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TomCADem

(17,378 posts)
Sun Nov 16, 2014, 07:14 PM Nov 2014

Eric Alternman - "Midterm Media Meltdown"

Nice piece from Eric Alternman that goes behind the corporate media's rightward turn of the electorate/return of "mainstream" Republicans narrative.

http://www.thenation.com/article/190505/midterm-media-meltdown#

One problem with the answers to the above is that they reside in phenomena that are complex and multifaceted, while our media insist on a narrative that is simple and straightforward. To be fair, some of the weaknesses of our system fall into the category of “It was ever thus.” Turnout is always anemic in midterms; the president’s party almost always loses in his sixth year. And while it’s true that Republican state legislatures have shamelessly gerrymandered their election maps to the party’s advantage, the distribution of the population would likely ensure a Republican House majority anyway, given the way that conservatives spread themselves across the rural areas and liberals crowd themselves into the cities.

* * *
Finally, the 2014 election coverage suffered even more than usual from the mainstream media’s inability to admit the degree to which the Republican Party has been captured by a fringe element with an unshakable commitment to ideological fantasy. As Heather Digby Parton notes in Salon, Iowa’s new senator-elect, Joni Ernst, professes to believe “in the fringe constitutional theory called ‘nullification,’ has told audiences that she’s ready to take up arms against the government, and thinks a 20-year-old U.N. resolution to encourage nations to use fewer resources called Agenda 21 is a threat to the American way of life.” (A spokesperson has denied that Ernst supports nullification.) But as Norm Ornstein reports, The Washington Post almost completely ignored her nutty notions: “A Nexis search shows that the Post has had four references to Ernst and Agenda 21—all by Greg Sargent on his blog from the left, The Plum Line, and none on the news pages of the paper.” Receiving far more coverage was her opponent’s argument with his neighbor over some chickens. The Times, too, made no mention of Agenda 21, but seven of the chickens. (On MSNBC, Luke Russert’s issueless reporting explained Ernst’s appeal with the assertion that she was “trying to ride this popular charisma” into statewide office.)

As Ornstein demonstrates, Ernst was hardly alone in benefitting from her bizarre beliefs being whitewashed for her by the mainstream media. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said in a telephone town hall: “Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico, who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.” In this case, the Post did run a fact-check column by Glenn Kessler on Cotton’s assertion, but not a single news story. The Times made no mention of it whatever.

The whitewash was especially thick this year because the narrative of the night was that the Tea Party had been defeated and the GOP was back in the hands of its far more responsible “establishment.” In fact, much closer to the truth is that the lunatics are now running the asylum… and, rather frighteningly, both houses of Congress.
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Eric Alternman - "Midterm Media Meltdown" (Original Post) TomCADem Nov 2014 OP
Trip Gabriel BeyondGeography Nov 2014 #1
example #28348749 as to why the "liberal" media myth stupidicus Nov 2014 #2
Bernie Goldberg. nt Snotcicles Nov 2014 #3
The Current State Of Political Media: WillyT Nov 2014 #4
Glad to see this point being made. snot Nov 2014 #5
"let a Dem say something that can be taken as off-base in any way" BumRushDaShow Nov 2014 #6
Media bias is the single biggest problem in the country right now Doctor_J Nov 2014 #7
+1000 ! jaysunb Nov 2014 #8
+1 Blue_Tires Nov 2014 #11
It's going to have to blow up in their damn collective face before anything is done about the US Cha Nov 2014 #9
K&R Scuba Nov 2014 #10
Like the vice presidency Droning Predator Nov 2014 #12
Corporate media's job: misdirect the public's attention from GOP's tactic of sabotage & blame Obama Bill USA Nov 2014 #13

BeyondGeography

(39,284 posts)
1. Trip Gabriel
Sun Nov 16, 2014, 07:19 PM
Nov 2014

What a fucking joke.

Take, for instance, Trip Gabriel’s front-page New York Times report on October 8, in which he explains: “The legal fights are over laws that Republican-led state governments passed in recent years to more tightly regulate voting, in the name of preventing fraud. Critics argue that the restrictions are really efforts to discourage African-Americans, students and low-income voters, who tend to favor Democrats.”

“Critics”? How is it that neither Gabriel nor his editors thought to interject into this nonsensical “he said/she said” exchange some actual evidence? Nowhere in this report of more than 1,200 words does the story mention the fact that in none of these states is voter fraud a genuine phenomenon. (If you wanted decent coverage of this issue, you would have had to rely on the “reporting” of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show rather than Gabriel and The New York Times.)
 

stupidicus

(2,570 posts)
2. example #28348749 as to why the "liberal" media myth
Sun Nov 16, 2014, 08:35 PM
Nov 2014

is one of the most stupid but effective ones the rightwingnuts ever came up with

 

WillyT

(72,631 posts)
4. The Current State Of Political Media:
Sun Nov 16, 2014, 09:13 PM
Nov 2014

"The Republicans say the Earth is flat.

The Democrats say it's spherical.

We Say... You decide."







There is a pronounced difference between... Neutral and Objective.





snot

(10,481 posts)
5. Glad to see this point being made.
Sun Nov 16, 2014, 10:08 PM
Nov 2014

I think we we see this kind of thing frequently. Bush says something stupid, the media try to massage it into something more sensible; but let a Dem say something that can be taken as off-base in any way, and it will be.

BumRushDaShow

(127,315 posts)
6. "let a Dem say something that can be taken as off-base in any way"
Mon Nov 17, 2014, 11:29 AM
Nov 2014

Or better, let a Dem say something that is a FACT, and the media will completely twist it around and obfuscate it in order to make it sound off-base so they can continue to support the prevailing RW narrative.

 

Doctor_J

(36,392 posts)
7. Media bias is the single biggest problem in the country right now
Mon Nov 17, 2014, 12:35 PM
Nov 2014

And has been since Limpballs came on the air. We'll know that we're on our way back as a nation when bad things start to happen to the propagandists and terrorists that saturate the airways.

Cha

(295,929 posts)
9. It's going to have to blow up in their damn collective face before anything is done about the US
Tue Nov 18, 2014, 03:27 AM
Nov 2014

corporatemediaWhoredom.

I got out in Nov 2002 and been waiting for the rest of those who are on to the goPropaganda Big Lie Machine to catch up.

Oh yeah, this would have been my tv back in the day had I kept watching.. now I don't even own one.. #1 b/c of money.. and I get to watch stuff from tv online.. so there, good.



Thank you, Eric Alterman and TomCA!

Bill USA

(6,436 posts)
13. Corporate media's job: misdirect the public's attention from GOP's tactic of sabotage & blame Obama
Wed Nov 19, 2014, 07:32 PM
Nov 2014

then explain the election as a Republican "wave" election;



But if you look more closely at some of the contradictions underlying those results, then you suddenly have what Ricky Ricardo used to call “some ‘splainin’ to do.” How is it that four states that gave victories to Republican Senate candidates also happened to approve ballot initiatives calling for an increase in the minimum wage? And how is it that this election ended in a GOP sweep, even as Americans, according to The Washington Post’s Zachary Goldfarb, routinely told pollsters that they share the Democrats’ views not only on the minimum wage, but on virtually every issue across the board: raising taxes on the wealthy, addressing global warming, repairing (rather than repealing) Obamacare, supporting same-sex marriage, you name it?


Election 2014: The GOP's war on Obama works, or: sabotage and proclaim: "Look he can't get it done!"


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