USA Today: Media soul-searching after Bush's victory

[high density]

Media soul-searching after Bush's victory
Peter Johnson, USA Today

...It's no secret that many people in the national media, perhaps a bit too willingly, believed preliminary exit polls that showed John Kerry was headed to the White House. But when Bush subsequently won — and religion and morality ranked high among concerns of voters — it set off a chain of soul-searching in big-city newsrooms, especially in the media epicenter, New York.

Newspeople began questioning whether they're out of touch with the heartland, a point many columnists concluded was obvious. There was lots of " 'Why was I inclined to believe those exit polls?' " says New York Times editor Bill Keller. ABC News executive Paul Slavin says, "We have talked about this endlessly since the election."

...

Slavin says the "whole flap about morality was blown out of proportion by the media. It was self-flagellation that the media do after every big event. We're always looking for lessons learned and 'can it be codified into a single overarching concept?' The answer is no, but was there interesting stuff that came out of this election? Yes."

Such as? ABC News has always focused on religion, having a full-time religion reporter until a few years ago. This election, Slavin says, "reminded us that we need to look in on it again."

More: http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2004-11-14-media-mix_x.htm

Also note the results from the Pew research poll that shows Fox News as the leading TV network for "news" about the election.

[Eric J in MN]

1. Why believe Exit Polls? Because they're accurate.

In Florida in 2000, Exit Polls said Gore won, and if there had been a statewide recount, that would have showed Gore won as well.

[whistle]

2. The media have no soul! The search if that is what is happening....

...is to ferret out news people who are not in goose step with the administration and to purge those individuals from the media spot-light. What will remain will be the propaganda core and the robots who will go on carrying the message that the neo-conservatives and fundies and the Bushies want us the people to hear.

[The Zanti Regent]

28. The American media is hopeless

Totally sold out lock stock and barrel to the Nazi Party.

Hitler never had it as good as Bush does!

[OldLeftieLawyer]

53. Boy, did you nail it

That's very well-put, and I agree completely with you.

Which is horrifying and tragic.

[Carl Brennan]

51. I've got a bone to pick

You stole the words right oughta' my mouth! :hi:

[Nordic]

3. what a bunch of goddamned idiots

Zogby has proved that the "moral values" push was a complete fabrication.

And these fucking geniuses might want to do a quick count of votes and find out who actually won the election and WHY those exit polls were "wrong".

[SoCalDem]

5. But.. the mainstreamers pooh-poohed Zogby's polls at the end,

so "zogby-must-be-wrong"..ergo.. "Who cares what zogby thinks"..

This will be the end of the line thinking..

Zogby needs to do a HUGE poll with only two questions..

1. Do you think *² cheated in the election?

2. Do you think *² is "your" president?

That would open MANY eyes..

[Nordic]

8. Zogby should do a poll and ask who people actually voted for

that might open some eyes big time.

Why doesn't somebody do this?

If the results differ markedly ......

[Old and In the Way]

15. Exactly. Or, better, yet....why aren't Democrats polling their

rank-and-file to see who they voted for? How about some serious canvassing and signed affidavits that show everyone that the exit polls were absolutely correct? Was the run up to the election just a big frigging charade?

I don't know....I just finished watching "JFK" again. Democracy took a headshot that day and the plug is just now being pulled from the life support.

[Nordic]

45. the "Democratic Party" has handed this election to Bushco

they sold us down the river and we need to form a new party.

These people were obviously in cahoots with the GOP, they cut some kind of deal.

Why else do you think Carville would smash a fucking egg into his face and make a complete ASS of himself on national television?

[Old and In the Way]

50. Carville did that? I missed it

Love to get a cite and read the context.

I really don't know why we see an incredibly wide non-response of the election results from the Democratic leadership. Seems they were firing on all cylinders before the election, then.....nothing.

But given the Anthrax perp was never apprehended and the real 40+ year history of accidents and assassinations of Democrats, I wonder if they aren't fearful for their own lives...or perhaps the lives of their families. I'm particularly wondering why Kerry went from fighter to conceder in less than 24 hours. Sometimes I think we don't get the full picture of what is going on behind the scenes. All I know is that it seems totally out of character for a man who dodged bullets in Nam to be giving up on this fight....if they are playing a sophisticated game of "loyal opposition", we really need to study this.

If I was the leadership of the Party, I'd have had a major canvassing of suspect precincts underway the day after the election. I would have had Democrats (and Republicans, too, if they were so inclined) sign affidavits as to who they voted for. Then compare those results to the reported vote results. Instead, we have non-Democrats who are leading this fight......I just don't get it.

