The 'Media' Party is Over - (Rare balanced column by liberal Howard Fineman!)

MSNBC.COM ^ | JANUARY 11, 2005 | HOWARD FINEMAN

[CHARLITE]

WASHINGTON - A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history.

Now the AMMP is reeling, and not just from the humiliation of CBS News.

In this situation, the last thing the AMMP needed was to aim wildly at the president — and not only miss, but be seen as having a political motivation in attacking in the first place. Were Dan Rather and Mary Mapes after the truth or victory when they broadcast their egregiously sloppy story about Bush's National Guard Service? The moment it made air it began to fall apart, and eventually was shredded by factions within the AMMP itself, conservative national outlets and by the new opposition party that is emerging: The Blogger Nation. It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the "media" has any credibility.

And, as Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is.

[MississippiMan]

Until now, the MSM has viewed us as gnats, irritating but harmless. Now we're mosquitoes. We actually drew a little blood and caused them to yell OUCH!

It's now essential to keep the pressure on, not only on the big three, but the LOG (Liberal Old Guard) wherever they're found. One current example is the media in Washington state reporting on the re-vote rally as if the two sides were equally represented, when conservatives actually outnumbered liberals 10-to-1 according to firsthand reports. From descriptions of news broadcasts about the rallies, the Washington LOG outlets used their classic deceptive practice of making the dozens of liberals look like hundreds on screen, while shooting the conservatives in an opposite style that minimizes their onscreen presence.

Every single conservative in that area should be coming unglued, calling, faxing, and writing, demanding that it stop. We've tolerated this kind of blatantly deceptive nonsense for years. Now that we're landing punches, we must not let them off the ropes.

MM

[MJY1288]

LOL, I do find it amusing to see how the various MSM outlets cover a breaking news story. I read the news here on FR, exchange views with people like you and the many othere here, and I'm shocked in the AM to see how the MSM media spins the news.

The problem for them is that their spin cycle is about to end and the entire country will be better off for it

[Texasforever]

CBS, did you forge WaterGate, too?

Yep how many other stories by the MSM have been based on forged documents from Watergate on? They got caught this time but I have to wonder what rocks are out there that need to be looked under.

[ForGod'sSake]

He takes a few swings and jabs at "my" president, but it's within bounds of what I can tolerate.

Maybe I read the piece with a more jaundiced eye than you. He took swipes at most everyone and everything conservative in his "oh by the way" shots. Like any liberal, he just cannot pass up the opportunity to take pot shots at the oppositon party; that's us. He's one o' them......still. He won't change. He can't. It's not in his nature. His brain(such as it is) is not wired like a conservative's mind. He deserves no kudos for this piece in which he took just as many cheap shots at conservatives who've done NOTHING wrong, as he did at Rats who've committed felonies in their zeal to win.

FGS

[EQAndyBuzz]

You are going to see many more "balanced pieces" by libs over the next couple of years. They are basically floating trial balloons to gain readership by republicans.

This is what gets my goat. The Slimes and the LSM could make so much more money if they only change one thing; tell the truth. At the least, write a fair and balanced piece.

[Nick Danger]

the last thing the AMMP needed was to aim wildly at the president — and not only miss, but be seen as having a political motivation in attacking in the first place.

I think it's significant that Fineman basically admits that the Mapes-Rather piece was a wild shot aimed at taking down Bush. He knows that's how most people see it, and he's not trying to sugar coat it the way "the Panel" did.

The "media party" had been approaching that sort of over-reach throughout the campaign. It was perhaps inevitable that one or another of them would, in desperation, try something a little too clever.

I think there was another episode that Fineman misses. I think the Swift Boat Vets were a lot more credible than the "media party" imagined. Millions of people saw those ads, and decided that the very ordinary guys in them were probably telling the truth. So when the media came down and tried to smear them all as "200 lying Republicans," that backfired. It positioned the media as less interested in truth than in advocating for the Democratic candidate. The Rathergate fiasco was icing on the cake at that point.

[foreverfree]

bump

[kittymyrib]

Watch for the weekly rags, Time and Newsweek, to try to regain their feet with these little mia culpa articles. They realize that the naked campaigning against the President by the MSM in '04 was a BIG mistake, because it ripped away the facade of "objectivity" that they had professed during all the years they were running Democrats against Republicans. All that ended in the last election, and they are trying to get the ADD voter to forget that.

