The media moved with stunning symmetry this week is seeking any and every means of tearing down the Republican National Convention, and particularly Paul Ryan.
To borrow their favorite metaphor, it was as if someone blew a dog whistle that only the liberal media could hear.
National Journal, which until now I have viewed as one of the few relatively neutral news entities, soiled itself when its Editor in Chief, Ron Fournier, wrote a rant titled Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card, in which he translated what two other people said in an interview into what he believed they were saying and then used his beliefs as proof of racism applied broadly to opponents of Obama:
I share this story to crack the code – the subtle language of distrust and prejudice that whites use to communicate deep-set fears, and that cynical politicians translate into votes. Translating Miller and Benson:
“Subsidization” = Welfare
“Generational Apathy” = Lazy
“They Slept All Day” = Blacks Sleep All Day
“I Feel Like a Fool” = I’m Mad As Hell
I have not seen such a feeding frenzy since the Palin nomination. When it came to Palin it was mostly very personal attacks on her and her family, particularly her son Trig.
For Ryan, it was false and hyperbolic “fact checks” which were not fact checks but political arguments.
Yes, Obama weakened the work rules required of states for welfare; how that weakening is described is a matter of the usual political puffery on both sides, but hardly evidence that Ryan’s speech was dishonest. And Ryan was correct that Obama promised that a Janesville auto plant would stay open if he were elected, and the decision by GM to permanently shutter the plant was not taken until six months after Obama took office and after the auto bailout; yet the media tried to claim Ryan lied, until the media itself was fact checked by the right blogosphere.
I can’t wait to see how these same major newspapers and networks swarm over every word and nuance spoken at the DNC.
They’re all just JournoLists, in heart if not history.
For those of you who haven’t been here long, the JournoList was an email list serve organized prior to the 2008 election by Ezra Klein, now one of the lead writers at The Washington Post, in which various young bucks (uh oh, is that a dog whistle) and doe in the emerging melding of blogging and journalism traded various strategies.
Another of the JournoLists was Greg Sargent, one of WaPo’s lead bloggers and someone who helps funnel Democratic talking points into the mainstream media. Nate Silver, now of The New York Times, was on the list as well (although I will say I have found his work at The NY Times to be quite good), as was Ben Smith (formerly Politico, now BuzzFeed Politics) and several others at Politico.
Many of the JournoLists were rewarded after the election with access to the White House.
Among the strategies were how to elect Barack Obama by jointly pushing certain themes, including claims of racism against McCain supporters, and how to neutralize Sarah Palin’s potential appeal. Not every one of the JournoLists engaged in these strategies, but enough did to create a scandal when The Daily Caller obtained some of the emails. (To my knowledge, Ezra Klein never has released the full email archive.)
The JournoList revealed what we always have known. What we call “journalism” really is a stacked deck against Republicans and conservatives.
Whether they move together because they exchange emails, or hang out at the same places, or just hear the same dog whistles, much of what we call the news media has an agenda and for the next 60+ days that agenda is to elect Barack Obama.
You need no better proof than the sleazy comment by the (now former) Washington Editor of Yahoo! News that the Romneys like to party while black people drown. The comment was caught on an open mic, and therefore became controversial.
But among the established and aspiring journalists in the room, the comment elicited no criticism. Only by luck of an open mic was the truth revealed of how a highly influential and respected journalist thinks, and how willing he was to share that agenda with those who work with and under him. It was the JournoList in another form.
There is a greater ability to fight back, but don’t kid yourselves. The accusations made in the media against Romney-Ryan and down ticket candidates drown out the pushback. But push back we must, and defeating the media at the polls has to be one of our highest priorities.
Update: Via John Sexton at Breitbart, one of the subjects of the Ron Fournier interview says Fournier took his comments out of context.
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Comments
The LEFT Press (the Mushroom Media and the New Collectivist Media) are a snake-pile of inbred relationships. And by “in-bred” I mean the writers are sleeping with people in the power structure of the Collective…many times the Obami themselves.
Literally. Sleeping with them.
You have to know this. You also have to know that the kind of amazing coordination of attack we saw yesterday does not require any kind of overt plan. Like a flock of birds in flight, or a school of fish, these people have subtle means of signaling.
OK, maybe they use a fax machine…
In any event, this is how the battlefield is shaped, and we know this. We can deal with it effectively. And they lose influence every day.
Will the Prof. trust Ron Fournier again…???
Just FYI, IRONICALLY one of the best pieces on the “Ryan lies” I found was this…
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/08/30/160320776/janesville-debate-dissecting-ryans-claim-obamas-promise-the-facts
Cops and crooks don’t belong at the same picnics.
Funny, that made me think of the “party” stings the cops have conducted to sucker crooks into a concentration.
A true “surprise!” party…and remarkably successful, often!
http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/08/31/103201
Cartoon = 1000 words
Very disturbing to me was the reaction of the MSNBC’ers to Romney’s more stern approach to Russia and Putin. They were apoplectic that Romney suggested less flexibility and more backbone in dealing with Putin. Also troubling is the media’s doubling down on the lies about the Medicare cut and the GM plant. P.S. John Boehner needs to GO.
Biased media is biased.
More than biased. They’re bought and paid for prostitutes that complain when they’ve been on their back for too long.
Katha Pollit: “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita.”
The best example of the liberal media is evident this morning at Memorandum. The Eastwood feeding frenzy I mentioned in last night’s thread.
The logic is fairly straitforward: Attack the icon.
About the smae as they did with Ryan.
Rather than comment on his points…the “guts” of what someone has to say..turn the focus and fixate on how the person ties his shoes. Or anything equally meaningless.
