, one has to wonder who they’re manipulating more - the voters or the Dems themselves. But for ABC this is really odd. Maybe, again, if this for real, their corpoarte masters really want the GOPhers out!
JMJ
By steve on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
Craig…
You left out
the attack from Canadathe Michael J Fox vs Limbaugh row, now made “Mainstream” by Katie Couric and her “CBS” minions.By Craig R. Harmon on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
Well, I didn’t forget it. I actually wrote a quicky diary post on it. I actually think Rush was wrong in that and, I’m told, he apologized for it. I didn’t catch Katie’s take on it so I can’t comment upon that.
By steve on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
The issue has been churning for me since I saw the ad. On the one hand, you have a legitimate cause…. But… Does it need to be political? It taints who we vote for when you see something that emotionally draining in a 30 second clip.
I have somewhat of a moral dillema between a neurological disease that members of my family have had or have now.
Is it the issue that we are voting for or is it the person? On a side note, we have a fiery election upon us that really has the Iraq War as it’s central leading platform, and that is what is really riling up the Democrats.
By steve on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
Actually… to add to what I just said… It’s almost as if those races that featured the ad from Michael J Fox needed to have the ad to ensure victory.
By Craig R. Harmon on Oct 26, 2006 | Reply
I have no particular opinion on that since I don’t know that it’s true. If you mean Democratic Congressional candidates need the Fox ad to win in their respective races, I don’t see why they would. The Republicans have so damaged themselves as statesmen and governors (i. e., people who govern at the federal congressional level, not state Governors) that they hardly need help from Hollywood this time around. If you mean the proposition, amendment 2 or whatever it is called, needs the Fox ad to win I don’t know that that’s the case either. There is, actually, rather wide political support for expanded ESC research. People find it difficult to care greatly about microscopic blobs which are fully human at least from a genetic point of view but do not in any way resemble anything that we think of as human, either in size, shape, or sentience, whereas they care deeply about the guy who loved Ronald Reagan and corporatism and capitalism from within a Liberal TV family and it breaks all of our hearts to see him reduced to what he has been reduced to by a disease for which there is as yet no cure but which may one day be cured by cloning/ESC therapies. In a choice between a blastocyst, which next to nobody even knows what that is, and Michael J. Fox or Christopher Reeve (now of blessed memory), it’s no contest. People don’t need a Fox ad to know of Michaels predicament and people still have a warm spot in their heart for the man of steel.
I guess I don’t think they NEED this ad to win.