PressThink: "Most of them are not ideologically driven; they just want to get on the front page."

"Most of them are not ideologically driven; they just want to get on the front page."

Huckenfreude is one case. "Like the social conservatives who deserve a seat on the bus but shouldn’t be allowed to drive it, the yahoos who think the press is a tool of the Democratic party are needed but should not be heeded by conservatives in power."

If you’ve been paying attention you know that Mike Huckabee’s rise is bringing out the contempt for social conservatives and evangelicals among the conservative elite and its ecosphere, as Mark Ambinder calls it. John Cole (“Enjoy your new GOP, folks…”) and Andrew Sullivan (“This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it…”) pounced on the squirming shown as Huckabee climbed in the polls during December. Arianna has written about the reaping and sowing. Steve Benen and Kevin Drum too.

Watching this pattern, The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat defined Huckenfreude as “pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee.” (And “Huckenfreude” is fun to say.) Some particularly good examples of that outrage are Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal and Rich Lowry in the National Review. But also see James Joyner.

“For the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration.”

I would like to report on a different—and perhaps subtler—instance of this same contempt by conservative elites for yahoos in their own coalition. My case involves not the views of Republican candidates but attitudes toward the press.

Some of the attitudes I have in mind were well expressed by John Hinderaker of the conservative blog Powerline in December of 2005. I think it is accurate to call this a political passion among a portion of the Republican coalition: the new media right, or that part of the base that has its own microphone. The context was this article in the Washington Post featuring military blogger Bill Roggio that badly mangled some key facts about him. Good, solid flashpoint material…

The Post’s reporters are part of a lavishly funded and monolithic media effort to misreport the Iraq war for the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration. Notwithstanding their near monopoly, the liberal media’s reporting is so patently biased and inaccurate that the mere presence of a reporter on the scene who is not part of their guild, and does not share their commitment to the well-being of the Democratic Party, sends them into a panic. Pathetic.

The virtues of direct speech: The press is monolithic, liberal, dedicated to bringing down Bush, and committed to the well-being of the Democratic Party. Hinderaker in 2006: “The liberal media are determined to drag the carcass of the Democratic Party across the finish line, come Hell or high water.”

“How do you deal with them when they’re all liberal?”

Compare that attitude, versions of which are a commonplace for the online right and talk radio worlds, to the observations of Dan Bartlett, formerly one of Bush’s closest aides, in a recent interview with Texas Monthly upon his return to Austin and private life:

I get asked the question all the time: How do you deal with them when they’re all liberal? I’ve found that most of them are not ideologically driven. Do I think that a lot of them don’t agree with the president? No doubt about it. But impact, above all else, is what matters. All they’re worried about is, can I have the front-page byline? Can I lead the evening newscast?

News is traveling from the Bush team to the base. “Most of them are not ideologically driven; they just want to get on the front page.” Bartlett wouldn’t even throw a conceptual bone in talk radio or TownHall’s direction, where the notion that reporters are both liberal and ideologically driven is part of the political religion of your new GOP: a common grievance, which, when joined with other grievances similarly shaped, forms a flexible politics of resentment that candidates can tap.

Bartlett’s broad portfolio included White House communications and press policy; he was speaking from experience when he told the base that its common sense was cracked because it didn’t account for the motivations of reporters. And that’s not all he said that was a bit contemptuous. Texas Monthly asked Bartlett whether he would respond first to Dan Balz, the top political reporter for the Washington Post, or Chris Cillizza, political blogger for the Post. Bartlett said he would favor Balz because he is on more platforms, and thus more influential. And then…

Bartlett: The question might not be as much Chris versus Dan as maybe, “Is it Dan Balz or one of the guys at Power Line?”
Yeah, or what if Hugh Hewitt called?

Bartlett: That’s when you start going, “Hmm …” Because they do reach people who are influential.

Well, they reach the president’s base.

Bartlett: That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

“They regurgitate exactly!” No filter. No back talk. We like that. We cultivate that. But when it comes to Hugh Hewitt’s and Powerline’s core beliefs about the “elite” media and the way it operates, all the “wing of the Democratic Party” talk, Bartlett acknowledges the popularity of it, but says: no, that’s not how it works.

Then he more or less affirms a view journalists have of themselves! In culture war terms, this is like joining the other side. Leonard Downie, editor of the Washington Post, put it this way, “The most common bias I find in our profession is the love of a good story.” That’s what Bartlett says he found. Reporters want something with a certain “pop” that will land them on the front page or the top of the newscast. And that’s their bias.

“I’m not sure I’ve talked about the liberal media.”

Karl Rove did the same thing when asked about the cultural right’s operational view of the press. He refused, then endorsed the profession’s view of itself. In 2005 Rove gave a lecture at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. It was named for Richard Harwood, former editor and ombudsman at the Washington Post. The theme was the executive and the press corps. The Post’s Dana Milbank was there.

“I’m not sure I’ve talked about the liberal media,” Rove said when a student inquired — a decision he said he made “consciously.” The press is generally liberal, he argued, but “I think it’s less liberal than it is oppositional.”
The argument — similar to the one that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his recent book — is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target. “Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat,” Rove said.

“Less liberal than it is oppositional [to] those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat.” No one is more of a warrior than Rove. Attacking those who lean liberal, that’s his political bread and butter. And yet here he is breaking with the base when it would have cost him nothing to support its common sense of the matter, just as it would have been easy and unremarkable for Bartlett to agree: “Sadly, an ideologically-driven press has been against us. They’ve always resented president Bush because he doesn’t treat them with the proper deference… ” Piece of cake!

Like Bartlett, but more so, Rove takes the view Washington journalists have of themselves: tough (“oppositional”) on everyone, Republican or Democrat. He even used the pro newsroom’s own cliches: “afflict the comfortable.” Appreciating the nod to ancient wisdom, Dana Milbank replied in kind: Karl, your view is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target.

“We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop.”

What’s going on here? (You tell me; that’s what comment threads are for.)

One answer would be, for conservatives who have actually been in power, the liberal media thesis is a bit like the theory of intelligent design is for Rich Lowry and Peggy Noonan: an intellectual embarrassment. It’s important to have those who passionately believe it as part of your coalition. They can do some serious damage to the opposition, so you want them “on” their game and active. But you can’t operate with their press think. Like the social conservatives who deserve a seat on the bus but shouldn’t be allowed to drive it, the yahoos who think the press is a tool of the Democratic party are needed but should not be heeded by conservatives in power.

Another answer is that Bartlett and Rove think like the Washington Post’s Leonard Downie because they have become (Washington) insiders themselves. And look, Newsweek just hired Rove as a columnist, so the cycle is complete.

I lean toward a slightly more complicated explanation. It starts with the words of David Addington, describing the expansion of executive power led by Vice President Cheney: “We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop.” The important thing about the press was to keep it from becoming that larger force. But it’s not hard, Rove and Bartlett were saying.

