The media has its priorities

November 2, 2006

It seems the John Kerry frenzy has come to a merciful end, and I have no desire to start the debate all over again, but there’s one last point that warrants attention.

National Journal publishes a daily round-up every morning of the stories featured on the network news casts the night before. In light of the disproportionate media response to Kerry flubbing one word in a meaningless joke on Monday, last night’s news casts were telling.

Let’s start with the NBC Nightly News’ broadcast.

Segment One: John Kerry Apologizes For “Botched Joke” About Iraq (Running time: 3:35)

Segment Two: Democrats Are “Furious And Frustrated” With Kerry’s Timing (Running time: 2:20)

Segment Three: Classified Pentagon Chart Suggests Chaos In Iraq (Running time: 40 seconds)

Classic. NBC Nightly News, just days before the midterm elections, devotes six straight minutes to covering a botched joke and 40 seconds to sensitive leaked information from U.S. Central Command showing that Iraq is quickly sliding into “chaos.”

Given the coverage and order of the stories, NBC News suggested to viewers that the Kerry non-story was six times more important than a classified Pentagon chart that debunked all of the White House’s mendacious rhetoric about the war.

NBC Nightly News was clearly the worst of the Big Three shows, but the others were hardly impressive.

Here’s last night’s CBS Evening News:

Segment One: John Kerry Apologizes For Gaffe On Iraq (Running time: 2:40)

Segment Four: Iraq Continues To Spiral Out Of Control (Running time: 35 seconds)

CBS’s coverage wasn’t as completely ridiculous as NBC’s, but you’ll notice that Kerry not only received nearly five times the air time, but the “Iraq Continues To Spiral Out Of Control” story was the fourth news item of the broadcast.

By comparison, ABC World News Tonight was practically award-winning.

Segment One: Political Firefight Under Way Over Iraq (Running time: 3:05)

Segment Two: Bush Says Cheney And Rumsfeld Are Staying (Running time: 1:10)

Segment Three: Leaked Classified Pentagon Documents Paint Grim Picture Of Iraq (Running time: 1:45)

To be sure, the first segment was mainly about Kerry, and was almost three times as long as the piece about chaos in Iraq, but ABC at least deserves some credit for a) not making the top story entirely about a flubbed joke, and b) giving the crisis in Iraq more than a minute of air time.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: the media has its priorities, are they yours?

Of course I don’t have my finger on the pulse of voters’ concerns (if they have a pulse), but it just feels like to me that the John Kerry flap was like a brief burp of memory of a bad meal of Rovian attack poilitics. It seems like people knew what was going on and were tired of it. Except for the media of course.

  • Let us all remember who owns NBC, General Electric, GE, the large defense contractor.
    You see, any war is good for GE, they sell more components (paid for by tax dollars, or national debts), and they get news stories.
    Back in the sixties there was a slogan:
    War is good business, invest your children.

  • On the other hand, what more is there to tell about Iraq. Over the last four years there have been hundreds of hours of prime time reporting on Iraq by the big Three.

    So Kerry gets 30 minutes, fah!

  • I know Meme’s got his tongue in his cheek. I think Karl would much prefer not to have nationalized this election on Iraq or Stem Cell Research. So much as I find Kerry annoying for being such a wuss loser, I can’t share doubtful’s opinion on this.

    So now, back to the evident failures of the Bushites and the Republican’t rubberstamp Congress.

  • and how much time was given to Democratic calls for Boehner to apologize for his statements – or was that even mentioned?

  • Actually I think the Republican scandals had stagnated a little bit before Fox and Kerry (each in their own way) captured the news cycles. Kerry seems to have invigorated the war scandal and Fox invigorated the stem cell scandal. Maybe th Tao is working in strange ways.

  • General Electric News, Disney News, Paramount News, 20th Century Fox News – who fucking cares? Fifth-rate otherwise-unemployable morons. The Barbies are all bad lays and the Kens can’t get it up to begin with – because neither of them has the necessary equipment.

  • Has anyone seen an actual transcript of Kerry’s remarks at Pasadena City College? Not just the quote we’ve heard ad nauseum, but what came before that? From Olberman’s comments last evening, it would appear that Kerry was bashing Dubya prior to the now infamous botch. If so, could this entire affair have been avoided by backing up the audio a minute or so?

    (Priceless: I actually heard some blather-head this morning promoting an upcoming story about whether the Kerry story was over.)

  • What Kerry said isn’t exactly a Revelation from God to most ordinary Americans. I live just south of Camp Pendleton, and it’s an unspoken truth that if you’re not smart enough or wealthy enough to get into college, you’ll likely wind up in the military (or Wal-Mart).

