{"id":7589,"date":"2006-06-04T09:12:03","date_gmt":"2006-06-04T13:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7589"},"modified":"2006-06-04T09:12:03","modified_gmt":"2006-06-04T13:12:03","slug":"sunday-discussion-group-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sunday-discussion-group-52\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Discussion Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the AP’s John Solomon decided that he wanted to tarnish Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. One story<\/a>, followed by another<\/a>, and then a third<\/a>, tried to characterize a non-story as an ethical scandal from a man who not only has great integrity, but who hadn’t done anything wrong. It reached a point in which Solomon felt it necessary to mislead readers, it would seem deliberately, in order to make an argument the facts wouldn’t support.<\/p>\n

Media Matters’ Jamison Foser offers<\/a> a powerful argument that the AP series was inevitable — Reid is a Dem leader, so he had to be taken down.<\/p>\n

The recent media treatment of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they’re in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men’s own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they’d have gotten better press coverage. That’s naive. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not just about lazy journalism — though that’s a factor — it’s also about creating narratives. Foser offers a compelling case and a disturbing series of examples: Whitewater was a “scandal”; Gore was an “exaggerator”; Dean was ultra-liberal and “unhinged”; Kerry was a “flip-flopper”; Murtha is “anti-military”; Hillary Clinton’s relationship with her husband is worthy of more scrutiny than anyone else’s marriage.<\/p>\n

In each instance, conservative attack dogs pick a message they think might work and traditional media outlets run with it, regardless of merit, until a public perception is firmly in place.<\/p>\n

Digby noted<\/a> yesterday that Eric Boehlert, in his exceptional new book “Lapdogs,” explained:<\/p>\n

[J]ust four months into [Clinton’s] first term, the Post published a lengthy, mocking feature on Clinton’s soft approval ratings. (“The Failed Clinton Presidency. It has a certain ring to it.”) Yet in 2005 when Bush’s job approval rating plunged into the 30s, the Post refused to print the phrase “failed presidency” to describe Bush’s second term. To do so would simply invite conservative scorn; something the newsroom seemed to go to extraordinarily lengths to avoid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Digby wrote, “After reading all of that the question is — how do we fix this?” I’m open to suggestion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the AP’s John Solomon decided that he wanted to tarnish Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. One story, followed by another, and then a third, tried to characterize a non-story as an ethical scandal from a man who not only has great integrity, but who hadn’t done anything wrong. It reached a point in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}