RealClearPolitics take on the liberal and conservative
blogosphere's coverage of Nick Berg: - From: Gina Vener
Friday, May 14 2004
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COVERING NICK BERG: The Washington Times reports the press is being accused of giving short shrift to the Nick Berg story while continuing to flood the zone on the scandal at Abu Ghraib. This isn't surprising at all. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to media bias knows that the treatment of the two stories was entirely predictable.
To me the real story is how Nick Berg's murder has been covered in the blogosphere. Why? Because in addition to being a vastly bigger place with infinitely more diverse viewpoints than you'll find in any newsroom across the country, the blogosphere makes no claims of being objective.
There are no editors, no deadlines, no external pressures that color or shape the views of the author. The only restraints on partisanship, political correctness, and even decency are those that each blogger places on him or herself. In other words, in the blogosphere you get unvarnished opinion, and you learn what people really think about things.
So I've been fascinated by the different reactions of the big blogs. I read three liberal-leaning blogs regularly: Atrios, Daily Kos, and Josh Marhsall. They're the biggest, the most-widely read, and certainly the most influential lefty blogs around.
As of early this morning, here is how they've covered the Berg story. Atrios devoted one post to the story (here). Daily Kos has devoted two posts (here and here). Josh Marshall devoted zero posts to the story, but he did post an email exchange with a reader yesterday explaining why he had skipped over the story (here).
Both Atrios and Marshall take the line that Berg's murder was an outrage and, well, there just isn't much more to say about it than that. (You certainly don't get that impression if you read the coverage at the three biggest conservative-leaning blogs Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and The Corner).
Marshall goes a step further, however, rebuking his reader and telling him "you're not in a position to judge what I think based on my silence." This is a colossal red herring (not to mention an insult to his reader) and Marshall knows it.
People are judged by their silence all the time, and the amount of space one devotes to issues on their blog (even if it isn't a "journal of record") is a good indication of what they find interesting and relevant.
For example, I suppose we could have skipped commenting on the whole Trent Lott affair (the one Marshall covered so thoroughly, by the way) and excused ourselves for it by saying something like, "gee, what Lott said was wrong, but there's not much more to say about it." We didn't do that, however, because we knew it was a story that demanded our attention and that people would judge us and make assumptions about us if we didn't voice an opinion.
Kos lack of comment is more understandable, since he's already told us what he thinks about civilian contractors working in Iraq ("I feel nothing over the death of merceneries...Screw them.")
But the context of his post is still instructive, because Kos quickly draws the conclusion that Berg's murder wasn't the fault of the monsters in the video but of the Bush administration:
So no, the prison abuse didn't cause Berg's horrific murder. Bush's (inept) War, in all its glory, did. The Neocon agenda, in all its folly, did. The war cheerleaders now trying to use this for propaganda purposes, in all their idiocy, did.
Congrats. Your war spirals ever out of control. Good luck trying to wash the blood out of your hands.
It's not that those on the left, both in the mainstream press and the blogosphere, don't think Nick Berg's murder was outrage. They do. It's just that they think the abuse of prisoners in Iraq is the real outrage and they don't want anything to interrupt the narrative of Americans being seen as the victimizers rather than the victims.
The difference between the two, however, is that the mainstream press is obligated to give the Nick Berg story coverage, even if it is just lip service. Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, are under no such obligation, and we've seen the results - they've given the Nick Berg story no service at all. As I said, in the blogosphere, you learn what people really think. - T. Bevan 11:45 am
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