Is The MSM Beginning To Look At 'Itself'?

[Annie]

I doubt it:

http://eddriscoll.com/archives/008627.php

The Spinal Tap Media
By Ed Driscoll · February 20, 2006 10:07 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

Writing in The Guardian, Glenn Reynolds looks at the Washington media that goes to 11--and never modulates its volume:

As Daniel Henninger noted in the Wall Street Journal, it was a pattern we had seen before. "Have you ever noticed how," Henninger wrote, "on a scale of one to 10, every untoward event in the life of the Bush presidency goes straight to a 10?

"The Abu Ghraib photos? A 10 forever. Dick Cheney catching a hunting buddy with some birdshot? An instant 10. The Bush national guard story? Total 10. How can it be that each downside event in this presidency greets the public at this one, screeching level of outrage and denunciation by the out-of-power party and a perpetually outraged media?

"There was a time when what has been called news judgment would deem some stories a five or six and run them on page 14 or deeper in the newscast ... Not with this presidency. Every downside event - large, small and in-between - plays on the front page above the fold now. And when Dick Cheney accidentally pops Harry Whittington, old Harry Reid jumps up from his Senate leader's desk faster than a Nevada jack rabbit to announce, one more time, that this 'is part of the secretive nature of this administration'.

"Here are some of the political and media bonfires that have been lit on the White House lawn, stoked and reignited over the past five years: the 'stolen' 2000 election, Halliburton, 'Fahrenheit 9/11', Cheney lives in an 'undisclosed location', Abu Ghraib, torture at Guantánamo Bay, Bush lied about WMD, secret CIA prison sites, Valerie Plame, the neocons ... Cheney's 'secret' energy task force, Cindy Sheehan, Bush is destroying social security, Hurricane Katrina, Jack Abramoff, illegal wiretaps, Bill Frist's stock sales, what else?"

With a nod to the movie Spinal Tap, I would say the media treatment of Bush administration scandals "goes to 11". This lack of proportion reflects poorly on the press and on Bush's opponents (categories that often seem indistinct these days) but in some ways it actually benefits Bush and the Republicans. First, the tendency of the press and opposition to seize on stories that reflect their own prejudices, rather than their newsworthiness, means stories that might actually harm the Grand Old Party get ignored in the rush to pick up on those that symbolise why they dislike the administration.​

As Glenn writes earlier in the piece, these include stories such as:

Its response to the "cartoon jihad" by Islamic extremists has been limp. There seems no clear plan, beyond allowing the obviously ineffective diplomacy of the EU to continue, for dealing with Iran. US domestic spending is out of control, and an anti-pork-barrel movement among conservatives and libertarians (of which I am part) is targeting Republican congressional representatives as well as Democrats, not surprising given that Republicans are in control of Congress, and chafing at the White House's lack of support for spending limits.​

Reading between the lines of the media figures being quoted in Matt Drudge's latest post, you get the feeling that some of them know off their profession is off the rails as much as half their audience does. But they have no idea how to right the ship, to mix transportation metaphors.

The issues that Glenn lists above as Bush being vulnerable on are conservative/libertarian issues. But it would go against the Washington press corps' ideology to explore those topics. Fox News might, but CNN's Jack Cafferty gave away how most journalists view that channel, when he sneeringly referred to them as "The F-Word Network". So any topic Fox explores is automatically suspect in the eyes of the rest of the media.

So let's look at the topics that Reynolds mentions, through the same prism that the bulk of the MSM views life:

Spending out of control? Ever since the days of LBJ's Great Society, liberalism has been defined by entitlements. The same press that to man doesn't own a gun would love to see America's defense budget cut. Is there anything else they'd agree is a good, positive budget cut?

The cartoon crisis? That would run the risk of actually having to show the cartoons--or writing that maybe, just maybe, the Muslim rioters are wrong. In a press obsessed with multiculturalism (read Bill McGowan's Coloring The News for a thorough discussion of journalism and that issue), so much for that.

Iran and nukes? Well hey, isn't that what the UN is for? I mean, they were doing a swell job in Iraq on that issue, UNTIL GEORGE BUSH INVADED!

And we're right back to the Spinal Tap--all Marshall amps on 11, all the time--media.

"If Bush's opponents had a sense of proportion and a measure of self-discipline, he would be in trouble. Luckily for him, they don't", the Professor concludes, and he's right.