Having a pipeline directly to your supporters in new media is vital. They carry the message down the line. And when they pound on the liberal media for bias, it’s great for our side, because it does put the press on its heels and raise the cost for challenging our public story. Meanwhile, we’re going about the infinitely more important business of giving the president the powers he needs. Opposing that would be hard; the press would have to connect a lot of dots, keep at it for years, and risk charges of being one-sided and unfair if the coverage continued.

Reporters need to feel “oppositional” to both parties, a thorn in the side of office holders everywhere, but they also love a juicy story their rivals don’t have, and they have a weakness for the inside-dopester, savvy style. By learning these simple things about them we can keep them from trying to stop us on the much larger plane of action where the White House has to be seriously engaged: the information battlefield in the global war on terror.

Posted by Jay Rosen at December 29, 2007 1:01 AM Print

You've written many times about the administration's efforts toward marginalizing the press, and the contempt in which Bush especially and the administration in general appear to hold the press. Rove's comments in particular, and Bartlett's to an only slightly lesser degree, pretty well reflect that contempt more than any dissing of the "liberal press" bloodhounds on the right.

Consider the portrait Rove and Bartlett jointly paint: reporters are narcicisstic obstructionists whose interests lie only in self-aggrandizement ("can I have the front-page byline?") and the satisfaction that comes from being primarily a nuisance ("to be a constant thorn of those in power") rather than a reporter ("discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth"). And then consider that Milbank, at least, seems to find some redeeming value in that portrait.

(Although the grammar in that 'thorn' quote suggests, no doubt inadvertently, that reporters are thorns wielded by those in power rather than ones stuck in the powerful's paw, which as it happens is all too often closer to the truth.)

You and I have discussed the lack of institutional memory on the part of the press—that inability or unwillingness to "connect a lot of dots, keep at it for years". This administration's penchant for generating dots, piling scandal upon disaster upon scandal, has ameliorated the failure of the press to recognize the pattern because the landscape is now all dots, all the time, and readers, the public, have made Bush the most enduringly unpopular president in history as a result.

But Rove and Bartlett and others involved in handling the press can't ultimately be unhappy about their results: the fact that no important newspaper has called for the impeachment of Bush or Cheney speaks ever so loudly to the unwillingness of reporters, and certainly editors, to synthesize a pattern from hundreds of similar stories about hundreds of similar excesses or incompetencies.

A case in point is Robert Wexler's stunningly successful and all but invisible effort to gain support for impeachment hearings aimed at Cheney. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post would publish an op-ed from Wexler and fellow representatives Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baldwin laying out the case for impeachment. (It was finally published by the Philadelphia Enquirer, nearly two weeks after the three members of Congress wrote it). And neither paper has done a story about the effort, which has attracted some 250,000 signatures in support; the only paper that has written a story on the drive is Wexler's home district Miami Herald (appropriately, part of the McClatchy chain, which still favors skeptical, analytical reporting).

Rove and Bartlett have to love that.

I don't see contempt in Bartlett's comments about right-wing blogs or talk radio; he's simply describing the ideal reporter/analyst, a la Judith Miller and Michael Gordon at the Times, or Joe Klein at Time magazine: someone with whom you have a relationship and who trusts you enough to repeat uncritically what you tell them. And who gets the front page anyway.

Posted by: weldon berger at December 29, 2007 2:52 PM | Permalink

Wrt Huckabee:
He's one of what is known as a Walmart Republican, tough on high-profile social issues and in favor of government programs. Social conservatives in favor of receiving government largesse.
For most conservatives, social conservatism is part of the package, but not the biggest, and Huckabee has dropped the biggest.

Washington insiders have to butter each others' bread, so they can't very well say what they think in some cases.

Roggio has no proof for the MSM's motivation. He does have, however, on-the-ground experience about the MSM's consistent misreporting. He wonders, as do many, what the motivation for misreporting is. Occam's razor points at a desire to bring down the Bush administration. TO put it another way, if they wanted to bring down the Bush administration, what would they do differently?
Neo-neocon thinks it's because the MSM sees themselves as Woodsteins and everybody above the rank of assistant dogcatcher as Nixon.
One poster spoke of doing some adjunct work at a J-school. He asked the Kids what their goal was. To a person, the answer was, "to make a difference". Which means, if the facts don't exactly fit the needed narrative, you fudge. That hasn't happened hardly at all.

"oppositional" is all very well, but the degree is in question. Even-up?

What you don't understand is that, from the outside, one journo's crime taints you all. You don't get to pretend Dan Rather never happened and so nobody is allowed to view the rest of you with distrust.

Jason, our sometime military commentator, is not going to be on any social-network-reporting Rolodex any time soon. Because he knows stuff the journos would rather not get into the story. Ditto anybody else who actually knows things that might screw the narrative.

The horse is long, long out of the barn. Incestuous chin-pulling isn't going to make the public any more likely to trust you.

You have to start doing real journalism again.

Ooops. I mean you have to start doing real journalism.

Maybe you could start with a copy of Until Proven Innocent.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at December 30, 2007 11:04 PM | Permalink

Weldon (welcome back to PressThink, man!) writes:

Consider the portrait Rove and Bartlett jointly paint: reporters are narcicissistic obstructionists whose interests lie only in self-aggrandizement ("can I have the front-page byline?") and the satisfaction that comes from being primarily a nuisance ("to be a constant thorn of those in power") rather than a reporter ("discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth"). And then consider that Milbank, at least, seems to find some redeeming value in that portrait.

Michael:

That's the thing which should disturb Dr. Rosen; not that Bartlett and Rove hold this opinion of the media, but that Milbank, a representative of the media, endorses that opinion -- without appearing to realize that it's a criticism.

I didn't make it explicit, but I do think that Milbank's embrace of Rove's description of the press was disturbing-- and unintentionally revealing. You can call us narcissistic and self-aggrandizing and we'll accept that and maintain our self-respect, just don't call us ideological, for we cannot accept that and maintain who we are.

Dana Milbank in not someone I trust with interpretations of what the press is actually doing. But he is a very representative figure for the Washington press tribe.

Michael, Sir: if the "voiced" GOP base--activists, talk radio, right wing blogs, conservative opinion writers--does not believe that the press is ideologically driven to assist Democrats, well... (trying to think of how to put this...) it has kept this belief very well hidden for the last six years while loudly proclaiming the opposite. Why would it intentionally mislead us?

In short, I find your contention counter-factual in the extreme. And I repeat what I said in the post. Hinderacker's imagery, describing journalists' "commitment to the well-being of the Democratic Party," is an accurate representation of some extremely common attitudes among the base. And it's an intellectual embarrassment, as well-- perhaps to you?

He didn't say, "the journalist's occupational tendency toward superficial reactions ends up benefiting the Democrats." He could have made a argument about "indirect" bias, but he didn't. He played the "ideologically driven" card. And that is the overwhelmingly popular choice on the right.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 1, 2008 1:00 PM | Permalink

I can definitely see how from the point of view of the endless expansion of executive power Democrats and the press would both be seen as obstructionist and narcissistic, and therefore look like "wings" of the same beast.