This morning its Eastwood’s turn in the magic wringer liberal media hauls out when one of their “protected clients” is held up to any criticism.
Older folks like Eastwood are made irrelevant so they think when media exhibits just how small minded they have become.
Its not about ideas any longer.
Its about the packaging. And that imagined liberal “stamp of approval”.
Eastwood made his point it seems by the simple fact liberals have reacted in the exact way they are trained to react. In lockstep.
Vonnegut was correct.
The liberal media has become the Handicapper Generals.
People like Eastwood are diminished. Success is diminished. Paul Ryan is diminished.
So a less than average Obama can compete.
“Bias” is an inclination or a prejudice, a persistent coloring of one’s viewpoint. It is distinct from, and not properly an euphemism for, deliberate lying for the purpose of influencing the opinion of others.
We are dealing with lies. That is, falsehoods a given writer knows or should know aren’t true. As consumers, we have the right and the power to demand better quality work product from our “news” sources. That’s a work in progress, and if the lamestream media is unable to increase its product quality, we will replace it.
In addition, I personally think it is time to review NY Times v. Sullivan. The New York Times and the rest of the media at the national level have well and truly pushed the envelope of that opinion, and it will be the death of several of them.
Excellent distinction you point out between bias and lying. Very nice.
I’ve thought a lot about Sullivan in the last four years. I think it started the decline of journalism for if the test is actual malice then it pays not to actually check out a juicy story and instead just toss in a few words like allegedly before running with it.
What would the Justices who decided Sullivan think of today’s journalistic practices? That case was legislated from the bench at perhaps the high water mark of respect for the integrity of journalists. The dockets were clogged with thousands of frivolous lawsuits by Southern segregationist officials against mostly Northern publications for very minor factual errors in stories covering the Civil Rights movement. How would those Justices react to the way today’s journalists find every utterance by a Republican racist even as they ignore stories of wrongdoing by blacks? What would they make of another bully named Sullivan publishing lies about the children of a politician?
Propagandists
Call them by their name. Out loud. In public.
These are not biased journalists. These are propagandists.
They are like an unattractive guy who always thinks every waitress can’t wait to take him home. Yeah, on rare occasions he might be right, but more often he’s just nuts.
We are winning this war on both fronts. The public is pretty much catching on that the media has become like that smarmy little clique of the self described cool kids in high school who try to set who and what it fashionable. They aren’t that smart, they certainly aren’t cool and they only matter if you let them live inside your head. Fewer and fewer people are letting them do that. In fact the opposite may be happening. Part of the Chik-fil-A turnout was people fed up with the media’s constant promotion of the homosexual agenda.
Then there is the business model problem. Consider how circulation and ratings numbers have collapsed for the media. A lot of it has moved to the web but on-line readership isn’t picking up the slack in a significant way. Perhaps more importantly it is a lot harder to make big money on-line because few venues have been able to charge for editorial content the way print publications charged for subscriptions or networks charge cable/satellite services to carry their channel.
“…in the emerging melding of POLITICS and journalism…”
FIFY
The left cannot stand mockery, not because they don’t have a sense of humor, but because their ideas are silly. A silly idea cannot stand mockery because a laugh destroys it. A laugh exposes it for what it is, a thought warped in delusion. The thing crazy wants most is not to be thought of as crazy. That’s why they will fight any comedy so hard.
Test: Pick which answer is unlike the others.
A] Liberal Progressives + Journalist = Barack Obama
B] Mental Illness + Propaganda = Tyranny
C] Conservatism + Truth = Freedom
The world’s oldest profession – We all know what that it (I hope)
The world’s second oldest profession – Politics
The world’s dumbest profession – Journalism
From the sudden number of dislikes I suspect we had a journalist trolling the site.
Dog Whistle: Liberal ventriloquism.
Hot Mic: When the dummy actually talks.
[…] – They‘re Still JournoLists – via Legal […]
[…] and Listening and They’ll Go Away Posted on August 31, 2012 5:30 pm by Bill Quick » They’re still just JournoLists – Le·gal In·sur·rec·t… I can’t wait to see how these same major newspapers and networks swarm over every word and […]
I’ve known for years that National Journal leans left. They try to cover it with dispassionate writing, but it’s there.
And Fox News is moderate, not conservative. As Breitbart said, the right needs many outlets, not just one.
The right tends to be defensive rather than proud of its beliefs. What a pity.
Didn’t Major Garrett of FOX news join NJ? What in hell was he thinking?
[…] JACOBSON: They’re Still Just JournoLists. “To borrow their favorite metaphor, it was as if someone blew a dog whistle that only the […]
The Fourth Estate long ago sold its integrity and became a propaganda Fifth Column for the Democrats. The fact that any of the JounoLists still have a job after their documented collusion to push news favorable to the Obama campaign is proof of this to any fair-minded individual. That is to say, anyone who’s not a committed Liberal.
The world of journalism is collapsing. Watch how shrill they get leading up to the election. And it won’t matter. their credibility capital has been spent.
Until a large boycott of the liberal press is begun, they will never listen. Put out the word that all the advertisers of such-and-such media will be boycotted and suddenly we’d start seeing more objective press.
[…] will be anger and protests. The “unbiased” media will stay in the tank for the left. There will be shitty movies and stupid […]
[…] Legal Insurrection argues compellingly that, even though Journolist was exposed and, presumably, disbanded, the MSM is stilling using the same playbook. […]
My question is, on the audio of the Yahoo DC guy making that terrible ‘joke’, who is the gal who can be heard laughing? Her job should have been removed faster than his.
It looks like somebody needs to fact check the so called fact checkers.