Rush and Newt Are Winning - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Rush and Newt Are Winning


By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, June 4, 2009

A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.

Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina.

Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.

more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303239.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I don't think there's a conservative inclination in the media. Some of it, sure, but overall? No. There's a lot of sensationalims in the media and they're going to cover whatever they think will keep butts in seats and advertising dollars flowing to their corporate accounts. The right win talking heads have certainly ratcheted up their rhetoric since the election, but all in all, I think it's having a negative impact on the GOP.

Part of the reason the GOP has been crushed in the last two elections is due to the fact that people are TIRED of hearing this same old hate and fear that (thanks to the talking heads) have become synonymous with the GOP.

Seems to me the more these wingnuts speak, the more Democrats get elected. I'm okay with that math.

you must not have watched the "coverage" of the anti-Iraq war protests. And the entire coverage in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.

you did miss the protests of Bush's first inauguration (the images were suppressed in newspapers, too.) Mark Danner wrote about this.

you must have missed that, last week I think it was that TPM noted this, only republicans were on Sunday talk shows.

you must have missed the lack of analysis into statements made by right wingers that are devoid of facts that get hyped as reality (the "pro-life" bullshit is only one of those.)

you must not have noticed that right wing pundits who have been proven wrong on foreign policy issues (such as Bill Kristol) are not held accountable for their wrong-headedness by, say, having the news outlets evaluate whether it is in the public interest to promote someone who has been entirely wrong for nearly a decade and then pretend that he has some worthwhile argument to make.

you must have missed, why, yes, you did, the fact that Greg Palast, and American journalist, is not on American tv (tho he is on a BBC "60 minutes" type program, even when Palast published an article that rightly noted a coup was on the way in Ven. in 2002... that was in Jan while the coup was in April.

you must have missed the way that Gary Webb was hounded out of work for telling the truth about the CIA and cocaine smuggling, or the way that Robert Parry became persona non-grata after he revealed Iran-Contra.

You must have missed that Oliver North, who admitted to treason, is on Fox News and is presented as a patriot when, in fact, he noted his loyalty was to a right wing junta.

You must have missed the way that the 2000 election theft was plastered over with "move on" when Republican operatives, not citizens, disrupted the vote counting process in Florida - election interference is seemingly a-okay if you're a republican.

If you get news information from U.S. media outlets, you are being lied to, plain and simple.

I think most people see what they want to see when they watch what passes for news these days. The right says the media is full of radical liberals, the left says the media is full of neocons. They're both right. If you're a raving neocon you probably think Faux news is the only station that you can watch. The far left seems to view everything that isn't KO and Rachel as being tainted by conservatives.

the things I noted were facts not opinion.

I read the BBC and the Guardian to get accurate information during the Bush years. that has nothing to do with left or right. that has to do with facts.

In other words, lies are not a matter of opinion when they are verifiable and yet are suppressed (the Jessica Lynch propaganda story is another one of those.)

you do think there's a difference between someone's opinion and facts that can verify whether or not something occurred, right?

As Ron Suskind noted in his book about the White House, they and the right wing pretend their claims are reality.

but they're not, as has been proven again and again. part of the problem is that you can find a way to say that opinion and fact are the same thing. that's not using any critical thinking skills- that's accepting whatever bullshit someone tosses at you.

The MSM is profoundly conservative. Oh, they've had to concede a little ground to Obama's enormous charisma, but Obama was long ago forced to play their game by governing as a sensible conservative. He's wily enough to resist corporate rule, and even to pull back from it a bit, but he won't be president forever; the far right will ensure that his successor is a bit more tame.

Rush, Newt and their ilk have won by tilting America so far rightward, in a process that was old before we'd heard of them.

Nor do I think Obama is governing as a sensible conservative. I guess that's a matter of where you fall on the political spectrum.

Rush, Newt and their ilk seem to have dropped the GOP into a hole so deep that the Republican party has no idea how to climb out of it. From my standpoint, Obama is pretty much exactly what I expected and I think he's doing a good job.

