Media Matters

While Reverend Wright was speaking to the National Press Club yesterday morning alarms were going off right outside my window. Literally, sirens wailing on the street below my apartment, stuck in traffic, not able to move. I thought to myself, "how appropriate." Here we go, one week before the Indiana primaries, and we're stuck in another (news) media feeding frenzy about the life and times of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

It is not so much that I wish Reverend Wright would have stayed away until, at the very minimum, after the primary season was over (I do), but that I wish we had a media that was capable of covering this and other stories with some element of intelligent and reasonable analysis and discourse (we don't).

We are, as a nation, worse-off because of it.

I spend a lot of time watching cable news these evenings. I am my own self-appointed watchdog and, sitting on my sofa, I do watch, and am appalled, by the extraordinary misinterpretations, and deliberate falsehoods, that are allowed to fill the airwaves night after night after night. Whether it's "bittergate," (last week I watched as Chris Matthews described Barack Obama as "making fun" of blue collar workers) or Jeremiah Wright (Chris Matthews, (again) last night, describing Wright as Obama's "surrogate," and going on to describe Obama and Wright as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the same person, "birds of a feather," he continued). C'mon now? Seriously?!

There are very few journalists on cable news anymore. I see a lot of pundits putting forward disingenuous arguments -- i.e. arguments they know to be false, in an effort to support their candidate. It is like what Jon Stewart said, oh so long ago now, on Crossfire, it's all about political hackery, with partisan pundits believing that the end justifies the means ... and any means will do. Jon Stewart said it back then, and it is still true today, "It's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America."

It's true. It is.

We all know far too well how the media played right in to the Pentagon's hands in the lead up to the Iraq War. I worked at CNN in the run up to that war. I booked folks like General Shepperd (that's "shepperd" with two "p's" and an "e" -- get it right for the chyron!), and Kenneth Pollack (author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq), time after time after time. I read Judy Miller in the New York Times (and Tom Friedman too). We all did. And we all lived through the hand-wringing when it became clear that the press had gotten it wrong. "Has the press learned its lesson?" you may ask. (Not if you take the White House Correspondents' dinner at face value).

The press corp is like a flock of sheep. One guy says something, and everyone else has to follow. In this Democratic presidential campaign, the guy is in fact a gal called Hillary Clinton who is better than anyone I know at controlling the message, steering the debate, shepherding the sheep. How did Pennsylvania become such a phenomenal victory for her, when she was supposed to win all along and in the end managed to pull off a single-digit victory (and yes, it was a single digit victory -- who rounds 9.3% up to 10%?). How does Barack Obama have such a problem with working class and lower-income voters when he has been making ground with working class voters and lower-income voters ever since Iowa? How is it possible that the guy who just finished paying off his student loans a few years ago is the one who is being described as elite?

I don't know that I offer any solutions -- any way to smarten the dialogue. I think we did well in the days after the ABC debate. (Thank you Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MoveOn). The outrage was vocal and I think the folks over there at ABC got the message. I also note a certain hopeful glimmer among some of the pundits out there -- we're being encouraged to listen to the whole speech, look past the soundbite, all good things. New voices are being included in the debate. Rachel Maddow for example, one of the smartest voices out there, (full disclosure, we used to work together), Lawrence O'Donnell, (the only one trying to make any sense when Reverend Wright first re-emerged last week but getting shouted down by the jackals dying to tear both Wright & Obama apart), and David Gergen, (a fair voice over at CNN).

For Reverend Wright, maybe it was his ego that made him decide that now is the time to get out there and make his splash. The cynic in me thinks Rev. Wright picked this moment deliberately. He knows that once the nomination process is over, we won't be so interested. The generous spirit in me thinks that, once again, he has misjudged the (news) media in this country, he's given them too much credit. Whatever his reasoning, one thing is for sure. His words will be sliced and diced beyond recognition by pundits aiming to score political points -- not against him, not against the Black Church, but against the man he purports to support: the junior Senator from Illinois: Barack Obama.

The media would be hurting America, one more time.

Comments

[FarOutFish]

The media has two mottos, “All the news that fits, we print” and “Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story”. However bad today’s media is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the newspapers of the nineteenth century and their ‘yellow journalism’, or the eighteenth century, when Thomas Jefferson and John Addams paid newspapers to slander each other.

[MariaHopeful]

Hillary Clinton complained (whined?) about her negative press coverage it has been an unrelenting assault on Barack Obama. Wrightgate, bittergate, ayersgate, lapel-pingate, can't-win-­white-peop­legate. At the same time other narrative has been about Hillary's toughness. She is the toughest politician ever (hanging on the coattail of her husband), she is a fighter, she is a policy wonk, she gives specifics ad nauseum. This is our media. And when I talked about the yellow-bellied, low-down, disgusting, dirty media, I am talking about Chris Matthews, Mika (whatever), Andrea Mitchell, Joe Scarborough, Nora O'donnel, Dan Abrams, Tim Russert, David Gregory, David Shuster and all the on air and behind the scenes personnel at MSNBC, Lou Dobbs, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Rick Sanchez, John King, Campbell Brown and all the on camera and behind the scenes personnel at CNN, the WHOLE OF FOX, ABC especially Stephanopolous & Gibson, NBC and all the major newspapers in the land. These people, these yellow bellied people who aided and abetted GWB into sending our young men and women into an illegal war which has resulted in the loss of life of thousands upon thousands of people, have now turned their collective power to destroying a decent man, the only decent candidate. These people who come into our living rooms, who are paid millions of dollars to INFORM are more responsible for the downfall of America and the erosion of our values than any politician.

