One of the reasons I've found it nearly impossible to watch the news of late. These numbers are bad. But I think the point at the end is even more disturbing because it is so true - the anchors are continually parroting inane, wrong and and extreme talking points (that seem to come either from a Republican "think" tank, or badly cribbed notes for a student barely passing a high school Free Enterprise class.)
Posted by armand at January 29, 2009 12:39 PM | TrackBack | Posted to MediaI think the piece misses the most obvious reasons the media continues to give disproportionate time to Republicans: they just came off an eighteen-month period during which Republicans accused literally every network of having a borderline Maoist agenda, and still tend to blame things like Obama's overwhelming victory in the general on media bias rather than on the man's charisma, vision, fresh attitude, and pervasive voter frustration with Republican rule over the past six years. And I think this skew is as much a product of the media wanting to prove just how unbiased they really are as it is of anything else.
That it is largely invariant regardless of who's in power merely suggests that constant demonization of the media by the right is effective at guaranteeing more time to right-wing voices, and the consequent ability to dictate the narrative, as is happening with the bailout.
And every time I hear a Republican talk about deficit spending as an unmitigated evil, I want to scream.
Posted by: moon at January 29, 2009 01:36 PM | PERMALINK