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Now Would Be A Great Time For the MSM to Prove It’s Still Relevant

by Glynnis MacNicol | 2:45 pm, August 14th, 2009

» 5 comments

Yesterday on our Office Hours show guest Garrett Graff noted that every August when congressman and senators return to their states and some story arises out of a public disaffection over the issue of the day and grabs the national spotlight. This year it is the Health Care debate. Last year it was…well it was the campaign. There was no summer news slump last year to hijack (unless you count the brief appearance of the Montauk Monster!). Both the conventions landed at the end of the summer and it was full steam ahead throughout the weeks leading to them. The summer before? Well believe it or not that was the campaign also. It’s hard to recall now, but the presidential debates started eight months before the primaries officially began in January ’08, and they kept the MSM fairly occupied throughout.

So what was the summer slump storyline of 2006? No idea. A quick scan of TVNewser’s headlines from August 2006 (which give a sense of what the cablers were talking about at the time) show that no one story dominated. A glance at Frank Rich‘s columns from the month are equally non-revealing. Point being, it’s been quite some time since a summer news story high-jacked the national headlines the way the shouting over the Town Hall-Health Care debacle has managed to do. The ratings gods must be very grateful!

The question now, of course, is does anyone actually know what they are shouting about? The proposed Health Care bill is currently 1000 plus pages of policy wonkiness. That’s a lot of complicated reading. That’s a lot of opportunity for certain people to paint it in broad strokes. It’s also a lot of opportunity for people in need of a narrative to create one! But has it gone too far? A lot of people think so. Namely Glenn Beck‘s advertisers who did not take too kindly to his comments that the President was racist and the Health Plan was actually a secret eugenics program. In fact Fox News as a whole is lately coming under some fire for inciting the unrest (Gawker’s John Cook had a most excellent piece on this the other day: “It’s as if there had been a 24-hour cable news channel in 1981 devoted to coverage of Jodie Foster, and what it would take for someone to get her attention.”). That said it’s not like the other cablers are adding much insight beyond a lot of additional chatter/yelling. MSNBC and CNN are just as guilty of latching on to the town hall “controversies” as anyone. You know what would be great right now? Some MSM intervention.

There is so much disinformation flying around at the moment wouldn’t it be great to have someone in the media who had at their disposal the time and resources, step in and separate fact from fiction. And we mean really separate it in a slow and deliberate way. Like, say, a Sunday Times in-depth expose about what we are hearing on TV vs. what is actually written down in the bill. Or, how about a serious rebuttal of Sarah Palin and Senator Grassley’s assertions. Not just what they are saying, but what they are saying wrong. And why isn’t someone in the MSM calling out Fox (Keith Olbermann doesn’t count, in fact he should probably be added to the list)? What about devoting five minutes of every network newscast next week to truth squading the Death Panel claims! This is what the MSM does well: a longer, slower, prepared news report. Details! Digging! Everyone still employed by newspapers and networks is so keen to tell us that newspapers and networks are still relevant, wouldn’t now be a great time to demonstrate that fact? With facts? People will listen. The MSM is down, but not out. People — meaning bloggers, cablers, and town hall attendees — still listen to what they say. We’ve seen a bit of what they are capable of today with the NYT expose of Betsy McCaughey. It would be nice to see that “public trust” leveraged in a more consistent and useful way while we still have it at our disposal.

Bill O'Reilly, Brian Williams, fox news, Glenn Beck, Katie Couric, keith olbermann, msnbc, New York Times

TfT

Truth be known, MSM has harmed themselves so badly, even if they did try to present “fact from fiction” not many would believe them.

Insofar as that “death panel” stuff — as you know that was regarding the “end of life counseling” that was in the bill (despite claims it never was) and has now been removed from the Senate version of the bill. So, perhaps the term “death panel” was incendiary, the legislative language associated with it, is now gone.

Furthermore, the rumors about all those folks canceling adverts from Beck turns out to be false as well, or some of the companies have reversed themselves. In my own discussions with SCJohnson and GEICO, both have informed me that they have not pulled ads from Beck’s show. Hmmmm, who to believe? The company spokes people or the MSM?

Why not use this site to start reporting facts rather than fiction. It’s as good a place to start than any.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Fred-Farrar/1409154527 Fred Farrar

Funny how Glynnis MacNicolonly mentions people against the Health Care legislation as being worth checking out.

