The American Mainstream Media is Done
I’m glad to see Sarah Palin finally responding to the anonymous critics, allegedly from the McCain campaign, who have been criticizing her. They’ve (or she…former staffer Nicole Wallace is suspected of being the cowardly, anonymous source) said things, from Gov. Palin wearing a bathrobe after a shower (the horror!), to not knowing about Africa.
The mainstream media is so far gone, I don’t think reporters will even try to rehabilitate the profession. Even the most left-wing observer now admits it, even if the benefits of such bias are grand. Everyone knows the media is biased, and now it’s just a fact; it’s no longer the conspiracy over coffee cake.
Nearly every major newspaper and network has announced layoffs in the newsroom over the last year or two. New York Times stock has been reduced to junk status. Katie Couric has run CBS News completely into the ground.
And I’ve turned Dan Rather into a verb: “The journalist Dan Rathered the facts,” meaning the journalist went with dubious sources s/he knew were not legit, just to have the story that didn’t exist.
So ding dong, the media is almost dead, and it has only itself to blame.
But the latest Palin nonsense once again illustrates the ongoing double standard.
Gov. Palin responded to the gossip by saying she couldn’t defend herself against an anonymous source without knowing the whole story. All she could say is the nutty allegations weren’t true. Then she returned to trying to run the state of Alaska.
When John Edwards’ affair and probable love child began to shape into a real story, the mainstream media ignored it. They couldn’t use an anonymous source. In fact they buried that story until they were forced to mention it because the entire country was talking about it and they looked like complete idiots. PIctures of Edwards with the baby, with the mistress, and a police report detailing his freakout when he was caught redhanded in a hotel and barricaded himself in the bathroom were all over the place, and the MSM still claimed it couldn’t use a story that originated from….horrors, the National Enquirer.
Reminder that the Enquirer was a fine source when they reported that OJ Simpson had lied about owning a pair of shoes that implicated him in the murders, and they even posted the pictures - taken by Enquirer photographers, perhaps the same ones who took the Edwards photos - on the evening network news. And on front pages across America.
Another example of the media’s blatant double standard: making Sarah Palin’s alleged (which she denies) confusion about Africa the continent and South Africa the country into the front page story for days.
When Barack Obama made his lack of basic geography known by commenting about the states that border his home state of llinois, the media completely ignored it. A person had to go to blogs and YouTube to learn about it. And this wasn’t an anonymous source: it was Obama himself saying Arkansas borders Illinois and not knowing Kentucky does.
That’s his home state! But the MSM protected him and it’s likely most of the country doesn’t know he’s made a number of gaffes like that, even though they’re all over YouTube.
The Christian Science Monitor has closed down its presses and moved its operation to the web. In a few years, the New York Times, LA Times and other papers that are already sinking fast will shut their doors and blame outside forces. The Paul Krugmans of the media will be bitterly complaining as they stand in line to file for unemployment benefits. They’ll blame the Internet, a right-wing conspiracy, and probably George W. Bush (because he has his hands in everything according to them).
But they’ll never have the courage to look in the mirror and accept that they’ve done this to themselves. The ship started to sink, and instead of trying to clean up their acts and plug the credibility holes, they blamed everyone else for their failings.
Yes, the Internet played a large role in the downfall of the mainstream media. The American masses were no longer dependent on knowing what the media wanted them to know. They could go to the Internet and learn that there was a lot more news out there that should have been covered, but wasn’t, because the media didn’t want anyone knowing certain things.
The media wasn’t working for the government as Pravda and Izvestia did for the Soviet government, but it had an agenda all its own. If news didn’t fit in with that agenda, they found stories that did. And if the story didn’t go their way, they learned to Dan Rather the facts so it did.
Thanks to the Internet, the American masses began to learn exactly what the media has been up to all these years, and they began finding other sources of news.
Poor Katie Couric tried desperately to come up with new tricks: a weekly commentary from people like Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh; allowing viewers to vote for which feel-good story they would see the following Friday; an obvious booming Walter Cronkite announcing her name at the start of each night’s broadcast.
Even Walter Cronkite couldn’t bring the credibility Katie needed. She tried new hairdos, new suits, even wearing glasses in a last-ditch effort to look smart.
if she would have taken the time to read the Internet or talk to Americans, she might have learned the wardrobe changes didn’t matter. What mattered is that CBS and the other outlets have lost their credibility and they are has beens in American society.
It’s too late to save the American media. The only thing left to do is watch with pity as Katie and friends resort to nonsense to try and stay afloat. Or if you have a cruel streak, simply pass the popcorn and enjoy the show.
