There's a Reason Why the Media Runs with Certain Caricatures

This article at Media Matters, by Jamison Foser, notes:

"Sure, maybe reporters got a little overzealous, the argument went, but it's just because the Clintons were a little dodgy...and it was suspicious that they didn't remember every detail of an ancient real estate deal. Surely that kind of frenzy -- or the Lewinsky-era media malpractice -- was something unique to coverage of Clinton.

And then Al Gore came along and, as The Daily Howler's Bob Somerby argues convincingly, was treated to the most relentlessly hostile (not to mention dishonest) media coverage any major party presidential candidate had ever seen. ..And..when we say reporters ... We're talking about The New York Times and The Washington Post.

And still, reporters and pundits and progressive activists and Democratic leaders -- people who should have known better -- chalked it all up to Gore being a lousy candidate. Sure, they said, the media exaggerated about Gore's exaggerations, but they wouldn't have if he wasn't such an exaggerator. Never mind that every example given fell apart under scrutiny: each lie told about Gore being a liar reinforced the others. It was Gore's fault the media went overboard, just as it had been Clinton's. (emphasis all added) ...

Then Howard Dean emerged as the front-runner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. And the media depicted him as a crazy man, a wild-eyed hippie liberal freak -- despite the fact that he had won the endorsement of the National Rifle Association during his career as governor of Vermont, during which time he was widely regarded as a moderate. And still, reporters and pundits and progressive activists and Democratic leaders -- people who should have known better -- chalked it all up to Dean being a little crazy...Sure, some reporters eventually acknowledged that they overplayed it. ..The same press corps that swoons daily over the notoriously ill-tempered John McCain relentlessly attacked Howard Dean for being "angry."

Enter John Kerry. Sure, Clinton, and Gore, and Dean had all been misleadingly slimed by the national media. But that's just because, by stunning coincidence, they were all deeply flawed candidates .... But John Kerry was a genuine war hero -- and so people who should have known better by then were surprised when right-wing activists connected to the Bush campaign smeared his military service, with the ready assistance of the nation's leading news organizations. And they were surprised (or worse, thought nothing of it) when Kerry was portrayed in the media as a flip-flopper and Bush was given a pass on his own lengthy history of flip-flops. [note; see here]

And still, too many journalists, pundits, progressive activists and Democratic leaders chalked this up to John Kerry's failings as a candidate [note; as opposed to George Bush's incredible communication skills, not to mention policy positions]... He spoke with too many qualifiers (remember: when Dean was blunt, he was derided as angry and crazy). He flip-flopped too much (Bush's own flips and flops escaped similar scrutiny).

Those who would apologize for the media's treatment of Clinton, Gore, Dean, and Kerry -- or who somehow fail to recognize it even now -- chalk it up to Clinton's supposed slickness, or Gore's trouble with the truth, or Dean's craziness, or Kerry's liberalism, and on and on and on -- somehow failing to recognize that they're excusing flawed media storylines about these candidates by citing those same flawed storylines. Hopefully hoping for the day when a progressive leader would emerge without these weaknesses. [note; like George Bush, except a democratic version].

The underlying point of this piece -- that major democratic candidates (and even Presidents) of the past several years have received coverage by different standards than republican candidates (and Presidents) -- and that democrats have not focused on this enough, is correct, and critical.

Media coverage is the heart of the problem. A democracy is only as good as the quality of its mainstream information. And America's mainstream information has been poor.

Gore received horrendous media coverage. This poor coverage fundamentally altered the course of history.

Many in the media, who are democrats, and who are loathe to appear or be accused of being "liberal," then were flabbergasted as to how Gore could have lost (and likewise, but even more so, with response to Kerry in 2004). They just don't get, as democrats often don't seem to get, that media coverage is critical. It is where the heart of America gets its foundation of knowledge and perception.

I also routinely heard from democrats how "well, this was Gore's fault." He did run a poor campaign. That was his fault. Bad coverage, on the other hand, was not his fault, other than to the extent he personally, along with his campaign, and the hundreds of thousands of other passionate, committed democrats, tolerated it from the media, and did not take the appropriate, CONSTANT, and focused communications necessary to set the record straight.

This same pattern repeated itself in 2004, with the refrain of the democrats that "well, Kerry was such a bad candidate" (when he was running against GEORGE BUSH) becoming an apt symbol for just how misfocused democrats can manage to lose when they have virtually every single fact on their side.

This letter, also linked above, makes the case with respect to the media's coverage of Kerry, on the seminal issue of that election. How did the democrats tolerate this?

Again, focus on the wrong things. Foser's article here, even if one does not agree with all of the detail, focuses on the right things.

It's simple. Voters will act upon the information that they receive. They always have. They always will. Voters are not, for the most part, the relative few who read Harpers, or the Atlantic monthly, or even most of the widely popular and often excellent but self selecting blog sites.