If you were to ask one of the GOP base -- especially the vocal ones, the Power Line bloggers for instance -- if they thought the press is allied to the Democratic party because both oppose the expansion of executive power, they would say you had gone mad. What I say is, it's rank presentism. You ought to remember that between 1992 and 2000, when the President was a Democrat, the press focused on Congress' exercises of power, not on the President's. Both the GOP base's belief in the press' "liberal bias", and the press' actual "oppositional bias", were firmly established long before January 2001; Bush's actions can't possibly have caused either one.

So now I'll unpack the other idea in the comment that confused you, namely that what you call the "cult of savviness" is the guiding principle of the Democratic party. If I may paraphrase you, the core belief of that cult, to which much of the press subscribes, is that the crux of politics is mastery and ruthless use of technique, preferably by trained experts; that the correct way to interpret any policy proposal is to consider its effect on public opinion at the next election, which only a trained expert can do; and that learning what the trained experts are thinking gives one the key to all current events, which makes access to them imperative. Now this faith in trained experts is not confined to journalism. For much of the 20th century it was an unquestioned assumption among the educated classes of the Western world; within the academy it remains the dominant view. The base of the Democratic party, as everyone knows, the vocal, the opinion-formers, the activists, are drawn from the academy and the professions that look to it; from, that is, devotees of expertise and idolaters of savviness. Journalists come from the same class, swim in the same pond; naturally, they hold the same faith.

How, I hear you ask, does this fit with the idea that the press and the Democrats now exist to oppose and obstruct? It fits because a critical mass of American voters have lost faith in trained experts, and in the class that venerates them, making it impossible for that class to govern as it once did. Like other classes in the process of losing power, this one uses the power it still has to block the path of its successors. And, again like other such classes, this one interprets its successors' actions by the same cynical strategy of power seeking that has come to guide its own. Hence, for instance, a professor of journalism can suppose that a President who openly holds the press in contempt, and acts on that contempt, does so because he wishes to become a dictator ...

Posted by: Michael Brazier at January 2, 2008 6:45 AM | Permalink

Steve's most famous line is (by far), “The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."

Krugman doesn't feel imperiled from critics, Michael. He knows his position is secure. Nor did he say that the rest of the media is intimidated by Fox News, the Washington Times or the New York Post. (The rest of the press cheerfully condescends to or dismisses them.) He was referring to the "hassle cost" and the "think twice" factor when the salivating morons who make up the lynch mob on the Right decide to storm you for saying something unflattering but true about one their heroes or causes. That's the intimidating part, he says.

I don't really buy his complaint myself--the press is strong enough to withstand such storms--but that's what he was arguing.

I also don't buy that Democrats (and journalists) feel they have a natural right to govern because they have the knowledge and you don't. Hey, who wrote that caustic book on the folly of the best and brightest screwing things up in Vietnam? Why, it was liberal journalist David Halberstam of the liberal New York Times. How odd, huh?

I think you are missing a factor that could account for the defections we are seeing from base-speak on the Republican side. That factor is the bizarre anti-empiricist "streak" within the Republican coalition. Prior to Bush the best symbol for it was supply side economics, and the fairy-tale that cutting taxes raises revenue. By actually putting into practice policies that replace observables from the world with wishes from the Republican heart, your modern GOP took a disastrous step away from the sort of sober, everyday empiricism that is needed to get any policy bearings at all.

Still, this radical step--dissolving the hardness of reality and replacing it with Republican desire, which is just about the most un-conservative thing you can do in politics--appeared to be confined to a few critical areas likes taxes until Bush the younger took over, a radical whom the real conservatives were unwilling to oppose. With him the anti-empirical streak took control of the government and a massive war was started with the wishers in charge.

National security conservatives, to their shame, did nothing about the threat. Now they're picking up the pieces. Smart, educated people in the military (to their shame) went along, as well, even though--empiricists to the core--they had real reservations. It took them a long time to realize that Cheney and Bush could and would wreck everything they had done to re-build the military after Vietnam.

Only now are the regrets starting to surface. For years it was all jokes and jeers about the "reality-based community." Now we are starting to see the first signs that this is actually a fault line within the GOP itself. There are people in the Republican coalition who don't want to leave the reality-based life, but there are powerful forces saying they must to remain loyal and win elections (and, not incidentally, keep the big accounting for 2001-2007 at bay). It's still a big joke to the bloggers but to people like Frum, for whom intellectual respectability matters, that is no joke.

You seem to think, Michael, that the natural alternative to trust in the decisions of Ivy-educated experts is trust in ordinary Americans and their decisions or the invisible hand of the market, which makes better decisions than Robert Reich or Ira Magaziner could. But there's a darker possibility: faith-based reasoning, the politics of denial, the retreat from empiricism and culture war against "hard" observables become hallmarks of the modern GOP. Post-Bush, that's where the party is right now. And it's too frightened by the prospect of its own crack-up to allow the tension to be discussed and settled during the 08 campaign.

That's the subtext of developments like this. Rudy is saying to the party: folks, we can still win with the politicized denial of checkable fact, and I am going to pick up where Bush left off.

I think that's what straining the coalition, and the ability to shout "bias" at anything in the news media you don't like is definitely a part of it. That's how the base indulges itself, lets itself go, gives itself a break from the strain of reconciling political imperatives with actual events.

One of the strongest critiques that (genuine) conservatives made about the post-60s Democrats was that the politics of victimhood had infantalized the party and led it to ignore all the proud Americans who refused to think like victims. That was an excellent point.

Well, today, right wing media theory is the crossing point where victimology became a Republican disease, with exactly the same crippling and infantalizing effects, the same self-righteous grandstanding. Big bad media is to blame, not wish-based war mongering. Climbing down from that is going to be difficult and ugly.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 3, 2008 11:46 AM | Permalink

I think it is possible for the views of grassroots conservatives and insider GOP partisans to both be true if you understand that they're looking at different parts of the media beast.

Consider that Carl Rove and Dan Bartlett want the press to write favorably about them when they are trying to enact a conservative policy (say restricting the size of government through social security privatization) and write favorably about them when they are trying to enact liberal policy (working with Ted Kennedy to expand the role of the feds in education). Rove and Bartlett view their media experience through the prism of partisanship not ideology.

Whereas folks like the PowerLine guys or your typical conservative talk radio host see the world far more through the prism of conservative policy. Giving Bush a fair shake on No Child Left Behind just proves that the press is liberal.

I think another way to look at this is by understanding how the press chooses to be oppositional. Sure my experience has been that the press is always oppositional to those in power. The preferred form of that opposition is non-partisan -- catching pols lying, being hypocrites, being unethical etc ... but when the press critiques on the basis of policy that critique tends to come with a good dose of liberal baggage.

Posted by: David Mastio at December 29, 2007 9:38 AM | Permalink

I think the media bias hunting yahoos on the bus but not allowed to drive is a good analogy found on the Right and Left.

I would note that the bias hunters on the Left have been successful lately driving.

