A Mighty Howl

by tristero

Today, Somerby makes a point that can never be made often enough: There is something seriously, profoundly, institutionally wrong with the way our political news is reported. Here, he takes apart an incredibly revealing article by John Judis in which he – Judis – gets his facts wrong and then admits that, rather than providing objective coverage, the press “threw their support” behind Obama. In their wisdom, they decided the notion of a “first black president” was more important than a “first female president.” And besides, the poor press was suffering from “Clinton fatigue -” Judis’ actual phrase.

Now, it’s important to remember something, people. It’s not the case that the mainstream press is merely narcissistically self-important and throws their support without telling you to one candidate or another. It’s much more complicated than that.

In certain cases, such as in the fight against “intelligent design creationism” the press assumes a faux-objective stance, giving a scoundrel like Ken Hamm inordinate amounts of free space without checking up on his background or assessing the weight of the ideas. Fortunately that’s been muted somewhat since Kitzmiller v. Dover, but faux-objectivity lives on in, for example, Michael Gordon’s often bizarre reporting as fact the deliberately misleading propaganda of the Bush administration vis a vis Iraq and Iran.

In other words, something close to the entire worldview of the mainstream political/cultural press is alarmingly askew. While posing as objective, they make specious, empty-headed judgments about presidential candidates, then without telling us, “throw their support” behind one rather than another. And, when genuine judgment is absolutely necessary to ascertain the substance behind a source’s assertions, the press is often AWOL.

It goes beyond the press having a conservative bias, although that is part of it. It is, in fact, a massive incapacity/refusal to do the actual job of reporting actual news. Sure, journalism has had few golden eras. But what we’ve seen in the past 20 plus years, and especially in the past 10, is breathtakingly awful journalism.

There are exceptions, of course, and we know who they are: Krugman, Hersh, the McClatchy reporters, and others. But, as Somerby constantly reminds us, these voices barely matter until it is too late. The press has the power to bamboozle its constituency, the American people. And they have, over and over again. It is extremely dangerous for a country half as powerful as the United States to have a media as dysfunctional as this one. It is downright terrifying to think of the damage they have done over the past eight years by elevating Bush to the status of a serious candidate and denigrating Gore, then Kerry.

Special note: I don’t have a BFF when it comes to the top of the pack among the Democrats. The Dems are brimming with potentially great presidents, including but not limited to Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Kerry (again, that’s for starters). Simply because this post is sympathetic to the disgraceful treatment Clinton received at the hands of the press is hardly a reason to assume I dislike Obama. In fact, I like him a lot, think he would make an incredibly great president, and given that he is almost certain to be the nominee, will enthusiastically pull the lever for him. This is not about Obama OR Clinton, but about a press that, despite having no knowledge and no qualifications, believes it has a duty to skew highly influential coverage and thereby skew elections. It doesn’t; it’s a travesty of a democracy that it is doing so with impunity. And a lot of people have needlessly died directly because of the coverage of Bush the mainstream press mishandled, and continues doing.