The great reporter Helen Thomas, of roughly 50 years of distinguished service to UPI, one of the very few members of the gaggle with the tenacity, intelligence, and moral compass to confront the slimy McLellan and describe his evasions and lies as such, was subjected to a really obnoxious and abusive line of questioning by one Hugh Hewitt. Phoned up on Hewitt's radio show to discuss Cheney's craven failure to report his hunting accident, Hewitt started asking Thomas whether she owned a gun or supported abortion rights, and speculating that she'd voted for the Dem in each presidential election since 1976; the insinuation being that she exemplified Hewitt's accusation against the "entire White House press corps" of being "biased and liberal", a "liberalism" which consists in failure to like Bush and Cheney -- evidence of effeteness and corruption -- and seeing themselves as arrogant "gods of the universe", who judge but are immune to judgement.
Thomas responded in the old-school way, correctly accusing Hewitt of getting into issues of no bearing of on her or anyone else's ability to report the facts objectively (indeed, adhering to a somewhat romanticized view of her profession, she didn't accuse the gaggle of being too deferential to the dictators and their fascist party).
I thought she was correct here. But to Hewitt's audience, she must have come off as refusing to acknowledge obvious facts, due either to blindness or deliberate dishonesty.
I thought there was a more effective line for her to take: your central claim is that the gaggle is untruthful. You argue that this is somehow due to the corrupting influence of effete tastes (for instance, dislike of Bush). Obviously you have no backup for the causal claim here, so let's test the central claim directly. Can you provide direct proof that the gaggle is untruthful?
The excellent Peter Daou makes a similar point, strongly indicating that no direct proof is likely to appear:
A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess: Prove it. One of the great absurdities of our time is the persistent notion that the traditional media skews left. Reporters buy into it, Democratic strategists and leaders buy into it, and rank and file rightwingers live by it. As I've written previously, the right controls all branches of government, talk radio is dominated by rightwing voices, there's a cable channel devoted to the rightwing perspective (and two others racing to do the same), there's a herd of rightwing pundits spewing anti-left venom across editorial pages, radio, television, the internet, etc., Bush's press conferences are cloying jokefests, and "neutral" journalists echo deep-seated pro-GOP myths.
Despite the glaringly obvious fact that major media narratives favor the right, we get bloggers like this, this, and this attacking the "MSM" for hyping the Cheney hunting scandal. Rather than waste cyber-ink explaining why it's a big deal that the Vice President of the United States shot a man in the face and heart and went to bed without letting the American people know about it, let me share a question I asked of a blogger at Real Clear Politics who questioned my premise about the pro-Bush press:
I know the assertion that [supposedly neutral or liberal] reporters favor rightwing narratives blows your mind; after all, the liberal media fiction is hard-wired into the right's political nervous system. But why should I believe your foregone conclusion that these people are left-leaning? Just because you say it with such conviction? Give me concrete examples of bias, not of negative coverage. (How can there not be negative coverage of the mess in Iraq? Or Katrina? Or the Plame outing? Or the NSA fiasco? Or do you want our media to simply fawn over the government? Is anything less than total pro-Bush propaganda considered media bias?)
This ties in - albeit tangentially - to a recent post by Glenn Greenwald about the Bush-cultism masquerading as conservatism on rightwing blogs. Glenn unmasks the ideological lie at the core of rightwing blogging. Similarly, digging beneath the surface of the anti-media stance of these bloggers reveals a philosophically bankrupt and logically fallacious position. If the definition of media bias is anything critical of the administration, then these bloggers must be advocating for a servile, state-run press. Which, ironically, seems to be where we're heading.
Of course, reporters take some comfort in being attacked from both sides, believing that it somehow justifies their actions and nullifies the complaints.
So here's my challenge to rightwing bloggers who assail the media for liberal bias (and to journalists who think it's all a he-said-she-said pissing match): Back up your claims. With concrete examples of bias. And without the tautological crutch that any story critical of the administration is proof of liberal bias.
I'll back up mine:
++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush and Cheney are infallible --- EXAMPLE: ABC News covered the Cheney hunting incident by downplaying the significance of the weapon itself. ABC reported that "the vice president accidentally shot prominent Texas lawyer Harry Whittington with a pellet gun while hunting for quail." Cheney used a shotgun, not a pellet gun. ABC later altered the story to read, "a shotgun loaded with birdshot." (Which is why we maintain screenshots of all print stories we reference.) This exemplifies a common tendency of the media, namely, to play defense for Bush and his team, downplaying negative news or polls.++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush strong, Dems weak --- EXAMPLE: CNN's Bruce Morton used the VP's shooting to repeat the tired GOP spin that Republicans are tougher than Democrats, and specifically tougher than war hero John Kerry. Morton commented that Bush and Cheney are avid hunters, and contrasted the observation with 2004 Bush campaign talking points by saying Sen. John Kerry "spent time posing with guns" two years ago, and that "voters probably saw more of him pursuing exotic sports, windsurfing and so on." The truth is Kerry has been hunting since the age of 12. As Media Matters points out, "Morton's jab echoed language Cheney used during the 2004 campaign to attack Kerry as effete and elitist."
++ ISSUE: Cheney shooting incident --- NARRATIVE: Bush and Cheney are infallible --- EXAMPLE: Jane Hamsher notes that CBS News ran a provocative news item on Monday, explaining that "Texas authorities are complaining that the Secret Service barred them from speaking to Cheney after the incident." For reasons that are still unexplained, CBS has scrubbed the report from its website without explanation.
Etc. Daou presents 29 other case studies. After a week, no right-wingers have responded to his challenge.
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