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In a post that he admits is “probably not career-enhancing,” Michael Grunwald can’t stop himself from ranting about his journalistic colleagues at Time‘s Swampland blog:
It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully … pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.
… I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.
… The press can’t figure out how to weave those facts into the current narrative without sounding like it’s taking sides, so it simply pretends that yesterday never happened.
… But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.
I wrote back in August that we were nearing a possible climax in the GOP’s genuinely Orwellian quest to make telling the truth an inherently partisan (and hence disreputable act). This would have happened if the Republicans had added the White House and the Senate to their control of the House — leaving the press as the only significant “opponent” in defining reality.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. However, the results from November also let the media continue to sidestep any responsibility for holding the GOP accountable, since they can simply insist that the Democrats (and that guy with the so-called bully pulpit) are able to speak for themselves, and should do so if they don’t think Republicans are being honest. So I fear Michael Grunwald’s plea for resistance will fall on many, many deaf ears in D.C.
Not only that, I suspect Grunwald is about to find out what actually happened to that little boy who called out the naked emperor in that old fairy tale. (You didn’t think the courtiers who invested so much effort in fooling the public really just shrugged and let the kid get away with it, did you?)
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Swopa!
The fundamental problem is that the interests of our corporate media are the same as the rest of the corporate behemoths. They have a vested interest in not letting the truth out or challenging the Republicans.
I remember when the Sunday shows were under a lot of scrutiny during the Bush years because their guests were wall to wall Republicans. They said that since they are the party in power, clearly their points of view were the relevant ones. When the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008, the Sunday shows insisted that of course they are going to have more Republicans on in order to “give the opposition a voice”. I think every liberal in the country gave up on those dog and pony shows around then.
As I say at 1.
Well, yours wasn’t up as I was writing mine! But great minds and all.
Yep. I haven’t paid attention to those shows in years.
Yep. We have to destroy the corporate oligarchs if our democracy is to survive.
Take the money out of the system. That would go a long way toward reclaiming our government but I just don’t see how that happens as long as the recipients of that money are also the ones making the rules.
I was glad to hear about the fast food workers striking in NYC today….
Now, if we can just keep that going and ramp it up a bit. And that graph that shows how the worker-bees’ income has been stagnant while the 1% has raked in the dough ought to be posted at every bus stop, every subway station, every library, every friggin’ WalMart, for gawd’s sake!
Sadly, that is exactly how the capture the system.
Speaking of Walmart, warehouse workers are petitioning a judge to name Walmart as a defendant in their wage theft lawsuit.
We’ve fought long and hard, for ‘Public Financing’ with no Party Afilliation, within our County Elections, after two election cycles now, half our Co. Council are Publicly Financed victors…! It does work, folks…! ;-)
That’s encouraging news. :)
Q: Who owns the media?
A: Really really rich people.
Anymore questions?
Nope.
Think I will toddle off early again. This cold is really laying me out. Left work at noon today and slept for 2 hours after i got home. Take care all.
Sorry I missed you. I’m coming down with my second cold in a month–and more than one a year is pretty much unheard of for me.
I think Romney was the epitome of the big lie. He could change depending on his audience. And few ever challenged him. He and Ryan figured out you could say anything, no matter how outrageous and no one would question you, not that minute anyway. Perhaps the next day or Jon Stewart took them up on the lie or hypocrisy but it seemed people didn’t care. How do you get nearly fifty percent of the vote and lie your way nearly into the WH with no one noticing? Just keep inventing a new reality every day. The media doesn’t care and most people can’t be bothered.
Oh, the media cares all right…. as long as they are holding onto jobs owned by Murdoch, et al., the media will do whatever it is asked. I don’t blame the uninformed populace…. they can’t all be FDLers. Until we get our community airwaves back and re-establish a free press.., well, we are screwed.
And someone send Dancin’Dave and that ridiculous Russert kid to summer camp til they grow up and develop their brains and their consciences.
Funny how our little ‘experiment’ in Democracy, receives about the same fanfare, as Iceland’s new-found economic success, eh…? ;-)
“The press can’t figure out how to weave those facts into the current narrative without sounding like it’s taking sides, so it simply pretends that yesterday never happened.”
It is not that they can’t figure it out, it is that doing so is in no way their job. Their job is exactly to pretend, and convince the product they are paid to manufacture (i.e. their audience) to believe, that “yesterday never happened.” Good propaganda HAS to operate on the principle that the words spoken today have been the only words ever spoken. Memory is to propaganda what vaccines are to disease.
I’ll contribute to send Georgie Porgie puddin ‘n’ pie too. GAAK!!