Whereas the bias hunters on the Right see a liberal media, the bias hunters on the Left see a corporate media. Whereas the bias hunters on the Right can name people and news organizations as ideological friends to Democrats, the bias hunters on the Left can name Scaife, Murdoch, Sinclair along with Clear Channel Communications and Fox News as ideological friends to Republicans.

The direct pipeline of the Progressive Media, plays a similar role in exploiting distrust of the press among the base.

I also think there is a corollary in The Note's observation: "One party knows the press is its 'enemy'; one party mistakenly thinks the press is its 'friend.'" An anti-authority "opposition" press is a player in the Culture War: Institutions vs. Media.

I do think there are better critiques of the press, along with headline-grabbing, the production of innocence and the ideological self-portrait as muckraker and watchdog.

Posted by: Tim at December 29, 2007 6:48 PM | Permalink

You don't go far enough. The media have been discredited in the eyes of the right wing activists -- they actually think the media are lying to them. So the "direct line" actually takes the place of the media.

Posted by: bonyfingers at December 29, 2007 10:05 PM | Permalink

I've always thought it strange and somehow a bad business practice for the conservative owners and stockholders of big media to allow so many liberals to report and support the news and opinions of the liberal elite over those of the right leaning mainstream masses.

Then again, maybe that's just their way of instilling fear and pointing fingers at a supposed "enemy of the state" in hopes of keeping their base energized.

Rule #1 in the fascist handbook: "Control the message."
Rule #2 "Appoint someone the enemy."

I guess since Communists are no longer a serious threat liberals are the next best thing.

Posted by: Billy The Blogging Poet at December 30, 2007 12:41 PM | Permalink

Yahoos

The 'press' doesn't 'expose' ANY truth! Referee, my freaking ass! Their agenda is the agenda of their corporate overlords - maintain corporations free from oversight, rolling in tax breaks, and keep the wars rolling cause it's god for the fat cats. That means defend war-mongering presidents and bought-off Congressman, condemn populist candidates (Edwards) as 'poofy faggots', condemn anti-Occupation candidates as 'extremist', etc, etc. The MSM should be regarded as 'collaborators' at best, by no stretch are they 'referees' - wake up jack!

Billy: "Then again, maybe that's just their way of instilling fear and pointing fingers at a supposed "enemy of the state" in hopes of keeping their base energized."

Which is of course followed by the obligatory fear-mongering finger-pointing reference to fascists. [sigh]

Posted by: Tim at December 30, 2007 1:33 PM | Permalink

On domestic issues I would agree that when it comes to domestic/social policy, press reporting comes with a "good dose of liberal baggage"....aka, facts.

But this is simply not the case when it comes to foreign policy, where the nature of the "oppositional" press is opposed to progressive ideas -- and where facts can be safely ignored. One need only look at the media's willingness to spout whatever anti-Iranian nonsense anonymous "administration figures" were willing to spout to see that --- or to note the worship of David Petraeus, despite his abject failure to accomplish his mission (and his demonstrated incompetence in his previous Iraq assignments), and the media's obsession over the 'Move-on' ad.

And, when it comes to coverage of "scandals", there is simply no comparison in how the two parties are treated. Sure, give 'em a good sex scandal, and it doesn't matter what party the perpetrator is from. But when it comes to personal financial "scandals", well we need only compare the obsessive coverage of Whitewater (a "scandal" in which the Clinton's lost money) with the way in which Bush's own insider trading (in which he pocked large sums) was (not) covered.

And Democrats are criticized much more viciously on the personal front. The vast majority of Americans stll think they know that John Edwards pays $400 for a haircut (of course, that isn't what he paid for the haircut --- what he paid for was the time that the barber spent in getting to and from Edwards because the barber could have been cutting other people's hair instead of travelling, but few Americans know that.)

Posted by: p.lukasiak at December 31, 2007 10:00 AM | Permalink

The obvious (to me, anyway) interpretation: Rove, Bartlett et al have ridden this particular political wave as far as it will go. They behaved very badly while they were up, but now that the wave is receding they're simply in survival mode. They didn't need the press when they were dominant, so they bullied it. Now that they're each looking to make their individual soft-landings, they need the press again, so they're playing to their new audience.

As for Huckenfreude (agreed: It is fun to say): There's generational fallout at play here. It used to be OK to play footsies with the 25 to 35 percent of the population that doesn't believe in evolution, global warming and civil liberties, but the Bush years have made the world a more serious place. Denial of the obvious is losing its appeal, particularly among the younger voters I talk to. The GOP is becoming the annoyed old people's party.

The GOP coalition had a fantastic run, but its run is ending. Now it will fracture, just like the Democratic base began fracturing into its discordant constituencies in 1980.

Huckabee represents people who feel threatened by the new culture because they refuse to participate in its creation. That's not a particularly effective marketing meme if you're trying to attract coalition partners and young voters. The next wave of American politics -- whatever it winds up being -- will bypass them and try to present itself as being practical and forward-looking.

Final note: A good friend of mine who is an avowed (and sincere) conservative blogger recently joined Facebook, and when I looked at his profile I noticed that he listed his politics as "Moderate." When classic conservatives have to describe themselves as "moderate," then there's a cultural change afoot. "Liberal" became an epithet in the 1980s. I suspect "conservative" is about to undergo the same transformation.

Posted by: dan at December 31, 2007 11:06 AM | Permalink

Teaching journalism (part 2)...

Here's Rosen's take:

...For the liberal journalists and professors who were the believers in make-a-difference journalism were babied by their profession, and their J-school training, which allowed them to believe in agenda-less journalism at the same time.

And in fact, they wanted the innocence (we do just the facts journalism) and the power (we do make a difference journalism) but this could never be....

Posted by: Tim at December 31, 2007 1:04 PM | Permalink

weldon berger: Consider the portrait Rove and Bartlett jointly paint: reporters are narcisisstic obstructionists whose interests lie only in self-aggrandizement ("can I have the front-page byline?") and the satisfaction that comes from being primarily a nuisance ("to be a constant thorn of those in power") rather than a reporter ("discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth"). And then consider that Milbank, at least, seems to find some redeeming value in that portrait.

Huckabee's candidacy is a sign of fractures in the GOP coalition, to be sure, but nothing Bartlett or Rove said was a break with the GOP base. Most of them are well-acquainted with the "cult of savviness"; they know there is nothing less "savvy", to a new-minted J-school graduate, than voting a straight Republican ticket and going to church on Sunday. Among the GOP base it's generally assumed that the media's worship of technique and process, sensationalism, and incapacity to see beneath the surface of events -- all the things Dr. Rosen wants to reform -- cause its bias to the Left, or more precisely against the Right; that if you are a superficial and half-educated narcissist, then of course you will hate the GOP and vote Democratic, for shallow calls to shallow. Thus Rove's remarks form part of the argument for liberal media bias; they weren't at all a rejection of the thesis.

Posted by: Michael Brazier at December 31, 2007 10:55 PM | Permalink

Call it "Rosenfreude," but Rosen has once again penned a lenghty essay full of anecdotal quotations from articulate people while simultaneously wishing away a mountain of hard, quant evidence.