  • If the media were good at covering the issues instead of horse races, foibles, polls, etc., Bush would never have been elected and there would be no war in Iraq. Incompetency breeds incompetency. The media is like American car companies — they create demand for inferior products (candidates) and then tell us that is what the consumer (voter) is asking for.

  • Tom (Re #11) –
    Cute remarks, but the Kens & Barbies are not the problem, it’s the owners & corporate leaders, and they do have the equipment:
    Broadcasting apparati & the bandwidth to spread their propaganda.
    They have built it up since Nixon, and it appears to be in fine working order, working against the interests of most of the American people.

  • What amazes me is the really big story which was reported yesterday but seems to have gathered much less attention than it warrants. Based on an order issued by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki US troops abandoned the search for a missing US soldier and changed tactics in dealing with Shiite militias within Baghdad. I believe that this may be the first time since the writing of the US constitution that US military forces have been under the command of a foreign power, a specter anti-UN wingnuts constantly evoke.
    I don’t watch TV news, so I don’t know if this story has received much coverage outside of newspaper and web sites. I did hear it yesterday on NPR, but it was definitely overshadowed by Kerry coverage.

  • what beep52 said.

    We can complain all we want, but the best way to smack this down would be to play the tape. The whole tape.

    Anyone with video of the context of the botched joke should post it pronto. According to KO the context made it obvious who the joke was about, but of course the media hates context. Ask Howard Dean.

  • Re #13,

    True Speed. But we are supposed to be gentlemen and not point that out.

    Of course, because of Boy George II’s war in Iraq, the Military has had to loosen standards for recruitment, so know we are getting even less educated and more mentally unstable soldiers then before. Not a glorious situation.

  • As someone who has experienced Kerry’s support for the troops first-hand, and as someone who has seen him give some small amount of comfort to my griveing mother, I can’t put into words how offensive I find the false suggestion, for cheap politcal gain, that Kerry wants to insult our troops and their families. To everyone out there trying to make that case (Bush, Cheney, Snow, McCain, among others), one simple message: Go to hell. More 

    From Democratic Underground, brother of soldier who died in Afghanistan

    Kerry Cares.

  • Its pathetic and shameful. Combine this with the Mark Halprin/Hugh Hewitt stuff and its enough to make me just want to forget about using the “MSM” as a resource. And these people wonder why the Daily Show continues to become more and more popular.

  • Why any Dem said more than he botched the joke is beyond me. All you have to look at is what it sounds like if he said ” …. got us stuck in Iraq….”, and the joke is clearly about W.

    Dems piling on Kerry for this was just so stupid. The media piling on him was just so ……….. reaffirming of the liberal bias hat has plagued America.

  • Woody,

    I believe that this may be the first time since the writing of the US constitution that US military forces have been under the command of a foreign power…

    I know its off topic, and I totally agree with your larger point that the Maliki ordered abandoned search deserved far more media play than the Kerry flap, but the statement above is incorrect. US Troops were under the direct command of a foreign power in WWI and WWII.

    The largest number of U.S. troops ever under the control of foreign battlefield commanders was about 300,000 during World War I, said military officials traveling with Rumsfeld to the NATO meeting. It was not clear how many troops were under foreign command during World War II.

  • These media outlets have aided and abetted the Iraq debacle! MSM is currently one anathama to our political heritage. It has negelected its fourth estate role for some time now so that is now looks like just another appendage coming forth from this current WH. In the unjust framing of the important issues before all Americans this election cycle, the MSM is doing its damnedness to keep its cherished access to power, at the expense of providing a vital service to all Americans by speaking truth to power. We don’t even get the benefit of the doubt in regard to any honest perspective on Iraq. In the imbalanced time allotted to last night’s “news” coverage were any images from Iraq offered up to Americans so they could visually assess the madness for themselves? I’m sure they repeated miserable images of the Honorable Senator of Mass.

    How can Americans assess the chaos in Iraq when the media allows for no images of such chaos. These media decision-makers have decided to keep the Iraq carnage an abstract idea for their viewers. Executives at the large MSM outlets are no allies or friends to small “d” democracy. Americans of all ilks, turn off your TeeVees and come to cyberspace. You have nothing to loose but your ignorance. Viva La Blogoshpere! -Kevo

  • Thanks, Edo. I wasn’t sure about chain of command issues during the World Wars, especially WWI. I thought that in WWII the US was more concerned about keeping a US chain of command leaving decisions about US troops ultimately up to US commanders. Straying further OT, the al Maliki command about Sadr City seems pretty confused to me at this point and I am curious about the chain of command there. Who did al Maliki give the order to and at what point did that order go from an Iraqi to a US operative and thence down the line to the actual soldiers who took down the checkpoints?

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