...and single-payer gets serious play, when the class war is openly acknowledged rather than denied, when the horrors of war are discussed before we initiate it, then the MSM won't be conservative.

These are among the herd of elephants in our living room, which (most of) our pundits studiously ignore. Instead, they fill their on-air hours with trivia and propaganda.

that coverage of the tea baggers?

The media made it look like millions of people were protesting in the streets... The reality? far from "millions" hit the streets - more like 20,000 to 40,000 total

And when there were hundreds of thousands protesting the war... Not a TV camera to be found...

Oh, there is a media bias alright and it tilts hard to the right.

The tea baggers were sensationalistic news. Did you sit there watching it? Then you're exactly what the MSM wants. With a handful of exceptions, the media could give a shit about politics unless it keeps viewers viewing.

I guess I didn't see it the way you did, because what I took from the coverage (except on Faux) was that lots of media outlets were a little disappointed that for the most part, crowd turn out was lower than expected, and very little happened other than a bunch of wingnuts with misspelled signs wandering aimlessly around.

I saw quite a bit of war protest coverage. At the same time, the wars have been going on seven years now...they're old news, no longer interesting to Joe-Sixpack. Heck, if you just landed your alien spaceship in Boston and went to a bar to watch TV you'd have no idea there were a pair of wars going on, but you'd know that a big company had filed bankruptcy and you'd know whatever sports star got caught juicing this week and who had gotten kicked off Dancing with the Stars or whatever big reality show is going on right now.

With the exception of channels like Faux who have an obvious political stance, I don't see anything but a constant lean towards sensational, pop-culture "news."

They included a complete set of the WWII years, 1941-1945..

Every single month there was at least one article and often more than one on the war effort, maps, combat photography, articles about scrap iron drives, war production and Victory Gardens.

This led me to research the rest of the media as well, without fail even small town papers had something about the war in every issue.

The current media blackout on the wars is deliberate and politically motivated, IMO.

sure, they make noise, but no one listens.....aside from those of us on the left.

They are winning at getting their opinion heard. But it doesn't appear to be moving opinions in the public at all. If anything it's simply reaffirming peoples opinions on why they voted for Obama. That's not a great political win if your a conservative.

because the news outlets subvert democracy by giving a megaphone to the right wing, a part of this nation that is a minority and that is out of step with the will of the American people.

I dropped cable tv because of the news program lies. I refuse to pay for their existence.

just like they touted the "pro-life" majority in gallup - when, as that SAME POLL indicated, an OVERWHELMING majority of Americans support abortion rights. More than 75% of people in this nation support abortion rights.

instead of noting this FACT - they played up the use of the words "pro-life." I'm pro-life. that's why I support Roe v Wade and legal abortions.

he's a bit eccentric on this one. Sure, it was a form of snookering to get Limbaugh's face pressed into all-things-hate & GOP (no props for belling the cat that's fine), but it's past time for Limbaugh to start taking responsibility for incendiary, ego driven gibberish in either event; E.J. Dionne would do well to wait a bit longer for the day when we begin scrawling 35lbs of clown-whore make-up onto Limbaugh's fat beady eyed face and *then* by extension the GOP...I know I can't wait,

And Newt was compelled to use his 'cubic zirconia mind' to tap dance back & away from his racist Sotomayer comments now if that's *winning the media war* then I guess that's what that is but I don't see it that way as time is going to fill in that blank, and so...

As much as I anticipate E.J.'s work, this is a form of journalism I care less for as it isn't even really news, or imo for that matter commentary so much as it's a paid-for-by-the-inch throw/toss-it-off piece with a missive quality, maybe zapped from a taxi in Manhatten stuff like that; or a DC watering hole stuff like that too eh screw it - maybe we can't all be Sebastian Junger

I'll wait for his next piece but little other than eccentricity is able to come from putting sly, insidious, hate-filled, no-bid crony war profiteers and their brain dead beady eyed assassins on a par with America herself is not right it's wrong

librul media? My ass.