See also Lichther, Lichther and Rothman' The Media Elite (1986) and Kuyper's 2002 study, Press Bias and Politics, in which the author finds that pro journos tend to operate within a comparatively narrow ideological bandwidth.

This Wiki site isn't a bad overview (although they get certain things wrong, such as the "misperceptions" of the Iraq war on the part of Fox News viewers that are actually true, but our inane media class is too inbred to realize that.

The bottom line, though, is that every single large-scale survey of the personal politics of national media figures confirms the overwhelming bias towards liberal points of view.

The only thing left to argue is their ability to keep their own views from affecting the news coverage. But don't ask Rosen, or most other journalists to see it clearly. It's like a fish trying to write about water."

The thing is, Jay, for every Karl Rove quote you come up with, I've got one from people like Pauline Kael. So let's don't bother with trading trees, and look at the forest as a whole.

In the aggregate, the national media is overwhelmingly liberal.

You can argue that it doesn't affect their coverage. But nobody who lives and works outside of that inbred, shared media culture can perceive that bias.

Duh. That's why it's bias.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 1, 2008 4:47 PM | Permalink

In other news, apparently nobody at the New York Times realized there's no such thing as a U.S. Marine Academy.

When was the last time the NY Times set up a recruiting table at a military job fair?

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 1, 2008 4:49 PM | Permalink

In order to provide a year's worth of tasty fisking in one place, like the Old Country Buffet and Cardiologist Full Employment Agency, see Patterico's Pontifications. He's an attorney in the LA area whose hobbies include careful, in-depth, well-researched work on the LAT. His year-end post on the subject includes responses from some LAT folks, including their public editor. Or non-responses.

Note the direction.

I keep saying: You can complain to each other all you want. What you do, how can I put this, has more weight.

Also, I found a wonderful essay on how the MSM no longer can keep the troops from knowing how much the nation supports them. It's the technology combined with the memory of the Viet Nam era. During GW I, it took no time at all, talking to somebody putting up yellow ribbons, to find that part of the motivation was to get ahead of those *** hippies.

You really ought to see what you look like from the outside.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 1, 2008 5:42 PM | Permalink

WRT getting on the front page:

You think there are certain subjects more likely to not get on the front page? Like, where Norman Hsu's money came from and went to? That's been a non-story for a long time. Suppose a reporter got a big story on that, vs. a big story on, say, one of the Bush kids using a false ID in a bar....

Right. Pull the other one.

It appears reporters have a pretty good idea of what kind of story will get them on the front page.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 1, 2008 5:45 PM | Permalink

Jay: Certainly the GOP base believes the press is driven to assist Democrats; they have thought so not just for the past six years, but for more than thirty. But the thing is, the GOP base has come to believe that the Democrats are, in Weldon's phrase, "narcissistic obstructionists whose interests lie only in self-aggrandizement and the satisfaction that comes from being primarily a nuisance" -- that the cult of savviness is what passes for an ideology among their political opponents. Rove drew a distinction between "liberal" and "oppositional" because to him "liberal" means supporting the New Deal and Great Society platforms, and he doesn't want to claim the press is interested in that. But since the Democrats aren't much interested in that either, Hinderaker sees no point in making Rove's distinction; "liberal" to him means what the Democrats are interested in, which is just the same as what the press is interested in. Examine Power Line's archive, and you'll find that Hinderaker and his co-bloggers describe Democratic politicians in terms very like those Rove used for the press. Hence the "break" between Rove and the GOP base is quite minor; a matter of vocabulary, not a disagreement on any point of substance. A nuance, in fact.

Posted by: Michael Brazier at January 1, 2008 6:23 PM | Permalink

I do not understand your reply. "Liberal" equals "savvy?" Democrat=journalist? The Republicans are the party of depth and the Dems the party of surface? You lost me.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 1, 2008 6:56 PM | Permalink

Jay Rosen: "Are you trying to suggest some sort of inconsistency?"

No. Richard Aubrey wrote:

One poster spoke of doing some adjunct work at a J-school. He asked the Kids what their goal was. To a person, the answer was, "to make a difference". Which means, if the facts don't exactly fit the needed narrative, you fudge. That hasn't happened hardly at all.

Posted by: Tim at January 1, 2008 7:13 PM | Permalink

There is nothing inconsistent in what Jay is writing. Like many pseudo-intellectuals, it makes him feel better to think of the rest of us as "yahoos."

Jay -- you should be careful -- you might sprain your arm from patting yourself on the back so much.

You should also be careful quoting Karl Rove. If you think he regards us as useful idiots, what do you suppose he thinks of you?

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 1, 2008 11:25 PM | Permalink

And, since Jay is so fond of citing the expertise of conservative luminaries such as Karl Rove, I wonder how he responds to the catch-phrase coined by yahoo-in-chief, Rush Limbaugh:

Drive-by media

Rush Limbaugh's term for the sensational, scandal-seeking, and agenda-driven coverage that is typical of the national press corps in America. Limbaugh draws an analogy between the media who cover a story with a barrage of unfair cheap shots before moving on to the next flavor of the month and an inner city gang that drives by and sprays a target with gunfire and then moves on to their next target.

Rush Limbaugh predicted that the response to the alleged murders at Haditha from Democrats, the left, and the media would be a "gang rape ... to finally take us out in the war against Iraq." Limbaugh stated: "This Haditha story ... this is it, folks. This is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the drive-by media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq." Limbaugh added: "Let me just put it in graphic terms. It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the Democratic Party, the American left, and the drive-by media to finally take us out in the war against Iraq. Make no bones about it."

You see, Jay, there is no contradiction between Rove and the yahoos, nor Limbaugh and the yahoos. The press can be self-aggrandizing, narcissistic, petty, foolish, sensationalistic, uninformed, cliquish, lazy, under-educated, and liberal all at the same time.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 1, 2008 11:36 PM | Permalink

I thought I was quite lucid, Jay, but I'll try again. Rove's statement in part was "Reporters now see their role ... as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power ...". The GOP base firmly believes this is true, and remains true if you substitute "Democrats" for "reporters". Further, the base explains the perceived alliance between Democrats and the press by referring to this shared concept of their role in the world; if the press exists to oppose and obstruct, and the Democrats exist to oppose and obstruct, they have an enemy in common and thus are natural allies.

By the way, the vocal GOP base doesn't see Karl Rove as a great genius to be revered, or even as a spokesman for them. He's just a technician, a master of a rare and valuable skill. I doubt that the average Republican voter had any opinion of him at all -- he wasn't drafting laws or setting policy, so he wasn't relevant to them. And before you ask, I doubt the average GOP voter cared who Bill Clinton's political consultants were either, though they passionately hated Clinton himself. (The contrast with vocal Democrats, who turned Rove into Beelzebub to Bush's Satan, may be instructive ...)

Posted by: Michael Brazier at January 2, 2008 1:05 AM | Permalink

Okay I think it's clearer now. Thanks!