[BibChr]

I'm wondering whether everyone who is praising Fineman read the essay all the way through. I think it's delusional, I think it's more of the same. It's sort of a, "Sure, little boy, you cheated yourself one apparent semi-victory, BUT...."

Look at this:

...the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes)....

There is no admission there that it destroyed itself, or that it was never what it claimed to be. In fact, look here:

...the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto

He blames the death of that "notion" on Bush and Fox and blogs. He doesn't care that it never existed. He doesn't admit that it was a lie. The "notion" was a cover for the worst smears, spins, yellow journalism, propaganda -- and now it's exposed. Does he lament it's PHONINESS, its DISHONESTY, its illusory nature? No; he laments the death of the illusion!

I give him nothing for this.

Dan

[oldbrowser]

At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president.

I never thought Nixon was power-mad. He knew then what a threat the radical dems posed to the U.S. and he was fighting like hell.

[chiller]

bttt

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.


And yet...

longtime LIBERAL Media Critic DAVID SHAW still tells us that:


RATHER's work 'Shoddy, Slipshod' not LIBERAL..?

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227809/posts

.

[Grampa Dave]

The comments below show that Fineman and his ilk still believe that the MSM did a great thing in defeating our military in the Nam War and the removal of Nixon with the lying Deep Throat scam.

"Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS's star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon's fate as the first president to resign.

"Good crusades at the time: The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born."

Since the Nam defeat and removal of Nixon, the MSM has been a weapon of mass disinformation for the Rats for close to 4 decades.

They have lied and use fraud to discredit our military and our side. When their buddies like the Clintoons commit crimes, they have spiked and hidden the news.

Arrogance like Fineman's will result in the end of the MSM as we have known it for at least 4 decades.

[CharacterCounts]

...the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto

That's just it, it has never been more than a notion. A neutral, non-partisan mainstream press has never existed and can never exist. It is impossible to communicate without a point of view.

Prior to television, most people got their news from newspapers and most towns had two newspapers eavh of which would cater to opposition audiences. Each paper had its own biased point of view.

In th 50's the three fledgling broadcast networks were weak and had to at least appear to be neutral. As they became more powerful in the 60's and 70's they were able to shed this appearance of (but not the claim of) neutrality. Hence, the completely biased coverage of the Vietnam war, and presidential campaigns.

After the treatment by the major networks of Goldwater and Nixon, Reagan decided to talk past the major news outlets and ignore their biased filter. Even though they were the only game in town, Reagan refused to play their game. His success only served to enrage the major networks and increase their attacks, resulting in a major campaign by the media to discredit Reagan in his second term.

Bush I apparently did not learn from the success of Reagan and attempted to go along with and get along with the major networks. His treatment by Mr. Rather should have been a warning signal, but to his detriment he ignored the threat.

Clinton was given more than one pass by the so called neutral mainstream media. However, by this time competition from the Internet and sites such as FR were having an impact. The mainstream media was becoming less mainstream as more and more people got their news from sources such as Drudge and FR and talk radio. Of course these sources were very biased. The difference is they never claimed to be unbiased and in fact were happy to announce their bias. If Rush has a point of view which he admits is biased, the opposite view, held by the major networks, must also be biased. he upshot was to uncloak the claim of neutrality from the major networks.

Bush II learned the lesson from Reagan. He did not need to go through the Major networks and their king-making process. With the added benefit of wide spread Internet access, it was easier than ever to go around the now less than major networks. The writing was already on the wall by the time the TANG story hit the airwaves. The release of that story was a last desperate attempt to affect the outcome of the race. Its easy and rapid exposure as a fraud only serves to highlight the ineffectaul status of the networks.

In the future, I see the three broadcast networks as dropping out of the picture. Their news reporting will diminish and eventually disappear, replaced by cable, and bloggers and othher alternate sources. The fight is over regarding the network news. The new fight will be over control of the Internet.

