Okay, but why really?
posted by Liberal Eagle at 11:36 AM
The ginned-up "controversy over Nancy Pelosi meeting with the government of Syria really has reached epic levels of stupidness, levels not seen in a fake controversy since we were told it was a constitutional crisis that Clinton had sent Christmas cards to some of his contributors (Congress heard 140 hours of sworn testimony on the subject) or that Chelsea Clinton had had slumber parties (once-great media outlets like the Washington Post were beside themselves with rage over the number of White House overnight guests Clinton was having--72 of whom, by their own numbers, were middle-school kids Chelsea was having over for slumber parties).
Do you ever wonder why only Democrats are ever the target of fake scandals? I mean, for the last six years, George Bush and his Squad of Doom have been getting into more actual scandals than anyone since...well, ever, really. Lying us into an illegal war, illegally wiretapping people, outing covert CIA agents for nakedly political reasons, staffing the entire government with unqualified yes-man ideologues, justifying and practicing torture, eating cake while a hurricane sank a great American city, holding people without charges, failing to give the troops it had deployed life-saving body armor, editing inconvenient scientific studies to contain more friendly language, putting pressure on intelligence agencies to back administration claims, shooting old men in the face and then making them apologize for getting shot...I could go on for pages.
The press thought all of this was an enormous yawn that only partisan left-wing loons cared about. I mean, come on, why other than irrational loathing of Bush would we care about all the absolutely rational reasons to loathe him? It makes no sense! Certainly it pales in comparison to the very very pressing question of whether Clinton got a haircut in his airplane.
The press is only covering the current attorney-firings scandal (which still lacks a punchy name, though I do like Olbermann's "Gonzo-gate") because a combination of relentless coverage by bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall and subpoena power wielded by Democrats forced them to. For as long as they possibly could, they took a kind of "nothing to see here, folks, move along" attitude toward the whole thing. Which is of a piece with how they've seemed to regard pretty much everything the Bush administration has done. Really, folks, it's all just politics! We rub elbows with these lovely people like Rove and Cheney at dinner parties, and they're just charming, so stop worrying your pretty heads that they're torturing and shooting people and sending your children to die in unnecessary, delusional wars, okay? That's a good voting public. Have a biscuit.
Contrast that with the glee with which they've pounced on the Pelosi in Syria story. There's an unmistakable resemblance to a shark that smells blood. I mean, it's something I remember well from the Clinton years. The press can't wait to nail Pelosi.
Never mind that it's an incredibly stupid story. Never mind that if a Republican did it the press wouldn't even have mentioned it. Speaker Gingrich visited both Israel and China and told them, basically, to ignore President Clinton and deal with Congress; soon-to-be-speaker Hastert did the same in Colombia. Remember how big those stories were? Exactly.
By contrast, Nancy Pelosi goes to Syria and CNN's Suzanne Malveaux speculates that she may be on her way to becoming "the most controversial speaker yet." Never mind that a delegation of Republicans was dealing with Syria at around the same time. Never mind that, by all accounts, Pelosi merely affirmed the Bush administration's existing Syria policy. Never mind that the Iraq Study Group recommended the U.S. start talking to Syria, and never mind that a very large majority of Americans say they want the U.S. to talk to Syria.
And I've been sitting around wondering why it is that the major American media outlets do this, and have been doing it for a long time. They contort, exaggerate, sometimes even invent scandals about major Democrats like Clinton and Gore and Pelosi, and furrow their brows and ponderously discuss how this is going to damage the Democrating Party and the country. Meanwhile in the background, some major Republican will be running by with bags of pilfered cash, Hamburgler-like, and they'll ignore it completely.
Partly I think this particular story might be a matter of timing. The major media, to some extent, fetishizes "balance." So, when a Republican scandal is spiraling out of control with no end in sight and they've been put in the position of having to cover it, they're itching to have a Democratic "scandal" to cover, so they can say "see? We nail them all! We don't actually have a liberal bias!"
It seems to me that they bend over backwards to innoculate themselves against charges of "liberal bias." And this often takes the form of going after major Democrats with both barrels, for reasons that would pass unnoticed if a Republican did them. And of covering Republican scandals only when there's basically no choice.
You often hear members of the media rebut accusations of bias by saying "well, we get criticized by both sides, so we must be unbiased." Which is faulty logic. All criticism is not created equal. If you look at the substance of media criticism from the right and left, the picture gets more complicated. Liberal media critics generally complain that the media isn't doing a good enough job getting the facts right. Conservative media critics generally complain that the media isn't serving as enough of a propaganda outlet for the Bush administration. (Yes, I approach this with a heavy and unapologetic liberal bias of my own--but this is honestly how it looks to me.)
As Roger Ebert once said:
So, basically, in a town that has been ruled by Republicans for two decades (Clinton was obviously treated as an interloper by establishment Washington, though his people have since become pretty establishment themselves), and in a media environment ruled by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, reporters bend over backwards not to seem to be attacking Republicans too hard, or letting liberals off too easy--which results in their ignoring Republican scandals whenever they can, and going after Democratic scandals even if they basically have to make them up. With Democrats seizing more power in the government, and liberal blogs and web sites ascendant as a source of pressure on the media from the left, the balance is shifting, as we've seen with Congress and Josh Marshall forcing the Gonzales scandal into the spotlight, but it's going to take a while for the press's habits to shift.
