April 15th, 2010
Are you surprised that Bill O’Reilly lied when he claimed that no one on his propaganda, er, news channel had suggested that Americans could serve jail time for not having health insurance, given the recently passed health care reform act?
Here’s the transcript, via Media Matters:
O’Reilly: “[W]e researched” and “[n]obody” on Fox “ever said you are going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance.” On the April 13 edition of Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly told Sen. Coburn: “[Y]ou don’t know anybody on Fox News — because there hasn’t been anyone — that said people will go to jail if they don’t buy mandatory insurance.” He added: “[W]e researched to find out if anybody had ever said you are going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody has ever said it. What it seems to me is you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn’t qualify there … you were wrong to do that, Senator, with all due respect.”
Let’s consider the video evidence, clearly proving Bill O’Reilly an out right liar:
February 16th, 2009
“Do you approve or disapprove of the job the Republican leaders in Congress are doing?”
51% disapprove
Pew Research Center Poll. Feb. 4-8, 2009.
N=1,303 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3
Josh Marshall, over at TalkingPointsMemo.com, captures something that I’ve given a couple of thoughts this past week. Understandably, if you watched the coverage over the stimulus bill you probably thought that president Obama was out of sync with Americans and that republicans, somehow, were now representative of public opinion. Of course, you would’ve been utterly and 110% wrong; however, according to the mainstream establishment media, especially cable news, republicans were gaining traction with their message of opposition against the stimulus bill and, thereby, against president Obama.
More importantly, however, than where the media thinks the momentum lies in the back-and-forth of a debate, the arguments or frames that the media decide to present to the public regarding policy do, in fact, influence public opinion. And, by this standard, the establishment media, given the last 25 years of conservative dominance of Washington, D.C., is simply predisposed hardwired to be more accommodating to the republican propaganda arm message machine. Washington, D.C., is a town that remains dominated by a conservative infrastructure composed of think thanks, media consultants, corporate lobbyists that are fundamentally attuned to the conservative ideology, and, therefore, composed of media producers with rolodexes filled with the numbers and contact information of conservative spokespersons ready to provide a quote, or to appear on-camera.
ThinkProgress.org ran the numbers and, as suspected, these illustrate that establishment media is dominated 2-to-1 by republican spokespersons, which is why consumers of establishment media may have thought that republicans were up and that president Obama was down in the court of public opinion:
As Media Matters has documented, during the Bush administration, the media consistently allowed conservatives to dominate their shows, booking them as guests far more often than progressives. The rationale was that Republicans were “in power.”
It appears that old habits die hard. Even though President Obama and his team are in control of the executive branch and Democrats are in the majority in Congress, the cable networks are still turning more often to Republicans and allowing them to set the agenda on major issues, most recently on the debate over the economic recovery package.
[...]
In total, from 6 AM on Monday to 4 PM on Wednesday, the networks have hosted Republican lawmakers 51 times and Democratic lawmakers only 26 times. Surprisingly, Fox News came the closest to offering balance, hosting 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. CNN had only two Democrats compared to 7 Republicans.
As Josh Marshall points out, there seems to be a big disconnect between the establishment media in Washington, D.C., and the rest of America:
“It’s eerie — I read the news from the Beltway, and there’s this disconnect with the polls from the Midwest that I see all around me.”
That’s from Ann Selzer, the Iowa pollster who’s an expert on public opinion throughout the midwest, as quoted by Ben Smith.
It really is the big story of the first weeks of the Obama administration. In Washington, it was a battle royale between the new president and an emboldened Republican minority. At times they seemed to have him on the ropes. And yet in the country at large, Obama remains super popular. And the GOP is wildly unpopular.
[...]
The city remains wired for the GOP. Not that it’s done them a great deal of good of late. But it remains a key part of understanding every part of what is happening today.
If the dynamic described above is true, and I believe that it is, it may take a while before the mainstream establishment media starts reflecting the shift in the balance of power that has come about in the country, given how unlikely it is that news producers and editors will empty out their trusty rolodexes.
February 14th, 2009
The fight over the stimulus bill has presented observers and participants many lessons, I just hope that president Obama and his advisors take note and adjust — which I’m confident that they will.
Lesson Nº 1: So-called bipartisanship, while useful as a tool to contrast oneself against the opposition, poses limits on the offensive tactical options available to use against the opposition. Therefore, bipartisanship, in and of it self, cannot be the metric that the Obama administration offers as the yard-stick to measure the success of their initiatives. Because, as we saw during the early coverage of the stimulus fight, the mainstream establishment media will mindlessly focus on the so-called bipartisanship narrative, and ignore the substance behind any policy proposals.
Lesson Nº 2: President Obama must be the face of the Democratic party, and of his administration’s proposals. It’s clear that the GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party) strategy is to paint the faceless “Democratic led Congress” as the enemy; because, the calculus must go, they believe that they cannot win head-to-head fight against the photogenic, media-savvy, and very popular president Obama. Therefore, as we saw in the latter half of the stimulus fight, president Obama must use the bully pulpit to present himself as the voice and face of the Democratic agenda.
Lesson Nº 3: Use president Obama’s popularity to contrast himself against the opposition. The best example of this, again, came in the latter half of the fight over the stimulus bill, when president Obama embarked on a campaign-style town hall meeting tour, that reminded the DC establishment media why Obama won the presidency; and, too, that GOP obstruction is out-of-step with the public, which overwhelming backs our president’s policies.
Lesson Nº 4: Finally, president Obama must remember that he and the Democratic party won with overwhelming public support, and that he has a mandate to change the course that the country has been in over the past eight years. Therefore, in spite of the timidity that’s always urged by establishment insiders in the media and in the halls of the capital, president Obama must assert his popular mandate and now shy away from pursuing a bold progressive agenda.
September 13th, 2008
Over at TPM Reed Hundt writes about the many lies that John McCain has been telling the American public, and wonders about something I’ve been thinking about recently:
In 2000 Al Gore was pilloried by the mainstream media (“MSM”) for his alleged untruths or exaggerations — Love Canal, Love Story, Internet, Who he visited in Texas. In every instance, at the very most he had chosen the wrong word or failed to clarify the misunderstandings of others.
Now in 2008 the McCain-Palin ticket revels in inaccuracy, wallows in whoppers, lies like a pair of rugs, buys ad time to tell still more lies. So tell me why the MSM doesn’t talk about their dishonesty endlessly, turning them from celebrity stars into pathological figures?
The contrast is absolutely clear. What’s the explanation?
July 2nd, 2008
Wow, this is brazen! Without bounds nor respect for decency. And yet they still dare call the crap they produce news!? Self respecting journalists should be outraged, and finally expose Fixed News, er, Fox News for the propaganda sham that it is.
From Media Matters:
During a segment in which Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe “attack dogs,” Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head.
See the Fox & Friends video clip courtesy of Media Matters.