Voters are the tens of millions upon tens of millions of American citizens who get the bulk of their news impressions from, "The news," be it print (decreasingly), the Internet (to a limited extent but increasingly), which supplements and replaces print, radio (perhaps increasingly) and TV (always by far the most important). The News, and how it is presented, is ultimately, what matters.

Mediamatters gets this. Now it needs to convince the rest of the blogosphere.

Several of the comments to this piece, however, illustrated a misunderstanding of the problem, as well as a not completely rational exaggeration of it.

By exaggeration, I do not mean of its importance. I mean of its scope. the Author, Jamison Foser, albeit very credibly, painted the democratic perspective. And while this was one of the best articles that I have read in a long time (and far better than I could have done) there are minor things that one could take issue with.

Even this scenario however does not suggest that reporters sit around and decide to conspiratorially rig everything.

What it suggests is that there is a systemic proclivity in the media to apply different standards to democratic candidates than to republican candidates.

There are a couple of reasons for this , and they are all conceptually easy to address. But it takes the kind of effort that Mediamatters makes, on a wide scale. On the other hand, those commenters -- and there are many on many different sites -- that take the view that this is all purposeful because "the refs work for the other side" exhibit a defeatist attitude that has a lot to do with why the "other side" has been able to so successfully mischaracterize both democrats and the issues the past few years.

First, policy wise, it is important to return the media back to numerous independent sources, rather than a few enormous conglomerates. (Will democrats focus on this if they get into power in 2006? Maybe not. They may be too busy congratulating themselves on what a fine job they have been doing to finally get a little traction after a long predictable backlash from radical right wing republican rule...and on fixing superficial issues, rather than the underlying processes...but that is what needs to be done. And that is I think they need to be constantly reminded of to do.)

Second, democrats have to understand why the media has this proclivity. It is to a large degree because right wing republicans have effectively made the case, and it is an easy case for them to make.

First, most journalists are democrats (even if this is become less and less so, as the line between rigorous journalism, punditry, and entertainment all continue to blur). Lazy logic leads most experts, even, to conclude the the media is thus "liberally biased."

Maybe most journalists are democrats because most journalists know the facts, and the fact is, most people are democrats who have been bamboozled into thinking that they are republicans, because they have been misinformed.

But even if not, all that is relevant is the slant of the facts presented, not the person presenting them (Michael Kinsley, among many others, is a classic example of a liberal who often writes with a conservative bias, for instance).

More importantly, if a story comes out that simply tells the facts, and these facts support the democrats, and not the republicans, it is easy (if illogical) to argue, and "show" bias because the story has appeared to favor, and thus be biased towards, democrats.

A classic example: 2004. One of the major journalism centers did a study and concluded that in a few of the months leading up to the 2004 election, stories were more favorable towards Kerry. This was interpreted by many as bias towards Kerry.

It wasn't anything of the sort. Think of the facts in 2004. Net job loss, first time in over 50 years. Wide scale and disastrous terrorist attack on our own soil, after the Bush Administration fell asleep for 9 months on the issue (something else not adequately covered by the media). Outrageously reckless fiscal policy. Misfocus onto Iraq away from the war on terror. The worst environmental record of any administration ever, etc etc. And a campaign that ran on the platform of trust and candor, that repeatedly misrepresented the facts and the issues in that campaign as well.

How could any reasonable coverage of the issues, not appear slanted towards Kerry?
There was an easy out. As one example, the Bush campaign defined Kerry early on, falsely, as this pandering flipper flopper (similar to what they had done in 2000, with Gore as an alleged liar). So the media, eager to show and prove how "balanced" it was and is, jumped all over this stuff. To the point where with respect to Gore and Kerry, many members of the media themselves WERE MISINFORMED.

And far from focusing heavily on counteracting this perception created by years of orchestrated, focused and constant hard work by the far right, setting the record straight, democrats would largely just throw up their hands and go, "well the media's just biased." Of course it's biased, they are humans, like anybody else. The right has convinced them and America of this, and the democrats have not countered it. And a few letters to the editor here and there don't counter it.

Obviously there are other factors. One key one which can not be directly addressed by everyday citizen (but it can be constantly brought to the attention of their representatives) is, again, media conglomeration. And there are others.

But the key point is that the media essentially tries to paint itself as "balanced," rather than actually be balanced -- with any overreaching to the right very helpful in this regard, because it is projected to be, and still perceived as, liberal.

Until the media comes to believe that it is their interests to actually be thorough and balanced, and simply make the case, this won't change.

Human nature being what it is, they media will not do this until it is backed up on this. It is not backed up on this if the media does this, and the republican attack propaganda machine -- buoyed by self conditioned earnest belief -- come down on it with a full court press, and the democrats, meanwhile, as they have for the past ten years, sluff it off in essence by saying (as they do now about the highly manipulative fox channel) "oh, everybody knows that's not true." No, they don't. and until democrats learn to effectively and continually make this case as often and as consistently as republicans, this trend will continue.