Do you ever wonder why only Democrats are ever the target of fake scandals? I mean, for the last six years, George Bush and his Squad of Doom have been getting into more actual scandals than anyone since...well, ever, really. Lying us into an illegal war, illegally wiretapping people, outing covert CIA agents for nakedly political reasons, staffing the entire government with unqualified yes-man ideologues, justifying and practicing torture, eating cake while a hurricane sank a great American city, holding people without charges, failing to give the troops it had deployed life-saving body armor, editing inconvenient scientific studies to contain more friendly language, putting pressure on intelligence agencies to back administration claims, shooting old men in the face and then making them apologize for getting shot...I could go on for pages.
The press thought all of this was an enormous yawn that only partisan left-wing loons cared about. I mean, come on, why other than irrational loathing of Bush would we care about all the absolutely rational reasons to loathe him? It makes no sense! Certainly it pales in comparison to the very very pressing question of whether Clinton got a haircut in his airplane.
The press is only covering the current attorney-firings scandal (which still lacks a punchy name, though I do like Olbermann's "Gonzo-gate") because a combination of relentless coverage by bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall and subpoena power wielded by Democrats forced them to. For as long as they possibly could, they took a kind of "nothing to see here, folks, move along" attitude toward the whole thing. Which is of a piece with how they've seemed to regard pretty much everything the Bush administration has done. Really, folks, it's all just politics! We rub elbows with these lovely people like Rove and Cheney at dinner parties, and they're just charming, so stop worrying your pretty heads that they're torturing and shooting people and sending your children to die in unnecessary, delusional wars, okay? That's a good voting public. Have a biscuit.
Contrast that with the glee with which they've pounced on the Pelosi in Syria story. There's an unmistakable resemblance to a shark that smells blood. I mean, it's something I remember well from the Clinton years. The press can't wait to nail Pelosi.
Never mind that it's an incredibly stupid story. Never mind that if a Republican did it the press wouldn't even have mentioned it. Speaker Gingrich visited both Israel and China and told them, basically, to ignore President Clinton and deal with Congress; soon-to-be-speaker Hastert did the same in Colombia. Remember how big those stories were? Exactly.
By contrast, Nancy Pelosi goes to Syria and CNN's Suzanne Malveaux speculates that she may be on her way to becoming "the most controversial speaker yet." Never mind that a delegation of Republicans was dealing with Syria at around the same time. Never mind that, by all accounts, Pelosi merely affirmed the Bush administration's existing Syria policy. Never mind that the Iraq Study Group recommended the U.S. start talking to Syria, and never mind that a very large majority of Americans say they want the U.S. to talk to Syria.
And I've been sitting around wondering why it is that the major American media outlets do this, and have been doing it for a long time. They contort, exaggerate, sometimes even invent scandals about major Democrats like Clinton and Gore and Pelosi, and furrow their brows and ponderously discuss how this is going to damage the Democrating Party and the country. Meanwhile in the background, some major Republican will be running by with bags of pilfered cash, Hamburgler-like, and they'll ignore it completely.
Partly I think this particular story might be a matter of timing. The major media, to some extent, fetishizes "balance." So, when a Republican scandal is spiraling out of control with no end in sight and they've been put in the position of having to cover it, they're itching to have a Democratic "scandal" to cover, so they can say "see? We nail them all! We don't actually have a liberal bias!"
It seems to me that they bend over backwards to innoculate themselves against charges of "liberal bias." And this often takes the form of going after major Democrats with both barrels, for reasons that would pass unnoticed if a Republican did them. And of covering Republican scandals only when there's basically no choice.
You often hear members of the media rebut accusations of bias by saying "well, we get criticized by both sides, so we must be unbiased." Which is faulty logic. All criticism is not created equal. If you look at the substance of media criticism from the right and left, the picture gets more complicated. Liberal media critics generally complain that the media isn't doing a good enough job getting the facts right. Conservative media critics generally complain that the media isn't serving as enough of a propaganda outlet for the Bush administration. (Yes, I approach this with a heavy and unapologetic liberal bias of my own--but this is honestly how it looks to me.)
As Roger Ebert once said:
There's an interesting pattern going on. When I write a political column for the Chicago Sun-Times, when liberals disagree with me, they send in long, logical e-mails explaining all my errors. I hardly ever get well-reasoned articles from the right. People just tell me to shut up. That's the message: 'Shut up. Don't write anymore about this. Who do you think you are?'
So, basically, in a town that has been ruled by Republicans for two decades (Clinton was obviously treated as an interloper by establishment Washington, though his people have since become pretty establishment themselves), and in a media environment ruled by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, reporters bend over backwards not to seem to be attacking Republicans too hard, or letting liberals off too easy--which results in their ignoring Republican scandals whenever they can, and going after Democratic scandals even if they basically have to make them up. With Democrats seizing more power in the government, and liberal blogs and web sites ascendant as a source of pressure on the media from the left, the balance is shifting, as we've seen with Congress and Josh Marshall forcing the Gonzales scandal into the spotlight, but it's going to take a while for the press's habits to shift.
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