Now that he's out of the Senate, maybe we can get Trent Lott to write a tell-all on obstructing the obstructionists, 2006-2007. He was there when it happened.

I didn't lionize Rove, or describe him as some kind of genius, or claim for him some big constituency in the conservative base. I don't know where you got that.

I told you what he said, and how it resembled self-definition in the press. I interpreted what I thought it perhaps meant, giving several views supported by the evidence. My point was that Rove won't speak for the base or even to them on this issue. He rejects their categories and their truth claims.

You say no such thing happened. Fair enough. I say it did.

Of course I am making a bigger deal out of it than he did. Rove's statement was a casual rejection of a form of pressthink popular within the coalition he was a part of.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 2, 2008 1:27 AM | Permalink

Even Bill Clinton thinks "the press and the Democrats exist to oppose and obstruct."

In an October 2006 news article in the Washington Post titled New Media A Weapon In New World Of Politics, John Harris reports that Clinton "said Democrats of his generation tend to be naive about new media realities. There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies---and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new media excesses."

Harris goes on to quote Clinton: "We're (Democrats) all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the '60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate...(t)hose of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations."

Which would explain the non-response of Clinton to the Lewinsky thing and Kerry to the charges of the Swift-Boaters.
Both expected the establishment press to protect them against the information that was percolating up through the new media.

I'm pretty sure George Bush expected no such protection from the press.

Posted by: QC Examiner at January 2, 2008 11:46 AM | Permalink

Actually, QC, wrt the TANG memos, Bush played the press expertly.
You will recall no response but one of befuddlement and asserted lack of knowledge while the press sawed and sawed and sawed at the limb.
Clever, says I.
But, as you imply, it was using the press as it actually is, not in any way presuming its integrity. In fact, it was using the press' lack of integrity against it. While keeping hands off.
Reminds me of some of the more apocryphal stories about the arcane oriental martial arts. Some guy said, when a new black belt in judo, an aikido master threw him off the mat without touching him. Rove is a magnificent bastard, sure enough.

I mentioned Patterico earlier. He has a post on the McClellan epiphany about having been lied to. He puts it in the context of the other things Mac said about the issue, demonstrating Mac didn't say the things the liberals claim he said, using the short quote.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 2, 2008 3:01 PM | Permalink

Both expected the establishment press to protect them against the information that was percolating up through the new media.

If by information, you mean disinformation, then you are probably right.

Posted by: JJWFromME at January 2, 2008 7:17 PM | Permalink

JJWF. Such as?

I recall Newsweek trying to protect Clinton from the Lewinsky story Isikoff did. They spiked the story.
Then it got out.
So it wasn't disinformation.
Forged docs for CBS?

How about some examples? Then we can talk about the new media--bloggers--protecting the public from disinformation peddled by the old media.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 2, 2008 7:54 PM | Permalink

Man, these guys are still ticked off at the Swift Boat Vets. They HATE it when veterans speak their minds.

So much so that the Nation is still fuming over it.

But that just shows you how arrogant and out of touch they are. Out of two million Viet Nam veterans, they managed to nominate the ONE Viet Nam veteran that would actually alienate Viet Nam veterans.

And then blame veterans when they lose.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2008 8:57 PM | Permalink

My favorite part about this thread is Jason trying to equate Karl Rove with ... Pauline Kael ??

I'd buy that, Jason, if Pauline Kael had been instrumental in getting her candidate of choice elected to eight years in the White House.

But, alas, all she did was to review movies (sometimes badly) for The New Yorker for a few years. Not exactly comparable to the Rovester, who set an entire nation off on the wrong path at the start of a new century.

Meantime, Jay, this thread is worth the price of admission just to see the Tinfoil Hat Brigade return in force. They have been sorely missed.

Congratulations ! (I knew you could do it.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2008 9:30 PM | Permalink

Gosh, Steve. You have a point. Or you WOULD have had a point, had you actually understood the argument. And chosen an entirely different response.

Here's a hint: When people refer to Pauline Kael's most famous line, they're not really referring to Pauline Kael.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 2, 2008 9:53 PM | Permalink

Here's a hint: When people refer to Pauline Kael's most famous line, they're not really referring to Pauline Kael.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk

Umm, okay.

And when people are referring to Karl Rove's most famous line, they are not really referring to Karl Rove ?

And when people are referring to Jason Van Steenwyk's most famous line, they are not really referring to Jason ?

And when people are referring to Steve Lovelady's most famous line, they are not really referring to Steve ? (I'll buy that part.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 2, 2008 10:05 PM | Permalink

Oppositional?
As in ignoring all the patent dishonesty of the Clinton crime family?

Give me a f***ing break!!!

Maybe the Bush administration had such an awful PR track record because it was being advised by a gross incompetent like Dan Bartlett?

It's nice to sound sophisticated and see beyond the "right-wing yahoos" and have a purist view of a "4th estate" - who in reality are a bunch of politician wannbes on the FAR, FAR left; doing everything they can to harm this country.

If there's another 9/11, you can bet there will be a bounty on their worthless treasonous asses -and their bosses, the dem cong.

Liberal? That's a compliment.

Posted by: graywolf at January 2, 2008 10:45 PM | Permalink

Maybe he means Susan Sontag.

Michael: If you want to go back to the cult of the expert and the belief in neutral professionals who bring "sophisticated" knowledge to bear, which is 100+ years old, I would certainly agree that modern journalists, modern bureaucrats, academic professionals, government professionals, and other techocrats including political tacticians (but also including civil engineers and the people in the war colleges that educate the American military)... these all share a "rationalist" way of thinking and "progressive" worldview that has many built-in biases... and also great strengths.

I am not exactly sure why you associate this cluster with the Democratic Party. Spreadsheet analysis knows no political tribe. Think tanks giving rationalist arguments for desired policiies are not a one party state. Plenty of technocrats who think we can do better with the right policies in the modern GOP. Hinderacker is a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Law. Do you imagine him outside the modern cult of expertise? I don't see how.

Overestimating what the best and the brightest can do to solve the world's problems is an error, or conceit, I can see journalists and Democratic party types sharing, yes.

The headwaters for the entire argument, in my view, is Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922). Part of my dissertation (The Imnpossible Press, 1986) is about that book, where you see the press, the culture of expertise, the maker of political symbols and the practical politician all vexed by the same problem: the big public world is complicated and unknowable except through symbols and they can be manipulated.

What should we do?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 2, 2008 11:00 PM | Permalink

Here's my theory. This is from an interview with Paul Krugman:

We have a situation right now in which there are several major parts of the news media that are for all practical purposes part of "movement conservatism" -- Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times -- and in which other news organizations are intimidated, at least to some extent. I sometimes talk about what I call "asymmetrical intimidation." If you say a true but unflattering thing about Bush or in fact about any other prominent conservative, oh, boy! People are going to go after you. I mean, I've got people working full-time going after me, right? But if you say a false, unflattering thing about a Democrat or a progressive, no risk ... And that shapes coverage, no question about it. It's better now, but it's still very asymmetric.

