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.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Southack]

This is what is available on-line from the "memo" that CBS obtained back during Watergate:

Break-In Memo Sent to Ehrlichman

John Ehrlichman
during an interview in 1982.
Joel Richardson -- The Washington Post

By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 13, 1973; Page A01

The Watergate prosecutors have a one-page memo addressed to former White house domestic affairs adviser John D. Ehrlichman that described in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, according to government sources.

The memo sent to Ehrlichman by former White House aides David Young and Egil (Bud) Krogh, was dated before the Sept. 3, 1971 burglary of the office of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist, the sources said.

The memo was turned over to the prosecutors by Young, who has been granted immunity from prosecution, the sources said.

The sources confirmed earlier reports that Young will testify that Ehrlichman saw the memo and approved the burglary operation.

Ehrlichman could not be reached directly for comment yesterday, but Frank H. Strickler, one of his attorneys, said: "It has been his consistent position that he had no advance knowledge of the break-in and Mr. Ehrlichman stands by that position."

The burglary was supervised by Watergate conspirators E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy, who in 1971 were members of the White House special investigations unit called the "plumbers."

The group which was directed by Young and Krogh, was charged with investigating leaks to the news media and had been established in June, 1971, after the publication of the Pentagon Papers by several newspapers.

The memo from Krogh and Young directly contradicts a statement Ehrlichman made to the FBI on April 27. According to a summary of that interview made public May 2, Ehrlichman stated that he "was not told that these individuals (hunt and Liddy) had broken into the premises of the psychiatrist for Ellsberg until after this incident had taken place. Such activity was not authorized by him, he did not know about this burglary until after it had happened."

In an affidavit released last month, Krogh had given "general authorization to engage in covert activity" to obtain information on Ellsberg.

Reliable sources said that Krogh prepared his affidavit by referring to an incomplete copy of the memo that he and Young sent to Ehrlichman before the burglary. Missing from that copy, the sources said, was the bottom portion in which plans for the burglary were described.

The top portion merely made a general reference to covert activity and Krogh based his affidavit on that, according to the sources.

The sources said the prosecutors have the entire memo and that Krogh, now reminded of its contents, is expected to change his statement, thus adding to the damaging testimony against Ehrlichman.

The sources said that the bottom portion of the memo was apparently removed late last year or early this year to sanitize Korgh's files before Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as undersecretary of Transportation.

Krogh was confirmed without difficulty. He resigned last month after acknowledging that he approved the burglary operation on Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

Young was a member of the National Security Council staff and had previously been the appointments secretary to foreign affairs adviser Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. He resigned in April.

Ehrlichman, one of the President's closest advisers, resigned April 30.

[capydick]

Later, he and CBS's star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers....

Yet - they could not go to painstaking lengths to make President Xlinton's crimes understandable to viewers. It's so obvious where their allegiance's lay. I dont need a commission to tell me what I already see.

[expatpat]

the American Mainstream Media Party helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president.

Lose a war. Oust Lyndon Johnson.

[weegee]

Rush Limbaugh read this piece on the air today and offered his own corrections to some of Fineman's statements.

[CHARLITE]

I agree. Fineman is "repositioning" himself in the wake of an all too obvious disaster!

Check Dr. Gregory Borse's newest column on chronwatch.com. I'm just about to post it on FR.

The title is: Memo to Dan Rather: 'What's the Frequency, Kenneth?'

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12327

[CHARLITE]

Link to Dr. Gregory Borse's chronwatch article, which I've now posted here on FR.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1319495/posts

What a story this "death of mainstream media" is getting to be!.........and methinks there's lots more to come. I've been wondering for YEARS why no one has yet done a major exposé of the cutsey Kewpie Doll darling of the left, Katie Couric! Why is it that Katie-pie is untouchable?

Char

[Southack]

"I've been wondering for YEARS why no one has yet done a major exposé of the cutsey Kewpie Doll darling of the left, Katie Couric! Why is it that Katie-pie is untouchable?"

Because our side doesn't have to depend upon scandalizing our opposition. Unlike the Dems, who *must* find and exploit Republican scandals to be electorally competitive, Republicans face no such desperation to repeat that behavior back against the Dems.

Because our *ideas* sell so well, we don't have to rely upon scandals among our opposition.

But Democrats haven't had a new idea since before they pushed Roe v Wade down our throats. Bereft of new ideas, scandals are their primary hope.

This leads them into Gungha Dan territory (ala forged Bush Guard docs).

In turn, it means that we need not reciprocate by scouring the undergrowth for scandals against them. This has the added bonus that we don't have any such chance of those sorts of tawdry episodes backfiring on us.

The Dems can't say the same (e.g. Sandy Berger, faked Guard docs, Senate Intel memos, Chinese fundraising, etc.).

[o_zarkman44]

John Kerry just about pulled off the biggest scam in American history by claiming the economy was tanking and he was strong on defense, was a war hero blah blah blah, had he been elected.

It takes a major conspiracy to coordinate the scamming of 40 million people into believing the Demwits unsubstantiated claims. One or two or four news anchors cannot do it alone. It requires considerable infrastructure and financing in the community of deception.

[nikos1121]

I am suggesting that we coin a new phrase..

The Dan Rather Syndrome.....

The Dan Rather Syndrome, is where your boss has you take the blame for a cluster F.... and he has you take the fall.

For example:

"I got fired as a result of the Dan Rather Syndrome.. My Boss made me take the hit for his f... up..."

Let this be Rather's legacy.....

nikos

[Grampa Dave]

Please summarize Rush re Fineman's bs in this oped.

[weegee]

Please summarize Rush re Fineman's bs in this oped.

I can't recall all of the specifics and had just gotten back in my car when I heard part of the discussion but this was one passage that he discussed:

It was not accident that the birth coincided with an identity crisis in the Democratic Party. The ideological energy of the New Deal had faded; Vietnam and various social revolutions of the ’60s were tearing it apart. Into the vacuum came the AMMP...

Rush was saying that the social revolutions of the 1960s weren't tearing the Democrat Party apart (he was not explicit in saying it, but it was an internal struggle for power, after all the Democrats pushed us into Vietnam).

He did not continue with the rest of this passage.

I recall that he followed with discussion of:

Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it's pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things

Rush's response was along the lines of "of course you wanted to hold onto it, it pushed liberal propaganda as objective journalism".