With all those 1,000+ wonky pages, Glynis, how about someone in the MSM (ANYONE!!) telling us what actually IS in it — rather than simply swatting at political enemies of yours?

Maybe it is time for the MSM to get off its arrogant ass and start reporting the news. Not what it would like to be the news, but what is actually happening. Unvarnished with its inside the Beltway cynical, arrogant comments. (It might also help if it would collectively stop describing anti-Health Care protesters as Nazis and goons. I don’t remember anything negative descriptions of anti-Bush demonstrators — some of whom, by the way, carried depictions of the then-President as a Nazi.)

But what an we expect from a “reporter” who goes back to check Frank Rich columns to see what was in the news? A glance at his columns almost any month is unrevealing, for goodness sake. Good, facile writer. Often a fun read. And so predictable in his politics to make him superfluous.

Ms. MacNicol checked Frank Rich columns to see what was happening? Therein lies a major problem for her and for anyone who bothers to read her.

Mediaite is still in its infancy, but Ms. MacNicol is doing it no favors with her shrill and one-sided view of what she considers the news. But then that is probably just another reason why the old-line MSM is dying an amazingly quick and — outside the insider MSM circles Ms. MacNicol appears almost luridly besotted with — remarkably unlamented death.

The MSM has done a horrible job in recent decades. Its “journalists” have come to think of themselves as personalities, as stars in their own right. It has fallen in love with entertainment as news, and has continually shied away from its job. For example, it didn’t give us any in-depth coverage of the last administration until we were in a war.

Just like it hasn’t given us any real coverage of the what IS in the Health Care proposals or the unprecdented and massive spending of this administration. You can blame FNC and Beck, but as Edward R. Morrow said quoting Sheakespeare during another dark time for the MSM, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.”

“Journalists” have allowed shlock stories, mega corporations and sales people to take over the news business. They have elbowed their way onto the cable news channels they love to disparage.

And this is what we get. Fewer viewers, fewer nbewspapers, far fewer professional journalists and a much poorer nation..

Oh: and tripe like this shallow, vapid, shrill column from Glynnis MacNicol.
http://www.abramsresearch.com/ Dan Abrams

Glynnis,

First of all, many MSM news organizations would say they have been “truth squadding” the health care proposals for weeks, even though you are certainly right that in a perfect world they would do more of it.

If they do exactly what you suggest and call out the Beck’s and Palin’s of the world . . . using what appear to be facts. . . I promise that will just lead to a new narrative and round of attacks on the MSM for bias. (There is also the concern that even by knocking down some of the more ridiculous allegations, you weirdly give them MSM credibility.) In the end this is utopian. Its so easy to say that the mainstream media ought to spend more time digging on the most important issues of the day. Everyone loves to say that. But those who don’t trust the verbal archeologists are never going to believe the facts that were supposedly “found.”

It is frustrating because the MSM ought to dig, and deep, and often they do, but the issue is not really time and resources as you suggest. Its the fear of being accused of bias. Nothing angers and scares MSM news organizations (outside of the cable news world) more than being accused of taking a side. That fear paralyzes them. Sure facts should be facts and its one of the most maddening things to me about television news . . . that everything . . .no matter how ludicrous, becomes two sided.

Bottom line . its -a lot- easier said then done.
TfT

“Its the fear of being accused of bias. ”

Why are they so afraid of the truth? The media IS biased…the simplest example is the “name the party” game consumers have to play when the media covers (which it rarely does) anything even remotely scurrilous about a democrat.
libra blue

@Fred Farrar, You are so right! The same people that are complaining that the town hall protesters are spreading false rumors about the health care plan don’t even know what it says themselves. Worse yet, the government officials that are supporting it and are willing to vote for it haven’t read it , but we are supposed to trust in their decision! The dissenters are not the only ones painting “broad strokes” in regards to the health care plan.

If the MSM spent as much time telling the American people about what is really in this health care plan as they do complaining about and working against the protesters, we would all know exactly what it says. Some of them are supporting it because it came out of their precious Obama White House.

The MSM has lost all respectability, it is controlled by arrogant overpaid celebrities whose only contact with average Americans is when they see the tops of their heads go by as they look down from the balconies of their exclusive penthouse dwellings.

I also thought it was rather amusing that MacNicol sited Frank Rich as a respectable source, but then again isn’t she one of the Huffo hacks?

I have high hopes for Mediaite, but maybe they should consider posting more commentary by intelligent people like yourself rather than from people like MacNicol and Danielle Belton.