Help me with what Frank Rich is saying: "This Time O'Reilly Got It Right"

[DeepModem Mom]

Rich makes some good points about the media, and its shilling for the Bush administration, but uses as the point of departure for his piece CNN's keeping Carville and Begala on air while they work for the Kerry campaign, writing that "Crossfire" and CNN "are now as inextricably bound to the Democrats as Fox is to the Republicans." Can there be no piece of writing in the New York Times or elsewhere, even by Frank Rich, that hits hard truths without gratutitously skewering the victims, Democrats??? I don't get it.

New York Times
FRANK RICH
This Time Bill O'Reilly Got It Right
Published: September 19, 2004

....is the response to an ideological news network like Fox an ideological news network with a liberal slant of its own? CNN, the inventor of 24/7 news, once prided itself on being a straight shooter. Now it and Mr. Carville have argued that the line wasn't blurred here because the liberal "Crossfire" hosts are unpaid, loosey-goosey Kerry advisers and their show is an opinion-mongering screamfest, not a news program. One might also add that with its 4:30 time slot, "Crossfire" has of late been seen only by shut-ins and barflies. Yet as CNN continues its ratings free-fall, humbled by Fox and occasionally by MSNBC as well, "Crossfire" remains one of its few signature brands. No matter how long the overlap between Mr. Carville and Mr. Begala's TV and campaign roles, that brand and CNN itself are now as inextricably bound to the Democrats as Fox is to the Republicans. The network has succeeded in an impossible feat — ceding Mr. O'Reilly the moral high ground. The Bush campaign doesn't have to enlist Fox hosts for its staff since they're willing to whore for it without even being asked....

(After criticizing the news media for failing to provide "hard-hitting trustworthy" news as an alternative to Fox, and generally shilling for the administration, Rich goes on to hit campaign coverage.)

....The W.M.D. flimflam was hardly the last time that government propaganda supplanted journalism. Though the chagrined major newspapers have since worked hard to compensate for their prewar lapses, the electronic media that give most Americans their news have often lagged behind, especially cable. From Jessica Lynch to "Mission Accomplished" to, most recently, the bogus charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, there is a tendency to give administration-favored fiction credibility first, often cementing the spin into fact well before the tough questions are asked (if they're ever asked). It's a damning measure of the news media's failure to provide a persuasive dose of reality as an antidote to Washington fairy tales that so many Americans came to believe that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, not Saudis. A Newsweek poll just two weeks ago shows that 42 percent of Americans (among them, 32 percent of Democrats) still believe that Saddam was "directly involved" in the 9/11 attacks.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, Ben Wasserstein dissected the Swift boat controversy as a case in point of how the process works in the right-wing press. After The Washington Post reported on Aug. 19 that the military records of one of John Kerry's principal Swift boat accusers, Larry Thurlow, "contradicted Thurlow's version of events and confirmed Kerry's," the scoop was either ignored entirely or distorted beyond recognition by The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and every Fox News talking head except one (John Kasich). From there, it was off to the races. Once Fox sets the agenda, and its allies in the administration, talk radio and the Internet ride herd, its rivals want to get in on the act, if only out of ratings envy and sheer inertia. Though the best-selling "Unfit for Command" was the work of a longtime Kerry antagonist and a writer best known for his anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic comments on a right-wing Web forum, its facts were challenged on TV at a far slower pace than the books of Seymour Hersh and Kitty Kelley, whose reporting was targeted in advance by administration talking points handed out before the books could even be read.

In this environment, even a beloved right-wing anecdote of flyweight content, like Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it!," can overwhelm all other headlines in the 24/7 news ethosphere. Afghanistan, tumbling into chaos, has all but fallen off the TV map. So to some extent has Iraq. How many Americans know just how much of the country has been ceded to the insurgents? Perhaps only Armageddon there or in North Korea can change the subject from George W. Bush's National Guard career, a story that has been known since The Boston Globe first reported it in May 2000, and whose embarrassing outline would remain the same even if "60 Minutes" had never done its piece....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/arts/19RICH.html

[RafterMan]

1. I don't understand Rich's accusation

On edit, read this graph:

"Any sideshow that can turn the press itself into the subject, whether it's about typewriter fonts or "Crossfire" hosts doing double duty on the Kerry campaign, serves an administration that would like to distract attention from its defeats in the current war, from Abu Ghraib to Fallujah to Tora Bora. When the press isn't creating its own embarrassments, the administration will step in to intimidate and undermine journalists who don't regurgitate its approved narrative."

Doesn't sound like he's coming down on CNN for keeping Carville and Begala -- he's knocking those two for becomming more ammo for the "liberal media" charge.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Maybe that's it, RM -- (nt)

[NewJeffCT]

3. agreed

it's a pretty damning indictment of the White House and their control of the media, through the RW echo chamber and through sheer intimidation.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Yet, Rich fails to note that CNN is not "liberal" but trying to ape Fox.

In my opinion, so what if Begala and Carville are unpaid advisors to the Kerry campaign; Nofacts Novak has his head up the Bush's administration's ass, defending them, even when he was dead against the war in Iraq. For Novak, it is all about tax cuts, capital gains--the scum must be incredibly wealthy, his greed is obviously boundless.

And then, of course, there is Bill Schneider, of the American Enterprise Institute, who is never identified as such. His fellow member there is none other than Lynne Cheney.

[mikehiggins]

4. "Perhaps only Armageddon"? Its coming, dude

The only question is whether it'll happen before or after the election. I'd bet the Afghan election will tell it all for the world to see.

Failure, failure, failure.

Even FAUX will have to tell the truth.

[GCP]

6. He's attacking the media in general for drinking the WH Koolaid

"At some point after 9/11, the news business jumped the shark and started relaying unchallenged administration propaganda — though with less zeal and showbiz pizazz than Fox. The notorious March 2003 presidential news conference at which not a single probing question was asked by the entire White House press corps heralded the broader Foxification to come.

That was a nice summation.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. "Unfit for Command" author is known for.....

"anti Catholic and anti-Semitic comments"?

News to me. Presumably news to many.

Shouldn't the good guys, so to speak, be exploiting this little known fact to help the K-man with these crucial constituencies?

Paul

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Anyone have info on "Unfit" author? I think there was DU discussion...

but archives search is unavailable, I think, at the moment --

[GCP]

10. Isn't he a Freeper - name of Corsi?

I believe someone brought up some of is old threads on freerepublic.com.
he's a major-league asshole.

[liveoaktx]

9. If, as he says, there is a perception that CNN is inextricably bound with

Dems, it sure is something CNN has been eager to shake off, in its efforts to go after the Fox market share. I believe that's why they are in ratings free fall, because they are alienating the Democrats while not able to compete with FoxNews on their bizarre right-wing agenda.

[redstateblues]

11. That's It-They are trying to get the Faux audience who believes they

are the"Commie News Network". I won't watch CNN anymore because of their current strategy.