A while ago, on a liberal e-mail alias I belonged to, I outlined what happened to the media under the Bush Administration. Without a lot of boring detail, what essentially happened is that journalists (that includes TV, print, and photo journalists) were slowly and systematically stripped of access depending on the tone of their coverage of the Bush Administration. This put journalists in the position of sticking to their ideals/ethics or losing their ability to make a living. I called it the boiling the frog strategy of controlling the media.
Now the McCain/Palin camp is doing something similar in refusing the media access to Sarah Palin because of the media’s “piranha” style “attacks” on her family. They’re saying if the media doesn’t treat her nice, then they don’t get to talk to her. Then they’ll carefully select one organization (hmm. Wonder which one? FOX maybe?) that gets access to her and the country will be so hungry for information on her they’ll flock to it. So then all the other media outlets will have to agree to play nice to get access to her, and voila, the media is fully controlled by the Republican Party again. I think they made it a little too transparent this time, though.
I sincerely hope the media is tired of being played like this. Yes, they’ve made their own significant mistakes, and yes, they should be sticking to journalistic ethics and have to take some responsibility for their own mistakes. So I would hope that at some point in the next two months the media shows some backbone and a desire not be made a patsy of again.
Already I like the New York Times refusal to back down regarding their coverage of her to date. Of course the NYT is the favored target of the Rove machine, but they are still the “newspaper of record” so they need to be part of leading the charge.
1 comment:
Well said.
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