“Taking Care of the Old Guy” – Your Liberal Media Part: MCCVXIICX
How in the tank for McCain is the traditional media? So in the tank that when McCain gave a flatly incorrect answer to a Katie Couric interview question (stating the Sunni awakening happened after the surge and not prior to the surge) that CBS edited out the inccorect answer!
Accordingly, Keith Olberman covered the CBS/McCain scandal in last night’s broadcast summarized by a kos diarist as follows:
CBS scrubbed a McCain interview.
1. McCain’s response didn’t survive the cutting room floor, but
2. Couric’s question did; and
3. CBS replaced McCain’s incorrect response with one he gave to another question.
If that’s what actually went down, I’m astonished. CBS has a lot of explaining to do.
I really have no idea how wingnuts can continue complain that we have a “liberal” media when we have proof like this, that CBS news accepts cleaning up and cheerleading for Republicans as part of its job.
Maybe it betrays a liberal bias to catch Republicans lying, cheating and screwing up?
This should rank up there with the Rathergate scandal from four years ago. This is fucking ridiculous and should be examined to the fullest. I know a guy like Hube disagrees, but I fully dispute anyone who claims the media is biased. Yes, the reporters by and large identify themselves as liberal, but the EDITORS and MANAGERS and PUBLISHERS are, by an large, VERY CONSERVATIVE as they’re generally tasked to protect shareholder interest, which many people know lean toward the conservative.
The media is not liberal. The media is not conservative. The media is corporate. I hope the Dems go JUST as crazy on this shit as Bush’s thugs did n 2004 in response to Rathergate.
Fucking pathetic.
For once, Mike and I agree on something.
As a side note, can anyone imagine a better week for Obama and a worse week for McCain?
I do believe the election was decided this week. It is all over but the shouting.
Ugh, error above. Should read:
“I know a guy like Hube disagrees, but I fully dispute anyone who claims the media is liberal.”
Jason,
Linky-link, please? I want to read more from this Diary and don’t feel like searching for it.
here you go
BTW – Katie Couric sucks and should not be allowed on television. Ever. Not even as a contestant in a reality/game show called “America’s Worst TV News Anchor” where she has to live in a house with Jerry Springer and Bill O’Rielly.
On second thought, she could be on that show – I would not watch it though.
damn, that would be a pretty sweet reality show though…
a bunch of talking heads..man what an idea
I wonder where that shrill bitch Michelle Malkin — who’s always whining about the “liberal media” — is on this issue. She hasn’t been that kind to McCain in the past, but I don’t see her blog lighting up with fury about this.
I agree with the “Corporate Media” label. It’s inherently conservative at the top of the autocratic power tree, with the charge of snuffing-out
liberal perspectivesreality.How does MSM TV News make money?
Do ratings have anything to do with the amount of money they make?
If a presidential election leading up to the fall appears to be non-competitive, will that have an effect on the networks bottom line?
And who or what are these publicly-traded corporations beholden to?
If you can honestly answer these questions, then you may see the problem.
VC, I can honestly answer any question in the world. Unfortunately, I’m wrong a lot of times.
I agree with Mike M with the following caveat: this is a long-term practice of at least the major broadcast networks for literally decades.
I remember quite clearly in 1987 watching the raw satellite feed of a Reagan news conference where he was pinging off the walls–his answers did not even fit the questions (He’d give the “cadillac welfare queen” as an answer to a question about Iran-Contra). So I waited that night with baited breath for Dan Rather to raise serious questions about the President’s state of mind.
Instead, all three networks took snippets of his answers and then matched them up after the fact with the right questions. Then they criticized his answers, but not one journalist in print or on TV ever mentioned the fact that he had been totally whacked out in the press conference.
I don’t know if that only gives us two GOP points in a line, or if this is a common practice that is as carefully hidden as retouching photos.
Unfortunately, I suspect the second.
Aren’t we all, Dist.
Just sick and tired of the insistence of certain others. All they keep telling me is that the sky is green and the grass is blue….
Steve,
That’s the most fascinating thing I’ve read all week. Thanks for that. I had absolutely no clue.
Crooks and Liars has up video showing both the original exchange with Couric and its edited version.
Personally I’m pretty fed up with the self-styled objectivity of the traditional media. I can’t imagine what objectivity is served by editing video to insert the answer to the question you think your subject really would have wanted.