[Nordic]

66. here's a photo of the idiot

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/041115/480/wx10111151346



What a moron

[JohnOneillsMemory]

68. Bingo. Allergic to anthrax. The press have been terrorized and know it.

The US military has been killing inconvenient reporters in record numbers lately. The press has taken the big hint, "stand down."

1) Operation Mockingbird-CIA control of media for decades.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html
(Operation Mockingbird, William Casey)
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ARCHIVE/ciamedia.html
(CIA and the Media)

2) US military weaponized anthrax mailed to media and Democrats in 2001.

3) Culture of 'conspiracy theory' ridicule on the national playground for anyone who sticks out from the herd.
http://www.mackwhite.com/tv.html
(The TV Hive Mind)

Remember how Pierre Salinger was made out to be a kook for saying TWA800 was shot down by a missile in 1996?
http://prorev.com/twa800.htm
(TWA800 The Crash)

Richard Clarke pulled the same bullshit non-explainer in his book 'Against All Enemies.' "What a nutjob..."

[OldLeftieLawyer]

54. Carville's always been an ass

I mean, look at his history. He's capitalized - to the point of selling a children's book based on his mother's stories - on everything he could, and now, out of the spotlight, he's desperate to be a player again.

He and his fuckface wife should just disappear. I'm sick of both of them.

[w4rma]

55. Instead of complaing that the Democratic Party needs a new name.

(a "new" party will have to get the votes of the same people the current one does) why don't you become active in the Democratic Party and learn a bit about how it works from the inside while you help it evolve into what you want it to become and while you help it win elections.

[Nordic]

67. Because I want a party where I have some say in the leadership

Who the fuck voted Terry McAuliffe into power?

Who the fuck gives any of these idiots their jobs?

It ain't the rank and filef.

[Carolab]

18. He just did that

I answered his survey a couple of days ago

[ewagner]

31. It would be tainted

by people saying they voted for the "winner".....just human nature.

[Dover]

4. AGAIN? Did they lose it again after they supported the INVASION

and then begged for redemption? "We were wrong...sniff...we'll tell the truth now...sniff..sniff." They can search all they want for a soul but they won't find one.

Puhleeeeeze......still trying to avoid the voting fraud issue. Those pesky exit polls.....

It's all pulp fiction.

[Career Prole]

6. Man, don't give me bullshit about media soul-searching!

The damned media ought to be soul-searching why they failed so completely in their duty to the people to report the news as it exists and not as it's spun.
They were so friggin' worried about offending their corporate masters that they let bushco get away with actual crimes without raising a single alarm. The sonuvabitch should have been impeached...would have been impeached if the media wasn't a bunch of corporate whores. They got that friggin' criminal back in for another four years at God knows what cost to the country and now they have the gall to use the term "soul-searching" in a story about themselves that doesn't even mention 9/11, or Iraq, or Valerie Plame, or voter fraud?
Hey there, Corporate Media? Go f*ck yourselves...I don't care about your phony-ass soul-searching. Drop dead, all of ya.
:grr:

I apologize for the above rant. I see red when a rag like USA Today uses the word "soul".

[Sideways]

14. I Love You

:loveya:

[Career Prole]

73. And I you!

It's fate...fate, I tell you! ;)

[leftchick]

19. apologize???

are you crazy? That was one of the best rants ever! :)

[Nay]

20. Don't apologize for your lovely and true rant. I love it.

If I read one more story about how the media is SO sorry it fucked us up the you-know-what for 4 years, I am gonna :puke:

Stop the "soul-searching" and start reporting the effing NEWS, you twits!!!

[rainbow4321]

39. They were more concerned re: Ashley Simpson....

lip synching than they were about talking about real issues leading up to the election. As I was surfing the net the WEEK before the election and finding news items like:
1>TSA overpaying Boeing for airline saftey NOT carried out
2> the Pentagon saying "we may never know what happened with the Halliburton $$ mismanagement so we are going to just ignore the problem and not get our $$ back" ,
3>and the Homeland Security Dept's OWN PEOPLE putting out a report saying how rundown the Coast Guard boats and equipment was and that it could effect security issues

...WHAT does MSNBC play over and over and over??...the lip synching "scandal". At least twice an hour or more. Forget all of the above cuz heaven forbid they let us see how BAD things are under shrub's regime. Wouldn't want people making an INFORMED decision on Nov 2nd.
If I can find shit like this on my $800 computer with the click of a mouse, there is no excuse for the news stations to not find and report it! Maybe if their ratings tank until they start providing REAL news, they will get the hint!
:mad:

[Career Prole]

43. Welcome to DU, Rainbow!

I remember a time when newspeople would fight to be the first on the street with real news. Now they sit in makeup while they go over their corporate (read government) scripts to ensure nothing said in the brunch hour will upset the sponsors.

