The media's plan for the rest of the election
Betsy's Page
Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, has a post on The Note of how the media is going to cover the last weeks of the election campaign.
<<< How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election:
1. Glowingly profile Speaker-Inevitable Nancy Pelosi, with loving mentions of her grandmotherly steel (see last night's 60 Minutes), and fail to describe her as "ultra liberal" or "an extreme liberal," which would mirror the way Gingrich was painted twelve years ago.
2. Look at every attempt by the President to define the race on his terms as deluded and desperate; increasingly quote Republican strategists saying that the President is hurting the party whenever he enters the fray.
3. Refuse to join the daily morning Ken Mehlman-Rush Limbaugh conference calls, despite repeated invitations.
4. Imbue every Democratic candidate for whom Bill Clinton campaigns with a golden halo.
5. Paint groups that run ads or do turnout for Republican candidates as shadowy, extreme, corrupt, and illegitimate; describe their analogues on the left as valiant underdogs, part of a People's Army (with homage to Rich Lowry).
6. Care more about voter disenfranchisement than voter fraud.
7. Take every Republican quote expressing some trepidation about the outcome and banner it.
8. Drop any pretense of covering good news from Iraq (uhm&.) or good news about the economy, including some upcoming positive macro numbers (Quick, Note readers: name the current Secretary of the Treasury.). LINK
9. Amplify Obama-mania as a metaphor for the Democratic Party being the party of excitement and the future.
10. Fail to follow Bob Novak's analysis of the difference between Democratic and Republican oppo plants. LINK
11. Lock in the CW (which, shockingly, could be wrong) that the winner of two out three Senate races in Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri will control the Senate.
12. Carefully document what appears to strategists in both parties to be the case — while a few incumbent Republicans are clawing their way back into contention (including and especially, perhaps, Tom Reynolds), the number of endangered Republican-held seats is growing, not shrinking. >>>
Check out Hot Air for the link to a Bill O'Reilly interview with Mark Halperin about his concerns that the old media is playing into all the conservative suspicions of their media bias. His twelve examples are all smack on analysis of how the media has been biasing their coverage of the campaign. He seems concerned that the MSM is losing all credibility with conservatives. Well, yeah!
You might remember Halperin as the author of an internal ABC memo in 2004 explaining why ABC should be covering Kerry distortions differently than Bush distortions and not hold both sides equally accountable. He's now an author of a book, The Way to Win, which looks at the supposed Freak Show of how politics works nowadays. Is it too cynical to think that part of his honesty now about the MSM is aimed at getting conservatives to buy his book?
Whatever - we'll see if ABC News eschews such biased tactics as he outlined in his blog posting at The Note or if Halperin is really just having it both ways - mock the MSM but participate fully in all the sorts of coverage he has just mocked.
betsyspage.blogspot.com
abcnews.go.com
hotair.com
drudgereport.com
amazon.com |