But it makes sense, cassandra, if they profit more from a horse-race than a walkover…
I agree with you, Steve — but want them to stop pretending that they’ve no investment in either the process or the outcome.
And want them to stop professing that they are interested in informing people. Writing down what he says vs what she says without providing any fact check or context provide a a big fat black hole by which the unscrupulous (the many) can game the system.
cassandra,
That hits the nail on the head. it is the pretend objectivity of the press that is galling.
I have more respect for Fox News than for ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN because they don’t hide that fact that they are partisan.
If we are going to have an unregulated market – we need a system closer to the UK’s newspaper system in which the biases of news operations are known by and advertised to the general public.
Look John McSame is having a bit of trouble remembering things after all he soon will be 72years old. Now some of us at that age are still active and other like john will soon need someone to wipe his chin. So if he gets things mixed up from time to time give him a break. But what ever you do For God’s sake don’t ever allow him to be put in charge of the nuclear button.
“we need a system closer to the UK’s newspaper system in which the biases of news operations are known by and advertised to the general public.”
We used to have that–at least with newspapers–as recently as the early 1960s. I’m not sure what happened, but I know it hasn’t been for the better.
It also makes that “fairness doctrine” argument take on a different perspective.
When I was growing up in Baltimore there were 3 major papers and two of those had multiple editions. You did know something about a person’s political leanings (and sometimes social class) by the paper they carried around — the same deal that exists in Europe. But newspaper culture has really died back in the US in a way that it hasn’t quite done in Europe and I don’t know why.
Yesterday, you had a thread asking if the MSM was in the bag for Obama. I gave you multiple links showing that even other journalists were questioning the absolute fawning over the Democrat candidate. Today, there’s another fawning piece in the NYT about how “supremely presidential” Obama looks and “classic JFK.” Now you’re complaining because they snipped a video of John McCain and THAT’S your proof that the media aren’t liberally biased? How about Obama’s gaffe about “Israel being a friend of Israel”?
There truly are none so blind as those who will not see. How many of you are or have been working journalists? It isn’t just reporters who are liberal. Editors, page designers, photographers, all the editorial staff who decide which news leads and which news gets buried are almost completely liberal, particularly on social issues.
BTW, I can tell you why newspapers have died: most people don’t want to read them anymore. And one of the main reasons they don’t want to read them anymore is because of the liberal bia. But hey, maybe there isn’t any liberal bias in Delaware.
Oops, I had that post backwards. You had a post yesterday arguing that the press is in the bag for Bush. Mega LOLs
Israel being a friend of Israel is a gaffe? I think a truer statement has never been uttered.
It’s certainly not “supremely presidential.”
Certainly not newsworthy.
“Certainly not newsworthy.”
Nor is this entire trip Obama’s on that the MSM is fawning over.
Thanks, Sharon, for taking the lead in moronic blog post of the week.
“How many of you are or have been working journalists? It isn’t just reporters who are liberal. Editors, page designers, photographers, all the editorial staff who decide which news leads and which news gets buried are almost completely liberal, particularly on social issues.”
I’ve been a working journalist for 30 years, and you don’t know WTF you’re talking about. There are plenty of conservatives in every newsroom I’ve ever been in, and just like the liberals, they try to put their biases aside when they work. The fact that you don’t realize they exist shows it can be done.
“BTW, I can tell you why newspapers have died: most people don’t want to read them anymore.”
Pure bullcrap. Most of the newspapers have more readers than ever thanks to the web — the problem is they can’t charge for it.
“And one of the main reasons they don’t want to read them anymore is because of the liberal bias.”
Again, pure bullcrap. Not a shred of evidence to show anything of the sort. There are a lot of reasons for declining sales (readership, counting web readers, is up), but no industry study has ever found any such thing.
Since you apparently are such an expert, perhaps I shouldn’t have to explain that newspapers are businesses and, as such, would quickly put out more conservative newspapers if it would boost their sales.
You newbie McCain supporters keep citing Obama’s one-time slips of the tongue as tit-for-tat evidence of something, but you’re way off-base. McCain isn’t stumbling over words — he’s wrong on the facts, and he doesn’t do it just once. They are not slips of the tongue.
I’ve been a working journalist for 30 years, and you don’t know WTF you’re talking about. There are plenty of conservatives in every newsroom I’ve ever been in, and just like the liberals, they try to put their biases aside when they work. The fact that you don’t realize they exist shows it can be done.
