2006-04-07
The "liberal media" in action
As attention focuses on the spectacle of a high-level Bush official apparently turning state's--at a time when Bush and Cheney's public popularity might make a dead skunk on a busy roadside blush--I think it's meet to look at the Libby saga as a sad example of how easily government manipulates the press. An honest approach to Joe Wilson's scathing NYT op-ed debunking Bush's state of the union claims of Iraq's nuclear program would have been for Cheney to pen another Op-ed in response. Instead, Bush/Cheney sent their pack horse, Libby, over to their favorite reporter, Judith Miller, carrying some rather fragrant garbage--which ended up being reported as fact on page 1 of the NY Times (that liberal rag that so infuriates the likes of sixstringslinger and Fox News zealots). Indeed, Miller so regularly peppered page 1 of the Times with cherry-picked nonsense from the likes of Libby and Paul's favorite Iraqi politician, Chalabi (whom Paul has yet to compare to the heroic US founding fathers, but there's still time...), that it's hard to imagine the whole unhappy disaster of the US attack on Iraq (oops, i mean liberation) getting off the ground without the Times' relentless page-one campaign. Why does the right hate the NYT so much, again?
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Tom: The right hates the NYT for many reasons. You could "cherry pick" a few cases where the headlines favored an issue or two. The issue you pick here is one on which the right is divided: the invasion of Iraq. And as you point it, it involved an unethical reporter-official relationship. Surely you do not assert that liberal / democratic officials haven't had the same relationships.
About 90% of the NYT reporters and editorial staff members vote democrat, and their reporting consistently reveals a worldview that reflects this perspective. The examples are too numerous for me to remember them all; the most recent that annnoyed me was the screaming headline about "the economy leaving behind black men." A subtitle subtly admits that the statistics apply only to black men who don't trouble themselves to go to college. All economic news is negative, at least during repo administrations. Headlines for higher unemployment during Clinton go more prominant location and positive coverage than lower figures under Bush II. Try finding in the Katrina coverage that the FEMA personel arrived in New Orleans in the same time that they arrived to previous Florida hurricanes under Bush II and Clinton.
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