[Grampa Dave]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1319021/posts

Rathergate Scandal Worse Than Previously Known
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 1/12/05 | Accuracy In Media


Posted on 01/12/2005 1:00:01 AM PST by kattracks



Accuracy in Media said today that the newly released report on how CBS News handled the Bush National Guard story contains a bombshell that further undermines the credibility of CBS News anchorman Dan Rather and his close collaborator and associate, producer Mary Mapes.

The report reveals on page 130 that Mapes, one of those fired because of the scandal, had documented information in her possession before the controversial September 8 broadcast that George W. Bush, while in the Texas Air National Guard, "did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots." This information is critical because Dan Rather, in the broadcast, insinuated that Bush was among the "many well-connected young men [who tried to] pull strings and avoid service in Vietnam."

AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid explained the significance of the panel's revelation: "Mapes, who was very close to Rather and enjoyed his confidence, had the evidence exonerating Bush of this malicious charge. The report shows that there were multiple credible sources to prove that Bush did not try to avoid Vietnam by going into the National Guard and that he was in fact willing to go to Vietnam as a pilot. However, CBS News deliberately kept this information from its viewers and conveyed an opposite impression because Rather, Mapes & Company were trying to depict Bush as a coward who, as Commander-in-Chief, was sending American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq."

The report reveals that Rather assured CBS News President Andrew Heyward that he, Rather, had not "been involved in this much checking on a story since Watergate," and that it was "very big." The report says that Rather assured Heyward that the story was "thoroughly vetted" or documented and verified.

Kincaid explained, "Rather saw this as a Watergate-style story that could damage the Bush campaign and sink the President's chances for re-election, as Americans were fighting and dying in Iraq. He seemed to be making a virtual guarantee that the story would be a smoking gun that would usher John Kerry into the White House. Instead, the story backfired, implicating Rather and his associates in a sleazy political operation, with links to the Kerry campaign, that was intended to mislead and misinform the American people as they prepared to vote on issues of war and peace. Even Al Jazeera couldn't have concocted a more sinister and dishonest attack on the President of the United States."

The "Rathergate" affair involved Dan Rather narrating a pre-election September 8 CBS "60 Minutes" story, based on forged documents, charging that President Bush not only used connections to join the Texas Air National Guard to avoid service in the Vietnam War, but didn't fulfill the terms of his Guard service.

When questions surfaced about the authenticity of the documents, CBS stonewalled, covered-up, and eventually apologized. An "Independent Review Panel" was formed to investigate. Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press president Louis Boccardi were in charge of the probe.

Now, three months later, the findings have been issued and four mid-level employees have been fired. They are Senior Vice President Betsy West, "60 Minutes Wednesday" Executive Producer Josh Howard, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, and producer Mapes.

However, other major players in the fiasco were not fired. They are Heyward, Rather, and CBS News White House correspondent John Roberts. Rather is retiring in March and Roberts is said to be in the running as Rather's successor.

Kincaid noted that CBS chairman Les Moonves, who issued a statement on the matter, insists that Heyward should stay in his job "during this challenging time." Kincaid said, "It's like rewarding the skipper of the Titanic for promising not to hit an iceberg again. Heyward was the captain of the CBS news ship and he and Rather have survived only because Moonves has thrown the women and children overboard."

Kincaid was amused by several references in the report to how hard Dan Rather was working at the time, as if this gets him off the hook for narrating the discredited report. "I understand it is par for the course in network news magazine shows for a network star to put his face on the work of others," Kincaid said. "But the report also quotes Heyward as saying that Rather had assured him that the story was solid, documented and verified. So why are Rather and Heyward still in their jobs?"

While the report claims no hard evidence of anti-Bush political bias on the part of CBS News, Kincaid said the report is full of evidence of such bias. "Why is it that CBS News and so many other news organizations cited in the report were so anxious to do a story attacking President Bush's National Guard service?" asked Kincaid. "Why is it that the same news organizations were not eager to attack Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's failure to release all of his military and medical records? The answer is simple: they wanted Kerry to win and Bush to lose. This is partisan political bias, pure and simple."

The report notes that other news organizations on the Bush story were the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Associated Press, and USA Today (which published a story using the same dubious documents that the dubious CBS source, Bill Burkett, had given to CBS. USA Today has not apologized for running this story.)

