He Said/She Said

by digby

Speaking of media malfesance, here’s a barn burner of a post by Avedon Carol on the alleged “even-handedness” of the press.

The so-called “objectivity” we are seeing today is very different from what we saw 30 years ago, for the simple reason that when you refuse to acknowledge that one side is telling the truth while the other is lying, that’s not objective. Objectively, Bush lied and Gore didn’t, but you’d never have known that from the mainstream media’s coverage of the 2000 campaign. Objectively, there is no more important thing to do in an election than make sure everyone can vote and then count all the ballots, but you wouldn’t have known that, either.

In that regard, I have to give some props to Andrea Mitchell today sitting in for Chris Matthews. She actually did call glassy-eyed Governor Bill Owen of Colorado out on his RNC mandated stream of consiousness blather about “Aldrich Ames – Brooklyn bridge – Jamie Gorelick – known terrorists – protecting America – 9/11 – Clintoncarterdemocrats.” She said outright that what he was saying wasn’t true.

The problem is that the Republican machine is like the Borg. They only have one brain. Owen did not compute her factual rebuttal; he just repeated his mantra, calmly and cooly, because he doesn’t really know what he’s saying — he’s just reading from the approved script. He has no idea what’s true and what isn’t and he doesn’t care.

I’d like to welcome Andrea Mitchell into the reality based community. Maybe she’ll stay awhile.

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