[THEhillbilly]

"There are very few journalists on cable news anymore. I see a lot of pundits putting forward disingenuous arguments -- i.e. arguments they know to be false, in an effort to support their candidate."

While you're in mind-reading mode, tell me whether grandiloquent, done-nothing tyro senator Barack Obama is thinking of dropping out of the race because of his four (so far) unsavory associations (Wright, Rezko, Ayres, and a wife who isn't happy to be an American).

"I don't know that I offer any solutions -- any way to smarten the dialogue. I think we did well in the days after the ABC debate. (Thank you Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MoveOn). The outrage was vocal and I think the folks over there at ABC got the message."

Why didn't anyone tell me that you could post voicemail here and on those two lunatic sites?!

[TribunusPlebis]

Not only is cable news obsessed with Reverend Wright. The networks have also been hyperventilating. Tonight on NBC, Brian Williams asked Tim Russert to ponder Obama's disowning of Wright, and Russert -- in full red-faced, eyebrow-signaling mode -- said that never before had a presidential candidate had to break from such a close associate. Russert, who exaggerates the importance of most anything he's asked to pontificate about, has forgotten quite a bit of history.

Just weeks before the 1964 election, President Johnson had to dismiss one of his longtime aides for having gay sex in a YMCA men's room not far from the White House. Both Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon had to distance their campaigns from their own brothers, who kept getting involved in questionable business deals. Ronald Reagan refused to discuss his first marriage, to the actress Jane Wyatt, who was known to have mixed feelings about him. But of course these presidents or their predecessors weren't harassed to answer endless questions about the alienation, outrageous remarks or clownishness of their former associates or relatives, because that was before the arrival of a 24/7 news cycle and a carnivorous media unhinged from any pretense of covering the actual substance of politics.

What the Wright affair has really illuminated is what might be called the Russert Syndrome: the manic drive of pundits and political reporters to throw their historical perspective, news judgment and common sense onto the burning funeral pyre of this country's maturity as a democracy.

[meanguy]

there's plenty of hackery on the left as well as the right: this site is one of several that are part of the problem

[SteelMaggie]

Wonderful post! It says everything my mother and I have been saying to each other as we watch what appears to be an intentional destruction of Obama, especially by Chris Matthews. I agree with the poster who says it's time for a boycott of Matthews... Hardball is a joke... I used to like Chris but over the past couple months especially, he just makes me ill.

How can we force the media to be fair? Is that even possible?

[carrigan]

I wish I knew the answer to that question... I think it's the chequebook in the end, how to hit them on the $$ signs. Any suggestions?

[AshevilleVoice]

I feel your pain!

The commentary last night was nothing short of obsessive. CNN did over 4 hours of nonstop analysis of Jeremiah Wright. Even Gergen was sucked into the vortex.

I keep thinking that CNN and MSNBC will wake up and realize that there is a reason why we DON'T watch Fox.

[THEhillbilly]

Why would CNN or MSNBC care about reasons for people "burying their heads in the sand"?

Protect yourself at all times and at all costs from everything that might make you question some of the ingredients in your chosen pabulum.

[RoloTomassi]

"Protect yourself at all times and at all costs from everything that might make you question some of the ingredients in your chosen pabulum."

Why not try slicing and dicing your own delusions rather than deliver holier-than-thou directives.

But since you've already crossed that plane, do tell us all about your superior political mindset and analytical skills--you know, enlighten the mere mortals here at HuffPo.

[laksa]

I totally agreed with you. Remember, with the lost of newspaper, we the citizens rely more and more on TV for news. Or the internet. But the group like those blue collar workers or senior citizens, they do not do internet. Therefore, they are for Hillary. All the info they receive is from TV which are one sided and untrue. Chris Matthew is loosing it. It started from the time Hillary openly criticized him for not being fair, followed by refusing to go on his college tour of Penn. Now he is over compensating by trashing Obama, mistakenly or dilutionally? that it is Obama's fault that he did not get Hillary on his show? After the primary, he was at it 24/7 that Obama is not going to win without the white working class vote. Never once wonder, can Hillary win without the black votes? or as Clyburn has said, does it mean the black votes do not matter?

[kj11]

Hang in there people....the media do not represent the population. We are way more progressive than those who have the priviledge of spouting their gossip and drivel on a daily basis.

Time for a serious boycott of Matthews...

My 16 year old was yelling at CNN and MSNBC ...

[jsomerville5]

Take heart: A man in my office today who voted for Hillary in the Connecticut primary (despitie my best efforts to get him to go for Obama) told me that in the last month he has been steadily tilting towards Obama. He said after reading about her position on the holiday gas tax today that cinched it for him: he's for Obama.

Never thought I'd see the day....