The survival of CBS News White House correspondent John Roberts, rumored as a possible successor to Rather, is also curious. The report says that Roberts had interviewed Burkett for a February 12, 2004 CBS Evening News broadcast¯months before the anti-Bush hit piece aired¯and aired a portion of that interview, even though Roberts had found Burkett "unreliable."

As we have explained in a previous release, Roberts was the personal representative of CBS News, sitting in for Dan Rather, in a meeting with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, at a critical time when CBS News was developing its fake "story." In the meeting with Roberts, Bartlett was told that he was supposed to confirm or deny authenticity of the National Guard documents that turned out to be bogus. When Bartlett did not immediately denounce them as forgeries, Roberts provided that information to "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes, as if Bartlett's refusal to disavow the documents meant that they were authentic. This was seen as the critical green light for Mapes (and Rather) to go ahead with the bogus story.

Bartlett later explained that CBS News provided documents that CBS News had said had "come from the personal file of a former commander" in the National Guard and that Roberts expected Bartlett "to authenticate them." The White House received the documents only three and one-half hours before Bartlett was interviewed by Roberts about them. Bartlett commented that "CBS had the obligation to authenticate them before they were used. They could have also given them to the White House much earlier so we had more time to verify them as well."

Kincaid commented, "John Roberts was in a position to stop this fraudulent story before it aired. He did not."

The new panel report sheds some light on this controversy, noting that Roberts said the Bartlett interview had "gone well and that he had not disputed the authenticity of the documents…" The panel said "this reaction" by Roberts and CBS "seriously misplaced responsibility for making sure that the documents were authentic."

So John Roberts, the likely successor to Dan Rather, was guilty of helping to perpetuate this journalistic fraud. The facts are clear.

[GrannyAnnie]

I'm not sure a person can be too right. Right is right. You're either right or you're wrong. This "moderate" stuff is another way to say,"not right"
I'm just a simple-minded Mennonite grandmother, but I know this much is True: is means is and right is right, no matter how liberals want to spin it.
I agree with you though, just not sure what you mean about not going too far to the "right."

[ForGod'sSake]

I'm wondering whether everyone who is praising Fineman read the essay all the way through.

I started to pick up vibes on his second sentence. It was downhill from there. This is a thinly veiled hit piece IMO. A modicum of discernment will reveal a leftist up to their very old tricks.

I wonder if some on our side are too quick to look for change in the old media that's not there. And IMO won't be there. The old media is a cabal of utopian dreamers who never got past adolescence. Teenagers in suits I like to call 'em. Their view of the world is shaped by lack of emotional development. They can't see things as they really are, only the way they want them to be. God spare us from these do-gooders out to shape the world based on their own warped sense reality.

FGS

[mikegi]

I bet AlGore can't stop kicking himself for inventing the Internet!

[Bernard Marx]

I never thought Nixon was power-mad. He knew then what a threat the radical dems posed to the U.S. and he was fighting like hell.

As a Congressman Nixon was an effective anti-Communist on HUAC. His bulldog tenacity (along with a little political showboating) was a major reason Communist Alger Hiss was convicted. The "radical dems" (aka Communists) made sure Nixon paid a terrible price for those "sins" against their fair-haired boy via Watergate.

Fineman follows in the tradition of the radical Left. The most noteworthy aspect of his article IMO is that while he admits the political function of the media charade he never displays any shame or regret for being a part of it. If there's any regret I can see it's that the cynical game is over.

[Southack]

But there's more to the story, Grampa!

This wasn't the first time that CBS has aired a "questionable" memo. They just got busted for using the forged Bush Guard docs this time.

...but before, to "explain" the Watergate scandal to their viewers, CBS broadcast a memo that was supposedly typed on official White House letterhead that said something to the effect of "Plumbers, break into the shrink's office at 2 AM through the front door, turn left, go to the filing cabinet at the back of the hall on the right side, and take the psychiatric evaluation of Ellsberg."

I mean, it was a ridiculous memo. There is simply NO WAY that anyone looking at CBS today after they've been busted for broadcasting the forged Bush Guard docs would conclude that CBS had a real White House memo from Nixon back then to detail each step of the Ellsberg burglary.

What gullible nutcase would think that President Nixon was ordering his secretary to type up, on official White House letterhead, a "memo" to tell thieves what to steal?!

CBS, did you forge Watergate, too?