NPR has really been pissing me off lately. You may have noticed it too – an overcompensation borne of decades of being accused by the conservative movement of being harbingers of a non-existent media bias. And it’s not just NPR – it’s every major mainstream media outlet.
Eric Boehlert of Media Matters nails it – using this past weekend’s tea party festivities as a example – in his essay on the “media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats.”
And Karl Frisch, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters and Liberadio(!) media correspondent, said on our show on Monday that the responsibility for correcting this, er, “overcorrection,” rests solely in our hands:
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“For 40 years, the right has been pushing the idea of liberal media bias, and since Palin is one of the most popular people on the right, the press – because of the pressure they get from every level of the conservative movement from the lowliest volunteer to the presidential candidate – they get immense pressure to bend-over backwards and be “fair.” And by “fair” I mean not correct the public record. The left has only come into its own in terms of coming after the media to get things correct for about 5 or 6 years now in any kind of organized fashion. And even then it’s still not from the lowliest of campaign activists to the tip-tops of the presidential candidates.
It was surely something when the White House started becoming critical of Fox News because we had not seen that before from the left. But this is something that has to be ingrained in the psyche of the progressive movement that you must challenge the media when they get something wrong. Because then, at least, we can bring the press back to a natural center where they’re bending over backwards perhaps for both sides but in the end we’re getting a better news product.
As it stand right now, everybody on the Right complains about the media. Every day. On every issue. That doesn’t happen on the left. And that’s why Joe Biden ends up being charicatured in the way that he’s charicatured but since the campaign nobody has said – I hesitate to say nobody – but, by and large, for all the gaffes Sarah Palin has had, since exiting the campaign trail, she’s certainly not held to the standard that other politicians would be if they were quite as dumb as Palin on the stump.”
Still shrill.
Casper! Good example of the “some say.” But it’s true, we would love puppies in all branches of the U.S. Government.
Uh……Forgot one thing. One of the good NPR programs out there is “Its All Politics”. Personally I have a tough time figuring out on which side of the political platform either of the hosts are.
Mary, you hit a point that I really notice a lot in american media, almost no matter which outlet I choose. The whole “Some say thing”….That can be said about anything. “Some people say that Liberadio is a brutal dictatorship who under the brilliant cover of being a liberal talk show is plotting the takeover of the US government only to replace it by a puppy focused rule”
Watch out for the pitforks
LWC FTW!
That’s exactly right, Dean. Listen how many times the term “Some say…” is used in reporting the news these days without defining who the “some” are or without verifying whether what they “say” is true or not.
Spelling error corrected, Jon. Can I have my two points back?
Nice
Polite
Republicans
What more needs be said?
Today’s media seems willing to bend over backwards to present both sides, no matter how extreme. If, on a sunny day, the issue were whether the sky was blue, the news would be presented this way:
“A spokesman for the Sky-is-blue-committee said that the answer to whether the sky is blue should be simple. But the president for TTS (Truth in the stratosphere) said that looks can be deceiving. ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover,’ he said. ‘Our science editor, James Ipaidhimoff, is encouraging further study.’”
Journalists, in the old days, would have told TTS to wise up and then do an journalistic probe into Ipaidhimoff’s “science.” If they did that now, however, they would be accused of having a sky-blue bias. Nevertheless, all the TTS folk would start their own channel, which they would watch religiously, enabling TTSTV to claim the largest audience share.
As the hard-line right gains more influence and takes the GOP to extremes, we’ll see more radical positions trying to be portrayed as mainstream. Look at we’ve already seen:
— A decorated Vietnam vet portrayed as a coward, while his opponent and vice president, who went out of their way NOT to serve, are portrayed as heroes.
— The trashing of the science of climate change, which is universally accepted around the world as fact.
— The use of torture, which goes against every law on our books, be argued as acceptable.
— The citizenship of our Commander-in-Chief during wartime be questioned despite the constant debunking of this myth.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Encourage your favorite journalists to call a spade a spade, an extremist an extremist, a birther a birther and a chickenhawk a chickenhawk.
P.S. I originally had an acronym other than TTS (forgot the “in”), but it’s a family blog. ;o)
Just keeping it real and to quote you….honest.
“But this is something that has to be ingrained in the psyche of the progressive movement that you must challenge the media when they get something wrong. Because then, at least, we ca bring the press back to a natural center where they’re bending over backwards perhaps for both sides but in the end we’re getting a better news product.”
The word is C-A-N… -2 for spelling.