I can appreciate the fact that [tag]ABC News[/tag] Political Director Mark [tag]Halperin[/tag] wants to sell copies of his new book, “The Way to Win,” but brazenly sucking up to conservatives on national television probably isn’t the best way to impress anyone.
Take for, example, Halperin’s appearance this week on Fox News’ [tag]O’Reilly[/tag] Factor.
When O’Reilly pointedly asked him if he believed major news organizations — including ABC — had a liberal bias, Halperin repeated the right-wing talking point that the media is trying to suppress Republican turnout. He told O’Reilly, “If I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break at the end of an election. We’ve got to make sure we do better, so [tag]conservatives[/tag] don’t have to be concerned about that.”
Halperin went on to say, “As an economic model, if you want to thrive like [tag]Fox News[/tag] Channel, you want to have a future, you better make sure conservatives find your product [tag]appealing[/tag].”
I’ve tried looking for a reasonable interpretation of these comments, but the only conclusion I can come up with is that Halperin is telling Fox News’ viewers, “Your paranoid fantasies are true and I’m on your side. Now buy my book and watch my network.”
And sure enough, no sooner than Halperin started promising to make ABC News more “appealing” to conservatives, the network’s news started delivering.
Media Matters reported:
In a report on how recent campaigns advertisements are “getting ugly,” ABC News, unable to point to a single instance of “nasty” attacks from Democratic candidates or their supporters, suggested it is only a matter of time before “the left” begins to “unleash its garbage as well.” ABC News offered no evidence to back up its allegation that Democrats might soon resort to distasteful, negative advertising.
ABC News had no problem documenting ads, currently airing in campaign across the country, attacking Democrats, including one from the Republican National Committee about Democratic Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. In it, an actress playing a ditzy blonde bimbo says: “I met Harold at the Playboy party. … Harold, call me.” Critics, including one prominent Republican, have called the ad borderline racist.
At the conclusion of its report on attack ads, ABC News insisted that “Democrats aren’t necessarily running clean campaigns.” Unable to cite any examples, ABC News reported, “As the races tighten in the next couple of weeks, the left will likely unleash its garbage as well.”
This is political journalism at its most inane. One side is engaging in cynical and vile demagoguery, the other side isn’t. ABC not only knows this, it was helping document this. But like all mainstream American journalism, ABC just couldn’t bring itself to criticize Republicans without also criticizing Democrats, even without evidence, and even though Dems hadn’t actually done what ABC insisted Dems will eventually do.
Ironically, one of the nation’s most preeminent and powerful political journalists knows this is style of reporting is a problem and fairly recently urged his news division to do better. His name is Mark Halperin. From an October 2004 ABC News memo, discussing the presidential campaign:
The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.
Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.
We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides “equally” accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.
As Josh Marshall said at the time, “The plain intent of the memo is to tell ABC reporters that they should feel neither obligated nor permitted to equate the level of deceptiveness of the Kerry and Bush campaigns if and when they are in fact not equal.
Everyone can see that they are not equal. Halperin is just saying it.”
Halperin was just saying it. Now he’s saying that news divisions that want to have financial success have to ensure that conservatives find their product “appealing.” And now ABC News is doing reports that are the polar opposite of what Halperin advised ABC News to do just two years ago, fabricating non-existent “balance” so as to avoid appearing “biased.”
Some days, I’m convinced the [tag]media[/tag] is just hopeless.