Category Archives: Media Criticism

Unremarkable

Which is stranger, that the editor of the Boston Herald has a picture of Che in his office (“for inspiration”) or that Howie Kurtz offers that fact without comment?

Is it because Kevin Convey considers the newspaper a “guerilla” operation against the Globe? Does he know who Che was, and what he did? What does he plan to do with his own vanquished enemies, assuming his success?

Since reading Jonah’s book, I’ve gotten new insight in the popularity of Che posters on campus and among the left. Fascists, after all, always admire men of action.

Creeping Sharia

Bruce Bawer, on the cultural surrender of the west, aided and abetted by our own media, and the multi-culturalists in both academia and government.

Not exactly a new theme, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat or remind, for those who haven’t seen things like this, or have gone back to sleep.

It’s a long piece, but this is really the nut of it:

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho­meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success.

Sadly, he makes a good case.

Dog Bites Man

Mark Whittington has a completely pointless post:

…not much remarked, is the implicit endorsement of NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration by one of the leading new commercial space companies

Is this supposed to be news? Is Mark aware of any commercial space company that is opposed to the VSE, or sending humans to the moon and Mars? I’m not. So what’s the big deal?

Or is he confusing ESAS with VSE again?

When The Old Becomes New Again

Are all of Hillary’s negatives really already “all out there”, as Lanny Davis spins? Rich Lowry thinks not:

The problem with this (and I’m more sympathetic to Hillary than Obama at this point) is that Hillary’s negatives aren’t “all out there.” She’s perfectly capable of creating new, damaging ones, as she did with the Bosnia story. Plus, Bill is always a wild card, in terms of what he’s going to say, what is going to be revealed about his business dealings, etc.

It actually goes beyond that. We don’t have to speculate on new revelations for Hillary to have big problems if she somehow snatches the nomination from Obama.

Throughout the nineties, the classic Clinton tactical response to discussion about their corruption or criminality was to say “that’s old news.” And it often, even usually, worked, given the degree to which the press was in the tank for them. And that will surely be their response if anyone brings up Cattlegate, the White House travel office, the missing billing records, the FBI files, “who hired Craig Livingstone,” Whitewater in general, etc. And we can be assured that these things (and particularly their abuse of women) will come up, because the Slick Grope Vets for Truth have pledged to make them come up if she gets the nomination. I assume that they’ve been keeping their powder dry during the nomination process, both because they want any revelations they have to have maximum impact in the fall, when people are paying attention, and because they wouldn’t have much effect on Democrat voters.

But if she does get the nomination, and Gennifer, Kathleen et al do make an issue of their treatment at the hands of both Bill and Hill, as I’ve written before, I don’t think the “it’s old news” gambit will fly, partly because it’s become too old:

One of the tactics that the Clintons used to use to deflect bad news was to leak something on a Friday afternoon, and hope that it would die down after the weekend. Then if anyone brought it up, they’d dismiss it as “that’s old news.”

Given how ignorant much of the public remains of all the Clinton scandals that they successfully buried in the nineties, I wonder if this “old news” tactic will continue to work if things like Travelgate are brought up as issues in a 2008 campaign. I’ve already noted that Hillary will have her own “Slick Grope Vets” problem if she runs.

…It occurs to me that the “that’s old news” defense may not work, particularly with the “Slick Grope Vets For Truth,” at least based on the Kerry experience. After all, what could be older news than his congressional testimony after Vietnam? Yet it did become a potent campaign issue.

Many of today’s young voters have no memory of the Clinton scandals. An eighteen-year old was only eight years old during the Lewinsky saga, and a toddler during the early scandals and Whitewater. Even today’s twenty-somethings weren’t paying that much attention at the time, and even if they were, they always got the Clinton spin in the MSM, not the vast amount of information available via the Internet and talk radio (and to a lesser degree, Fox News). So for them, it won’t be old news, or at least, it will be a revelation of history, of which they were previously unaware.

And this time, with the blogosphere, the MSM won’t be able to help her spin her way out as it did in the nineties. No, I don’t think that Hillary’s negatives are “all out there.” We can expect a massive replay, and reminder, if she gets the nomination, and to a lot of people, the “old news” will become new news, or more simply, news.

Busted

It will be interesting to see how how NBC (and Dan Abrams) respond to this:

As a matter of fact, I had other things to occupy my time in the White House in 2002 rather than “structuring” a campaign for an Alabama gubernatorial candidate, calling people to raise money for his race, and going through the arduous task of “putting together a strategy.” And I certainly didn’t meet with anyone at the Justice Department or either of the two U.S. Attorneys in Alabama about investigating or indicting Siegelman. My involvement in the campaign was to approve a request that the President appear at a Riley campaign fundraising event, one of several score fundraising events the President did that election cycle.

It boils down to this: as a journalist, do you feel you have a responsibility to dig into the claims made by your guests, seek out evidence and come to a professional judgment as to the real facts? Or do you feel if a charge is breathtaking enough, thoroughly checking it out isn’t a necessity?

I know you might be concerned that asking these questions could restrict your ability to make sensational charges on the air, but don’t you think you have a responsibility to provide even a shred of supporting evidence before sullying the journalistic reputations of MSNBC and NBC?

People used to believe journalists were searching for the truth. But your cable show increasingly seems to be focused on wishful thinking, hoping something is one way and diminishing the search for facts and evidence in favor of repeating your fondest desires.

So what else is new?