And at a recent National Press Club event, David Gregory said both the body politic and the press were now bitterly divided. Interestingly, he blamed the Internet for this. Notice that he didn't blame Fox News or right wing talk radio. So is the liberal blogosphere starting to apply the pressure that Krugman is talking about? Debunking falsehoods when there was no one playing that role before? Quickly connecting dots that a non-partisan press couldn't connect on its own, without appearing partisan?

If the press is starting to have these internal debates, maybe they have connected some dots. And now the struggle for the GOP elites is to appear intellectually honest and try to influence the press's internal debate. They're even willing to do this even at the risk of making their footsoldiers uncomfortable (they know they'll be loyal in any case).

Anyway, my theory for what it's worth...

Posted by: JJFromME at January 2, 2008 11:55 PM | Permalink

Here's some more food for thought. David Frum (Mr. "Axis of Evil") did a recent Huckenfruede-worthy mia culpa. Frum nervously dips his toes in the water of what liberal bloggers have called the reality based community (and Kevin Drum of course can't resist doing the snark thing).

Four days later, Frum writes this post for the National Interest. Why is Bush's former speechwriter engaging the likes of Glenn Greenwald? He must be concerned. He notes (like David Gregory does?) that the blogosphere has had a significant impact on the Democratic party, and that even Joe Klein is sounding partisan like a blogger. He cites Steve Clemons saying that Washington is a "corrupt town," and then doesn't really respond to that criticism, but seems to be passing it along as useful information to pass along to his colleagues.

Maybe he realizes the game is changing, and is trying to give everyone a heads up? Is George W.'s former speechwriter trying to rally the troops or what?

Posted by: JJFromME at January 3, 2008 12:22 AM | Permalink

If you want to go back to the cult of the expert and the belief in neutral professionals who bring "sophisticated" knowledge to bear, which is 100+ years old, I would certainly agree that modern journalists, modern bureaucrats, academic professionals, government professionals, and other techocrats including political tacticians (but also including civil engineers and the people in the war colleges that educate the American military)... these all share a "rationalist" way of thinking and "progressive" worldview

Well, no they don't. Some academic professionals do, but not the ones in the humanities and social sciences. Or at least, not the ones with any influence. Engineers do, by and large. Some of the people in the war colleges do. But I wouldn't include most journalists in their number. They'd like to share a "rationalist" way of thinking, but they aren't academically or intellectually equipped to do so. They admire those in the groups you mentioned. They admire experts. But only a very select few are genuine, sober and fair-minded experts themselves.

If they were, you would be forced to deal with actual evidence in your own essays instead of your usual practice of argument by name-dropping...an extended exercise in the logical fallacy of appeal to authority that has become your standard operating procedure.

Your colleagues in journalism and academia would demand nothing less.

The reverse pyramid is part of the craft of journalism. But it is no substitute for a disciplined mode of inquiry.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2008 12:26 AM | Permalink

OK, one more. It appears there's some introspection happening. Here's Jim Sleeper at TPM Cafe describing a recent talk at AEI:

New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus put his finger on American conservatism’s original sin inadvertently last month at the American Enterprise Institute. He noted that while conservatives once chafed under the soulless leftist managerialism of the New Deal, they let ex-leftist conservative guides such as James Burnham and Irving Kristol lead them on a long march through the institutions they despised to build a managerial class of their own.
In Tanenhaus’ telling, Kristol showed conservative business and political leaders that New Deal managerialism had bred a liberal “new class” of academic, think-tank, and media experts who trafficked in words more than in deeds or missions accomplished. He counseled conservatives to outdo liberals at this game in order to rescue liberal education and liberal democracy for the kind of capitalism and politics conservatives can profit from and enjoy. They might even restore virtue that way to Progressives’ necessary reforms and secure the enlightened “national greatness” conservatism of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose American admirers would soon include Kristol’s son Bill, David Brooks, and Tanenhaus himself...

Through lavishly-funded initiatives such as those I encountered in New York City’s Manhattan Institute and on college campuses, and in vast private ventures such as Rupert Murdoch’s “journalism," conservatives generated a parody of the liberal “new class,” an on-message machine of talkers, squawkers, power brokers, and greedheads which Slate's Jacob Weisberg dubbed “the Con-intern.”

Yes, that AEI.

Or how about David Brooks' recent column on "The Republican Collapse?"

Posted by: JJFromME at January 3, 2008 12:38 AM | Permalink

Only someone blinded by ideological prejudices could seriously claim either that Fox News, the New York Post, and the Washington Times are a major part of the American media, or that other organs of the press censor their coverage out of fear of any of those. And while there are people who spend their days dissecting Krugman's column in the New York Times, Krugman isn't in peril from them, because the NYT editors regard criticism from that quarter as no more than the screams of pain from a wounded predator -- it just proves the latest blow drew blood.

Good; that's a large part of what I meant. Further, there's a related error of underestimating what the non-best and non-brightest are capable of, also characteristic of both the Democratic party and the press; and a consequent political judgement, that the best and brightest have a natural right to govern. (I doubt very much that Hinderaker believes his law degree from Harvard gives him moral authority, or that any other vocal members of the GOP base would see their credentials that way.) You don't often find these errors in colleges of engineering or military academies -- engineers and soldiers respect expertise, but they have too much acquaintance with the complexities of the world to idolize it.

Moreover, the rejection of both those errors, and of the resulting judgement, is equally characteristic of the Republican party; see Bill Buckley's remark that he'd prefer to be governed by the first 200 people listed in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard, or Thomas Sowell's book The Vision of the Anointed, an extended polemic linking those errors to a number of disastrous policies.

Oh, and Steve? When people refer to my most famous line, they're really referring to Rev. Charles Dodgson.

Posted by: Michael Brazier at January 3, 2008 1:23 AM | Permalink

I don't know that he has a 'most famous line.'

And when people are referring to Jason Van Steenwyk's most famous line, they are not really referring to Jason ?

Same there. If I have a most famous line, I have no idea what it is, nor do I know how it's used.

And when people are referring to Steve Lovelady's most famous line, they are not really referring to Steve ?

I don't know that you have a 'most famous line,' either, though "tell it to the limbless" comes to mind, to me personally. But your most famous line in the blogosphere probably had something to do with your rabid hyena attack on Mark Yost...what was the term you used? Ah. "Lying sack of shit," which was picked up by Buzzmachine, whose proprietor, Jeff Jarvis, you called "an intellectually dishonest schmuck."

So when someone quotes you on that, that doesn't tell you much about Jarvis or Yost. So of course, if they mention it, they're referring to you, because those quotes tell the reader more about you than the object of your vitriol.

In Pauline Kael's case, though, her quote tells us nothing about her own character. But it does tell us a lot about the people she knew, in the New York-based high-gloss media circles, the lunches at Michael's etc.

And so when a conservative brings up Kael, it's not Kael he's evoking.

It's everybody she knew.

