On stories
posted by Liberal Eagle at 11:22 AM
Eric Alterman has a good column here in which he examines the media's dominant narratives about the four top-tier presidential candidates (I would also have included John Edwards and Mitt Romney, but maybe he had space constraints).
This is one of the major problems with American press coverage of elections. Rather than simply examine a candidate's policies and public statements and report objectively on that, they filter their coverage of any candidate through the narrative they've chosen for that candidate. And if the facts suggest otherwise, and can't be made to fit that story, well, screw the facts.
This was particularly disgraceful in 2000, when the national press, terrified of the Limbaughs and Hannitys and completely unafraid of any kind of liberal backlash, essentially bought wholesale the narratives being offered by the Bush campaign. George W. Bush was a down-to-earth, honest, decent, folksy guy you'd love to have a backyard barbecue with. Al Gore was a two-faced serial liar who would say anything at all to be president and also he was a big boring policy wonk (when you think about it, aren't those two things almost mutually exclusive?).
Facts that interfered with this storyline just vanished. Never mind that Bush was the multimillionaire son of a former president, whose business career was defined by failure and corruption and almost certainly illegal insider trading. Can you imagine if there'd been even a whiff of insider trading in Clinton's past? They'd have had his head. But with Bush, it didn't fit their narrative, so the national press made the story disappear.
And never mind that, while Gore, as a politician, has certainly stretched the truth in his life--it's pretty much a job requirement--nearly all the "lies" he was supposedly telling were media inventions. Gore never said he "invented the internet," never said he "was the one that started it all" at Love Canal, didn't invent the idea that he was part of the inspiration for Love Story (the author has acknowledged that that's true), etc. And, honestly, all that drivel about how he was wearing suits with too many buttons, or that were the wrong color, or what have you? They really really had to reach, to try and back up the storyline on Gore the RNC had given them that they'd decided to use.
The result? People were unable to make an informed choice, and we ended up with arguably the most disastrously bad presidency in history. Democracy only works if people can vote intelligently, and when the press pushes irrelevant and untrue narratives about the candidates at the expense of important policy information, we get George W. Bush.
I'd like to think that won't happen this time, but of course some version of it will. That's what we have to push back against.
This is one of the major problems with American press coverage of elections. Rather than simply examine a candidate's policies and public statements and report objectively on that, they filter their coverage of any candidate through the narrative they've chosen for that candidate. And if the facts suggest otherwise, and can't be made to fit that story, well, screw the facts.
This was particularly disgraceful in 2000, when the national press, terrified of the Limbaughs and Hannitys and completely unafraid of any kind of liberal backlash, essentially bought wholesale the narratives being offered by the Bush campaign. George W. Bush was a down-to-earth, honest, decent, folksy guy you'd love to have a backyard barbecue with. Al Gore was a two-faced serial liar who would say anything at all to be president and also he was a big boring policy wonk (when you think about it, aren't those two things almost mutually exclusive?).
Facts that interfered with this storyline just vanished. Never mind that Bush was the multimillionaire son of a former president, whose business career was defined by failure and corruption and almost certainly illegal insider trading. Can you imagine if there'd been even a whiff of insider trading in Clinton's past? They'd have had his head. But with Bush, it didn't fit their narrative, so the national press made the story disappear.
And never mind that, while Gore, as a politician, has certainly stretched the truth in his life--it's pretty much a job requirement--nearly all the "lies" he was supposedly telling were media inventions. Gore never said he "invented the internet," never said he "was the one that started it all" at Love Canal, didn't invent the idea that he was part of the inspiration for Love Story (the author has acknowledged that that's true), etc. And, honestly, all that drivel about how he was wearing suits with too many buttons, or that were the wrong color, or what have you? They really really had to reach, to try and back up the storyline on Gore the RNC had given them that they'd decided to use.
The result? People were unable to make an informed choice, and we ended up with arguably the most disastrously bad presidency in history. Democracy only works if people can vote intelligently, and when the press pushes irrelevant and untrue narratives about the candidates at the expense of important policy information, we get George W. Bush.
I'd like to think that won't happen this time, but of course some version of it will. That's what we have to push back against.
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