Gee, Al, I’m glad to see ONE of the “there’s no liberal media” crowd is an actual journalist who–get this–still insists they aren’t liberal. Well, guess what, Al, I, too, worked for years in the local press here and while there are SOME conservatives (usually in the business news section, imagine that), the vast majority of any news room consists of liberals, some more liberal than others. To argue that they “put their biases aside” is to ignore the discussions you should have had in Reporting 101: human beings have biases and, especially when they want that out, they will let it out.
I worked at the local paper during the Reagan years and heard and saw all the things liberals said about him. I was there when Clinton was elected president and how gleeful they were about that. I’ve watched the news coverage from outside the newsroom long enough now to understand why average readers point to their morning paper and say, “Why is it Barack Obama has an entourage to go to the Middle East but John McCain didn’t?” The only ones fooled here, Al, are the journalists still arguing that their biases aren’t showing.
Pure bullcrap. Most of the newspapers have more readers than ever thanks to the web — the problem is they can’t charge for it.
We’re talking about circulation numbers, Al. You know, the things that your advertising people use to set rates. And the numbers were declining before the internet. That’s why so many papers were scrambling during the 80s and 90s to go to a more “user friendly” (read: dumbed down) format.
Again, pure bullcrap. Not a shred of evidence to show anything of the sort. There are a lot of reasons for declining sales (readership, counting web readers, is up), but no industry study has ever found any such thing.
Ever answer the phones, Al? You may not find an “industry study,” (God, you gotta love it) where people tell you they are tired of the liberal slant to their news, but you really get to know your readers when you answer the phones and they TELL you why they are dropping their subscriptions.
Since you apparently are such an expert, perhaps I shouldn’t have to explain that newspapers are businesses and, as such, would quickly put out more conservative newspapers if it would boost their sales.
But there ARE more conservative newspapers, Al. The problem is, when you’ve got a choice between really liberal and sorta liberal, that’s not a lot of choice, is it? And there are plenty of papers who are printing more conservatives on their op-ed pages, as I’m sure you’ve complained about. It’s just too bad that that effect hasn’t trickled down into other coverage (like that of the Obama messiah). I guess I don’t need to tell an expert like you how expensive newspapers are to start and run which has a lot to do with the demise of the evening paper.
You newbie McCain supporters keep citing Obama’s one-time slips of the tongue as tit-for-tat evidence of something, but you’re way off-base. McCain isn’t stumbling over words — he’s wrong on the facts, and he doesn’t do it just once. They are not slips of the tongue.
One time slips of the tongue? Please. You are showing the worst sort of age bias here. John McCain makes a mistake and the leftosphere plasters the “He’s senile!” meme all over. Obama makes numerous mistakes and “uh, uhs” his way through questioning and, gee, that’s just because he’s such a thoughtful orator.
The problem is, when you’ve got a choice between really liberal and sorta liberal, that’s not a lot of choice, is it?
Good stuff. I’d love for Sharon’s warped reality to be actual reality for even one day.
John McCain is no liberal. Not even sorta. He pretends he is a moderate, but when you are a anti-choice, pro-Iraq War, pro-death penalty, pro-drilling for oil everywhere, anti-healthcare, anti-social security, anti-gay adoption, anti-balanced budget Republican, the reality is you are a Bush Conservative.
It pains me to watch you guys actually try to claim there’s no liberal bias in the MSM. Fox News has blatant Conservative bias, and the rest of the MSM has glaring liberal bias.
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
– Ayn Rand
By the way, how do you explain this? If the media is soooo Conservative why do they contribute money almost exclusively to the Democrats?
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=301702713742569
Easy.
Your little example leaves off the big money donors from: News Corp, the world’s largest media conglomerate, Time Warner/Viacom and The Walt Disney Company.
Add in contributors from those entities and we’ll see if the media is liberal or conservative.
AL
you are so right these newbies are playing tit for tat just like school children “well johnny did it to” they now seem to have changed their line from “it’s Clinton ‘s fault or Clinton did it too'”So now it’s Obama made a mistake so over look the 30 or so fuck ups McSame has mad9 not knowing when exactly that the SURGE BEGAN or the difference between Sunni or Sheia and most of all claiming that the SURGE protected the Sheik when he was killed at the height of the surge.
Well when you guys are calling Bush a “war criminal” It’s perfectly relevant to point out that Clinton did the same thing. Someone has to point out your bias and obvious double standards.