[tavalon]

75. Do you write rants this concise often?

If so, I must see them. Fabulous.

[bullimiami]

7. the stupid stupid media

just accept the fraud on its face, deny exit polls and science and blame everyone except the criminals. the world is askew.....it must be me! (sic).

if they would spend a little time investigating and printing facts and less time with opinion, spin, reflection, opinion of opinion, opinion of spin, spin of spin.....
things would be a lot better.

[Chipper Chat]

9. it's NOT you.......

The boob-tube media (especially cable news) never gave Kerry a chance the past year - ergo: he "lost."
Even CNN's Judy Woodruff, bless her, kept saying things like "How can John Kerry recover from this," and "Isn't this potentially damaging to the Kerry campaign" - ad nauseum!
This type of trash talk was so negative it made me puke!

[martinolich]

35. I'm with you regarding Woodruff & Cable News...

...I sent SOOO many emails to CNN and their damn anchors....The bias was appalling...I got in their faces, so to speak, regarding their "competition" with Fox News, etc...Got one brief, snarky response from Anerson Cooper...Woodruff, in particular with that "concerned" voice "I think they're being very hard on the President"...aaww!..really?!!...I've lived through a lot of elections...and I've never seen bias like this in supposedly mainstream media.....

[tuvor]

10. Appropriate Keith Olbermann quote

Oh and by the way: how come the “Kerry’s winning” part of the election night exit polling is presumed to have been wrong, or tampered with, but the “Moral Values” part of the same polling is graded flawless, and marks the dawn of a new American century?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1356240

[RuleofLaw]

37. Exactly!!

I wish someone would please explain this to me. Defies logic.

[Libby2]

76. We have a winner

I don't understand that either.
They can't have it both ways!

The media has been "inbed" with this admin. since the beginning.

[Borgnine]

11. Tell me this...

...if the exit polls were wrong about Kerry, why were they correct about "moral values"?

These mouth-breathing media morans can't have it both ways. Oh, I guess they can.

[alittlelark]

12. The exit polls on MORALITY we believe ...........

BUT NOT THE ONE ABOUT WHO WE VOTED TO BE PRESIDENT.... are we INSANE!!!!


EARTH to SENTIENT LIFE FORMS........ This cannot be happening.

[DELUSIONAL]

13. The media whores have no soul -- having sold their soul to the devil

for lots of money and/or access to the empathy-less bushie crowd.

For the corporate media to with hold news about what is really happening in Iraq -- the slaughter of the civilians in Falluja -- demonstrates that the whores lack a collective soul.

[LynnTheDem]

16. US State Stenomedia can't find their souls under all that blood.

IF the US State Media had just DONE THEIR JOBS we'd never have invaded Iraq and 100,000+ people wouldn't be dead.

Politicians LIE. BUSHCARTEL LIE.

But that's a given.

And it's why the media has special Constitutional rights; to PROTECT WE THE PEOPLE, NOT to promote bushCartel's bullshit.

FUCK YOU, U.S. STATE MEDIA. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY DEATH IN IRAQ AND EVERY FUTURE BUSHWAR DEATH.

[dbt]

17. USA Today joins the movement to kill exit polls.

"The exit polls were wrong. What happened?" is the only facet of this fraudulent election that will come under any sort of scrutiny from the Media Borg.

Having been apparently bitten twice by exit polls that didn't match to the election results, the Media will now decide that these polls are untrustworthy and must be discarded. It will not for a moment consider that it was the election results that were flawed. Or hacked or manipulated or stolen or whatever you care to call it.

The death of exit polling is what the BFEE wants and the Media once again falls right into line!

:argh:
dbt

[bklyncowgirl]

21. 40% thought Bush was treated unfairly 30% Kerry treated unfairly

Quote:

Voters are increasingly troubled by what they see as unfair treatment of the candidates. This year, 40% of voters thought Bush was treated unfairly, up from 30% in 2000; 31% said Kerry was treated unfairly, up from 24% who faulted Al Gore's coverage in 2000.

This is rather startling considering that nearly all of us believe that the media was shilling for Bush all the way. I suppose the Dan Rather thing added to that but still and all this is a very strange disconnect with my reality.

What media are these people looking at anyway?

