PrintApril 8, 2010
Some in MSM Cry Uncle
Signs are accumulating that some corners of the MSM are getting a clue. It took six months for the major news networks to show video from the million strong tea party rally on 9/12. Now there are consistent polls showing record numbers of Democrats and Independents getting their news from conservative cable, radio and websites while the MSM hemorrhages its audiences.
CNN just the other day ran a story: "Disgruntled Democrats join the Tea Party". And this just in from CNN, an African-American producer who went on a tour with the Tea Party to report on what actually happens at the rallies. Here are some of his remarks.
But here's what you don't often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: Patriotic signs professing a love for country; mothers and fathers with their children; African-Americans proudly participating; and senior citizens bopping to a hip-hop rapper.[snip]Being at a Tea Party rally is not quite like seeing it on TV, in newspapers or online. That's the reason CNN is covering this political movement -- and doing so in ways few others can or choose to do.[snip]
...stereotypes can loom large when they're magnified through a television lens, on the radio, the pages of a newspaper or in the vastness of the Internet.
So, it's important that with a newsworthy, growing phenomenon like the Tea Party movement, viewers and readers fully understand what they see and what they don't.
In addition to CNN, a most delicious turn of events is the story of Gwen Ifill, moderator of "Washington Week," senior correspondent for "NewsHour" and the author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," and stone Obama supporter. Ifill appears to be changing her steadfast view of the president oh so slightly, but still measurably.
In her review of the new book The Bridge by David Remnick, Ifill states that she's skeptical of the emotional slant concocted by Obama in his Dreams of My Father.
Obama, Remnick points out, ended each section with climactic, somewhat overwrought descriptions of himself in tears -- as he sees his father in a dream, discovers his spiritual roots in church, visits his father's grave.I totally bought all of this the first time I read "Dreams." I don't know that I would today -- in part because I am a professional skeptic when it comes to the people I cover, and in part because it's difficult to conceive of cool cucumber Obama being that overcome by emotion.
Ifill continues on to agree with Remnick on another point:
The McCain forces, Remnick concludes, saw Obama as absurdly fortunate.There may be something to that. Obama was elected to the Senate only after not one but two credible contenders had contentious divorce papers unsealed. He was elected president because Clinton's campaign was chaotic, but also because Americans were anxious to change course from a deeply unpopular Republican president.
"Obama as absurdly fortunate. There may be something to that." I love it.Don't worry, I'm not naïve in thinking that the shift in coverage will take down the left tomorrow, but it could be a harbinger of the fall of a leftist regime losing credibility minute by minute. Tea partiers, citizen journalists, patriots-keep the pressure on, it's working.
