Posted on 11/12/2004 6:08:22 AM PST by StoneGiant
It is often said that the only sure winner in American politics is the media. Amid GOP victory parties or the ruined dreams of the Kerry candidacy, the one constant is that the media marches on.
Maybe not this time. Big Media lost big. But it was more than a loss. It was an abdication of authority.
Large media institutions, such as CBS or the New York Times, have been regarded as nothing if not authoritative. In the Information Age, authority is a priceless franchise. But it is this franchise that Big Media, incredibly, has just thrown away. It did so by choosing to go into overt opposition to one party's candidate, a sitting president. It stooped to conquer.
The prominent case studies here are Dan Rather's failed National Guard story on CBS and the front page the past year of the New York Times (a proxy for many large dailies). Add in as well Big Media's handling of Abu Ghraib, a real story that got blown into a monthlong bonfire that obviously was intended to burn down the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. I think many people thought the over-the-top Abu Ghraib coverage, amid a war, was the media shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Authority can be a function of raw power, but among free people it is sustained by esteem and trust. Should esteem and trust falter, the public will start to contest an institution's authority. It happens all the time to political figures. It happened here to the American Catholic Church and to the legal profession, thanks to plaintiff-bar abuse. And now the public is beginning to contest the decades-old authority of the mainstream media.
.... continued .....
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The Wall Street Journal should be required reading in school.
The dinosaurs are giving way to the small furry creatures....
bump
Why don't we finally institute an American version of the parliamentary question period common around the U.K.? If the likes of Messrs. Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Powell, Snow, Cheney and Bush had to appear before the House in this tightly regulated question-and-answer format, broadcast on C-Span, surely the public over time would acquire a clearer sense of which ideas are competing for their support and vote.
I like that. These British encounters are lively and bring out the best. My only reservation is pretty partisan: Bush would not do well in it. I love W, but he's not always great on his feet, as some pressers, and the first debate, surely indicate.
Dan
Biblical Christianity web site
Biblical Christianity message board
Only the editorial pages.
Dan
(c;
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"Your" Los Angeles Times =
DAVID SHAW: RATHER's work 'Shoddy, Slipshod' not LIBERAL
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227809/posts
.
Remember a little video titled "The Wall Within"? CBS
Remember a news story on the Chevy Truck exploding fuel tanks? NBC
Walter Cronkite?
The list is endless.
The media did not LOSE the public trust, it was crumpled up and THROWN in the trash deliberately.
An informed public is the most dangerous weapon that can ever be arrayed against the enemies of freedom, because every informed person is an arsenal of information.
That arsenal was deployed during this election to devastating effect.
Lame Stream Media, think about that.
Because our eye is being turned towards YOU.
A survey by the Pew Research Center reports that over three years from January 2000, the percentage of people getting candidate and campaign news fell 9% for daily newspapers, 10% for network news and 5% for news magazines. The numbers rose, up to 4%, for cable news, the Internet and comedy TV shows (Jon Stewart's rise as a news authority figure is the court jester displacing the journalistic monarchy).
In a post-2004 election report, Pew and the University of Michigan jointly note that this past summer, 40% of Internet users pulled down political information, a significant increase over the 2000 election.
[snip]
We really could use some neutral ground, a space one could enter without having to suspect that "what we know" about X or Y was being manipulated. ... You end up having to Google every subject in the news (Guantanamo, gay marriage statutes, Tora Bora, the Patriot Act) to find out what's been left out or buried at the bottom.
[snip]
The real winners here are the politicians. Pig heaven for them. If much of the public (a margin large enough to decide elections) believes it no longer has access to a settled information baseline, an agreed-upon set of facts, then it's so much easier for the pols, using this new arsenal of high-tech info firepower, to manipulate a doubtful public and push it around with propaganda (they can demographically target ads to the TV screens in health clubs).
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