But

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2008 1:30 AM | Permalink

By the way, just for the record, I think David Gregory is mischaracterizing the blogosphere's criticism the press. I think some of the criticism is as he characterizes it--very quick to assign motives, etc. But a lot of it is very well informed, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that. My guess is that the polarization he sees is due to the fact that this criticism is a new thing, and also due to the facts of recent history in this country (Thinkprogress's quote from Greenwald speaks to this).

Posted by: JJFromME at January 3, 2008 7:20 AM | Permalink

New report--linked at Instapundit--that the media was the primary cause of losing the first battle of Fallujah.
Check it out.
Presume, for the moment, that it's right.
Is this a good thing?
A bad thing?
Is this "making a difference"?
The proper role of journalism?
Would you prefer the report had remained secret?

Incestuous chin-pulling is meaningless, guys. It's what you look like from the outside that will affect your future. And your work product--and the discovery that it's often screwed up--is what affects what you look like from the outside.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2008 7:58 AM | Permalink

Incestuous chin-pulling is meaningless, guys.

Hardly. I just linked to two Republican sources, one Democratic blogger linking to a Republican source, and one source quoting a speaker at a major Republican think tank. These are all Republicans pulling their own chins and talking about themselves.

Posted by: JJFromME at January 3, 2008 8:15 AM | Permalink

JJ.

Sorry. I was referring to the journos' frequent discussions about why people distrust them. Not the doubly-incestuous chinpulling among the insiders.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2008 9:37 AM | Permalink

Well, one reason they are distrusted is that insiders manipulate them and journos allow themselves to be manipulated. Now, the manipulators are starting to say some interesting things.

Posted by: JJWFromME at January 3, 2008 9:44 AM | Permalink

"I would certainly agree that modern journalists, modern bureaucrats, academic professionals, government professionals, and other techocrats including political tacticians (but also including civil engineers and the people in the war colleges that educate the American military)... these all share a "rationalist" way of thinking and "progressive" worldview that has many built-in biases... and also great strengths."

Us civil engineers who apply rational thinking to the design of better upholstered caves do so because you can’t bullshit nature, or the laws of physics or of behavior of materials or of compound interest. Whereas the “progressives” live and breathe their narratives with which they do their best to bullshit the electorate into steering social history leftward – and if you choke on that idea, just remember Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party. Civil engineers are so suspect on campuses for that same rational thinking that in the wild efflorescence of 70s campus politics, certain Universities started up programs for the Social Management of Technology, just to rein in those misguided engineers and impose some sort of party discipline on them. Unfortunately this theology succeeded – you cannot read a page in the flagship organ of the American Society of Civil Engineers without gagging on strings of politically correct platitudes, remarkably similar to those spewed by journalists in their ‘news’ stories, having very little to do with how to design a better bridge but everything to do with a “progressive” approach to living on the earth.

So I reject your AND between rationalist and progressive. Those are far from shared approaches, in fact are usually opposites.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at January 3, 2008 12:56 PM | Permalink

Too bad the Republicans weren't much interested in your kind of thinking over the past 7 years.

Posted by: JJWFromME at January 3, 2008 1:29 PM | Permalink

JJWfromME

The meaningless non-sequitur on Republicans isn't worth a reply, but have you any relatives bearing initials JUW who write about civil engineering?

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at January 3, 2008 1:52 PM | Permalink

have you any relatives bearing initials JUW who write about civil engineering?

No.

Seriously, though. It's not a non-sequitur. I wish the Bush administration had been better at planning things with hard realities in mind instead of just going on a wing and a prayer. Frankly, it could have saved lives.

Posted by: JJWFromME at January 3, 2008 2:11 PM | Permalink

Ummm, Jason -- I've been at Michael's a few times over the past several years. But I never ran into Pauline Kael there. Perhaps that's because she DIED seven years ago.

Research -- it's a bitch, isn't it ? But you might try it out for once. It could change your life !

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 3, 2008 3:52 PM | Permalink

Steve,

You might check the syntax of the passages you quoted. You will note that I did, in fact, use the past tense of the verb "to know." This indicates pretty clearly that I was and am aware of her passing.

You may also note that I never once intimated that she was still alive.

In making your point, however inept you may be, you actually prove mine: You are part of the same Manhattan media fever swamp that Kael was.

You're also more in love with your own snark than in dealing honestly with the issue of reflexive liberal bias in the media.

The funniest part was you trying to catch me in not doing my research. I was way ahead of you. As usual.

I'z in ur OODA-loop, short-sirkutin' ur argumentz.

Literacy. Catch the fever.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2008 5:01 PM | Permalink

Here's a passage from the Wiki on Pauline Kael:

Nixon "quote"

Kael is frequently quoted as having said, in the wake of Richard Nixon's landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election, that she "couldn't believe Nixon had won," since no one she knew had voted for him. The quote is sometimes cited by conservatives (such as Bernard Goldberg, in his book Bias), as an example of allegedly clueless New York liberal insularity. There are variations as to the exact wording, the speaker (it has variously been attributed to other liberal women, including Katharine Graham, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion), [1] [2] and the timing (in addition to Nixon's victory, it has been claimed to have been uttered after Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984.) [3]

There is, in fact, no record of Kael making such a remark. The story may have originated in a December 28, 1972 New York Times article on a lecture Kael gave at the Modern Language Association, in which the newspaper quoted her as saying, "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."[30]

So maybe Jay actually heard it attributed to Sontag, and I heard it attributed to Kael. Sontag later went down to much ridicule as feeling oppressed by the display of American flags after 9/11.

At any rate, even Pauline Kael had the presence of mind to admit that she lives in "a rather special world," where Nixon voters were "beyond her ken."

Why is that such a problem to recognize?

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 3, 2008 5:09 PM | Permalink

I could not disagree more.

I really missed reading Jay's observations during his "hiatus", but I haven't missed the mind-numbing, soul-crushing stupidity of the "Tinfoil Hat Brigade".

There was actually a good discussion about media issues over at Time's "Curious Capitalist" blog last week -- and while it included some 'right wingers' the discussion did not degenerate into the kind of mess we see above.

I'm afraid that Jay would just be better off killing his comments section at this point (at least when the subject comes anywhere close to 'politics'); his time would be far better used observing and reporting on media trends
than reading and responding to the tsunami drivel that appears above.

(For instance, I'd love to hear Jay's take on the sudden media concern with how "democratic" the Iowa caucuses are, given that it is the media that has made what was once considered a minor preamble to the New Hampshire primary into the most crucial state in the process....)

Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 3, 2008 6:31 PM | Permalink

True enough, Paul.

But you have to concede that they are such easy targets.

I admit, I'm like the guy who can't resist poking a stick through the fence at the idiot bulldog on the other side.

But I promise, I'll try to be better.

Cheers,
Steve

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 3, 2008 6:48 PM | Permalink

Steve.
You think you're having fun.
Checked circulation and stock prices lately?
Not to mention employment?
Why isn't the buying public buying?

I know. It's fetal alcohol syndrome among the great unwashed. Nothing you did.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 3, 2008 10:11 PM |