[durablend]

25. They watch Faux News, mostly...

Then when they watch anyone else that's NOT kissing *'s ass, they claim the news organization is biased.

[rainbow4321]

41. Must not get their news from the Net...

cuz those of us that did, were finding all the stuff that the MSM wouldn't touch. And I am not talking small, obscure, opinionated websites. Everything I found and posted on blogs during pre-election was directly from the AP wire, Reuters, or Yahoo.com links to international news wires.
Would have loved for them to ask the polled voters THAT---"do you get news from the Internet or mostly from TV". If TV is their main news source than it explains their answers. Makes you want to put them in front of their computer for a few hours and then in front of their TV and THEN ask them which gave them more useful, unbiased news!

[liberal N proud]

22. Again they are missing the story!

Or are they?
This is just another diversion from the real story "Voter Fraud"
Moral Values did not put bush in the white house for 4 more years...
Diebold did.

[JudyM]

40. Right. And by this article they are priming the public for disbelieving

the validity of the exit polls, which we are now leaning on to bolster our case of voter fraud.

[The Wielding Truth]

72. Rove did! His manipulations are unbelievable . Media should get

wise to him and write what they see not what he tells them they see.

[xchrom]

23. soul?!?! you mean you guys got one

and then lost it?
maybe you should start asking yourselves ''why am i pathetic?''

[Ganja Ninja]

24. The media soul search will have the same results as the hunt ...

for WMD's in Iraq.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

27. BULL!!!!!

How are we to believe that the exit polls on "faith" are right but the polls on who we vote for "president" are wrong?!?

:wtf:

[DeadManInc]

29. media

The media better invest in stem cell research. Then maybe they can grow their spine back after Bush has severed it.

[leesa]

30. Please reply to this WH whore.

Do not allow their spin.

[Seabiscuit]

32. Doesn't sound like "soul-searching" to me. More like anal-probing.

The robotic American media has no soul.

Soul-searching would be like looking for a left-handed broom.

[UpInArms]

33. the underlying presupposition is that the media has a "soul"

I reject this premise as the "media" is compromised of corporations. Corporations are machines that only have one purpose - to generate profits for their stockholders.

This article is yet more garbage and should be discarded into the trash.

(not flaming the poster - merely the article)

[Plaid Adder]

34. Jesus. When they find their souls, now that'll be a scoop.

Why is it that the media never seems to ask themselves, "Have we licked too much Bush administration boot today?"

@#$!,

The Plaid Adder

[daleo]

49. Boot?

You're too kind.

[Plaid Adder]

71. It's a running gag

Left over from the days when I was still updating No More Blood:

http://www.plaidder.com/oldnomore.htm

I used to award a Lick Your Own Damn Boots prize to the least bootlicking American mainstream journalist. This year I think it would ahve to go to Jon Stewart...who of course is not really a journalist.

I love this country.

:argh:

The Plaid Adder

[llmart]

36. USA Today.....

The "McDonalds" of newspapers. Yeah, like they're a real newspaper. Well, I guess it's the type of newspaper that the average Joe Blow American can handle. Can't read any indepth articles now can they. They have such "busy" lives.

This is pure bullshit and propaganda. I never read that rag even if it's given to me free at a hotel.

[Massachusetts]

38. Media Ga Ga

The US media for the most part (ex. exception Harpers magazine), has been "out of touch" for as longggggg as The inner belt of DC.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

52. USA Today is pretty liberal......

n/t

[w4rma]

56. Like heck it is. (nt)

[llmart]

57. What????

Where on earth did you get that perception? Are they now printing in depth articles by Noam Chomsky?

[maxrandb]

42. The Problem Is Not Morality or Values!

The problem is that the media blew * and Cheney's Scud and failed in their duty to ask the tough questions. They allowed morality to be an issue, because they didn't properly question the morality of those that wanted it to be an issue.

They Suck, and I hope that the FCC fines the living crap out of them until all we have are old reruns of Leave It To Beaver. They are complicit, no need to soul search. The media got what they deserved.

[Cocoa]

44. "are we whoring for the republicans enough?"

"are we selling the religious crap hard enough?"

lots of questions...

[Pacifist Patriot]

46. They need to be searching for their balls, not their souls.

The journalists who were the least bit conciliatory towards the Kerry camp in the last days of the campaign have got to be shaking in their shoes or licking someone elses.

ETA: I'm not usually so crude. Fussy whiney children in the house today. Sorry.

[ourbluenation]

47. The media shouldn't have a soul - hello???

They should just report the news. What a refreshing idea.

