Jamison Foser, at Media Matters, had a really insightful post yesterday, about the media perpetuating misconceptions about terrorism, it's impact on US politics, and how the media helps the Repugs bend that to their benefit. Great read.
Media promote mutually inconsistent themes on terrorism and the election, both of which benefit GOP
If you believe what you hear from prominent conservatives and political reporters, the following things are true:
1) Anytime terrorism is in the news, it plays to the political and electoral benefit of the Republicans.
2) Terrorists who are trying to destroy America are trying to help elect Democrats because they think Democrats are weak. The terrorists are doing so by increasing violence in Iraq and otherwise drawing attention to their existence, as the Osama bin Laden videotape released shortly before the 2004 election.
Those two things are obviously incompatible. The latter is based on the premise that increased news of terrorism benefits Democrats; the former is an explicit statement of the opposite. The two are fundamentally inconsistent. (OK, there is a way the two sentiments could rationally coexist -- but it requires us to believe that The Enemy has reached depths of incompetence previously explored by only Wile E. Coyote. And, in that case, why haven't we been able to defeat them yet? This possibility can be safely dismissed.)
The fact that the U.S. political media routinely tell us both of those mutually inconsistent things reveals almost everything we need to know about the state of the profession and the quality of the political information we receive. Almost everything.
But there's something else worth keeping in mind. Both of those sentiments just happen to be favorable to Republicans: The first because it suggests that the American people know Republicans are better able to fight terrorists, and the second because it suggests that the terrorists know it, too. As Thomas B. Edsall, author of Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (Basic Books, August 2006) and long one of the nation's most influential political journalists, says: conservatives' decades-long campaign against the media "has turned the press into an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right."
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That's something of a specialty for Matthews, as he has shown lately. "Terror and taxes are the Republican strong points," Matthews keeps telling us, and damn the facts. Think that's an exaggeration? Here's what Chris Matthews said on Hardball last night:
MATTHEWS: Republicans know from the polls they got two strengths right now. One is terrorism. Anything that reminds us of 9-11 reminds us of Bush's leadership back them -- and since then. Taxes -- Republicans are good at cutting taxes -- Democrats are notorious for not cutting them, whether the current polls back that up or not.
Got that? Republicans know from the polls that taxes are a political strength for them, whether the current polls back that up or not. Incidentally, they don't.
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If reporters are going to tell us The Enemy is trying to influence our elections, maybe they should tell us who the terrorists really want to win, and why.
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, CIA analysts believed that bin Laden's 2004 videotape was an attempt to swing the election in President Bush's favor.
How often have you heard that on television? How often have you read that in your newspaper? Somewhere in the neighborhood of "never," right? Excuse us, but why the hell not?
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After all, the notion that The Enemy wants Republicans to win isn't merely consistent with the CIA analysts' take on the bin Laden tape, it's also quite logical. More than five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration still hasn't managed to capture or kill bin Laden, the Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan, and it is increasingly clear to everyone except George Bush and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (CT) that things aren't exactly going well for the good guys in Iraq. The recently released National Intelligence Estimate indicates that Bush's Iraq war is creating more terrorists and making us less safe. Why would the terrorists want to change horses in midstream?
Yet rather than pointing any of this out, the media tell us things like "no one questions whether this president has been tough on terror," as NBC's David Gregory recently said. Bull. Many people question whether Bush has been tough on terror. Many people -- those who aren't employed by news organizations, at least -- increasingly understand that oversimplifying complex issues and speaking as though your audience consists entirely of third-graders and morons doesn't constitute "toughness." If the CIA analysts are correct, even Osama bin Laden apparently thinks Bush hasn't been tough on terror.
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These are the things our media should be focusing on -- not baseless assertions of the Republicans' purported political advantage. The Bush administration and its congressional enablers have been shockingly inept, criminally incompetent, and, in many cases, simply criminal in their handling of everything from Iraq and national security and the hunt for bin Laden to Hurricane Katrina to the budget. They have auctioned off legislation to the highest bidder, and shunned any vestige of oversight and accountability.
And they've gotten away with it in no small part due to a political media that can be counted on to repeat -- perhaps, as Edsall says, unwillingly and unknowingly -- bogus GOP storylines almost without fail.
One glaring example of this is the way news organizations seem to bend over backward to pretend that both parties are equally guilty of corruption. With every week bringing new examples of prominent Republicans pleading guilty, being indicted, having their associates' homes raided by the FBI, and generally behaving more like an organized crime syndicate than a political party, it's been a struggle, but reporters -- seemingly under the mistaken impression that "balanced reporting" means making the news equally bad for both parties, no matter what the facts -- are giving it an impressive try.
CNN, for example, covered news that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (NV) may have made a minor technical error in disclosing a real-estate transaction as though it were the news of the century. Again and again, CNN breathlessly reported that Reid bought real estate (which he disclosed) and sold it years later (which he disclosed) for a profit of $700,000 (which he disclosed) -- but that he had neglected to disclose a technical transfer of the property to a limited liability company in which he was a partner. CNN had devoted more than 3,300 on-air words to the story by October 17, mentioning it nearly every day for a week. By the end of the next day, the total neared 5,000. Why did such a seemingly insignificant story merit such coverage?
By comparison, CNN has broadcast only 65 words about a land deal in which Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert (IL) made nearly $2 million. The Hastert story should have gotten much more coverage on the merits -- Hastert's land appreciated after he personally earmarked federal funds for a highway nearby, while Reid is not alleged to have taken any official action that increased the value of his property. Yet the Hastert land deal got only a tiny fraction of the attention CNN gave to the Reid deal. Perhaps because CNN is desperately trying to appease Republican critics by portraying congressional corruption as something Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty of?
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Further suggesting a complete lack of appreciation for proportionality, World News ran a report on the Reid land deal and his use of $3,000 in campaign funds for Christmas bonuses for employees of the building in which he lives on October 17. But the program still hasn't gotten around to telling viewers that the FBI has raided the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's (R-PA) daughter and her business partner, as well as four other locations, as part of an "intensifying corruption inquiry" into whether Weldon illegally used his office to enrich his daughter. To ABC, Harry Reid's Christmas bonuses, which are not under investigation as far as anyone knows, are news -- but the FBI's raids on houses as part of an "intensifying corruption inquiry" into Curt Weldon's possible misuse of his official position to enrich his daughter is not. (After Media Matters drew attention to this disparate treatment, ABC mentioned the Weldon raid on the October 19 edition of Nightline -- but it still hasn't found its way onto World News.)
Can journalists at ABC and CNN possibly believe that Harry Reid's reporting snafu is more newsworthy that Denny Hastert fighting for federal funding for a highway that increased the value of his property? Or that Reid's Christmas bonuses are more newsworthy than FBI agents raiding the home of a congressman's daughter as part of an "intensifying corruption inquiry" into that congressman?
Or are they "overly anxious, and inclined to lean over backwards not to offend critics from the right," as Thomas Edsall says?
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