JTT

[grasswire]

48. don't just preach to the choir

Let this USA Today reporter know what you're thinking

[e-mail]

[Javaman]

58. Out of touch? Soul-searching?? CNN and PTL merge, I can see it now.

[restorefreedom]

59. Neo-Pavlovian conditioning has arrived....

When you own, by honesty or by theft, the white house, congress, SCOTUS, CIA, and the justice department, not to mention (almost all of) the MSM, you can create your own reality.

Frightening, isn't it?

[LongTomH]

60. The Hopeful Thing

in all this is that people are finally getting the idea, at least some of them! During the Iraq invasion, more people were going to foreign news websites or alternative websites in the U.S. I don't think we'll see any move to reform the existing mass media; what I do look for is for an alternative to mass news media to build up on the internet.

The biggest warning I can sound now is, direct your vigilance toward keeping the internet free! The RW will be going after the net in a big way now, since that's the biggest challenge to their hegemony.

[WCGreen]

61. My brother in law from rural Colorado

told me that he and his friends were listening to Kerry but inclined to vote for Bush simply because they wanted him to finish the job he started....

My brother here in Ohio told me the same thing. The only reason he voted for Bush was to win in Iraq...

So, the Bush people may have known this all along that when we are at war, it is very hard to vote against the incumbent...

They were probably counting on it.....

So, maybe they have thrown up this whole moral march toward conservatism crap in order to get the dems to move further to the right, agree with them on the Gay Issue, not contest so much with the Faith Based crap and those kind of things that their base in the fundamentalist community hold dear..

And we all know how well the Media does their homework now don't we...

So if a plausible theory emerges, they sink their teeth into it and never let go.....

Remember the Gore said he invented the Internet crap that everyone who claimed to be a journalist was taking it as conventional wisdom...

Now that is where the media should aiming their soul searching, at why they continue to spout "conventional Wisdom" as if it were the truth when in fact, it is nothing more than Urban Legends concocted by a republican PR machine...

[proudbluestater]

62. I feel like I am on a different planet completely

The exit polls have NEVER been wrong until 2000. Now suddenly three in a row are wrong. Where is the soul searching on that? Why the blind acceptance that there's not a major problem here? WTF? WTF?

I heard the context of the exit polls yesterday. The Mitofsky team listed issues and asked which was the biggest concern when you voted. Of course they listed moral values but didn't specify what values they were speaking of.

When asked an open-ended question such as "what issue most influenced your vote?" most folks said the war.

When you look at all the results, there's only a 1-2% difference in the TOP issues anyway. So a reasonable human being with an 8th grade education would be able to conclude that there are about 5 issues that concern voters most. But the media don't like that spin, Bushie said spin the moral values BS.

Another irritating factor. HOW can we throw out the part of the exit polls that said KERRY WON! and ignore that fact when we talk about the moral issue voting? Does not compute.

Yeah,those exit polls were screwed up when they showed Kerry won, but they were NOT screwed up when people voted for "moral values."

F the media. I have unbookmarked the lot of them except for those in the UK.

[kitkatrose]

63. Don't you have to have a soul

to do "soul-searching?"

[Sterling]

64. Isn't their a rule about RW sources on DU?

I hope everyone understands Gannet is a Bush supporting evil empire.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

69. That rule would eliminate almost all mainstream media now. n/t

[progressivebydesign]

65. Hey dumbfuck journalists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Search yourself as to WHY you gave NO time or credence to the millions of voters YET AGAIN disenfranchised in this election!! Or perhaps, you could pull your well coiffed heads out of your asses long enough to INVESTIGATE the illegalities of Bush's war.. or perhaps the millions in tax payer monies used in Bush's campaign. Or perhaps you can investigate the PLAME OUTING. Or maybe you could search your fucking brains for a clue!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:grr:

[proudbluestater]

70. Soul Search This 70% Bush voters think Saddam = 9/11

I just can't get this article out of my head. We live in an alternate reality here. Or just the ONLY available reality left.

Of the millions of issues the media whores should soul search themselves on, THIS IS WHAT THEY PICK?

24/7 coverage of a boob exposed, Scott Peterson, Swift Boat liars, Jessica Simpson's lip synching, etc.

The corporate media has allowed itself to be turned into Entertainment Tonight.

Soul search THAT, whores.

[tavalon]

74. Not to put too fine a point on it, but

soul searching requires that there be a soul to search. Modern journalists are pretty much bereft of integity, incitefulness and yes, soul.

[MGKrebs]

77. Ted Rall speaks for me.

http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/

[demokatgurrl]

78. Do they actually have souls??????