"How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign"

[applegrove]

How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign

by Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/republican-lies-2012-election_b_2258586.html

"SNIP......................................


But according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.

Mann and Ornstein are two longtime centrist Washington fixtures who earlier this year dramatically rejected the strictures of false equivalency that bind so much of the capital's media elite and publicly concluded that GOP leaders have become "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

The 2012 campaign further proved their point, they both said in recent interviews. It also exposed how fabulists and liars can exploit the elite media's fear of being seen as taking sides.

"The mainstream press really has such a difficult time trying to cope with asymmetry between the two parties' agendas and connections to facts and truth," said Mann, who has spent nearly three decades as a congressional scholar at the centrist Brookings Institution.


.....................................SNIP"

[libodem]

1. huh

I figured someone finally had the story on his Cuban Mistress, how he spies for the Soviets, and loves to gamble. Silly me.

[grasswire]

2. hooray for Dan Froomkin

One of the good guys.

[dimbear]

3. We were right on top of this. The folks who follow the net were in the know.

The usual cast of culprits were spot on: us, Wonkette, Kos, so on.

[Selatius]

4. Personally, I think the failure was done by design. It's a subtle form of propaganda.

I bet if you looked at the names of the board members who run the news companies and compared their names to those who sit on corporate boards that favor extreme right-wing economic policy or corporations that are major defense giants and thus have a stake in militarism and empire-building, you'll find an overlap on the list of names.

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.

[dougolat]

5. +1 ...nt

[defacto7]

6. K&R

+1

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

7. "Let's Just Say It. The Republicans are the Problem."

Mann and Ornstein were suddenly unwelcome at the news talk shows on which they'd previously been frequent guests after publishing that WaPo truth-telling piece. I hope they don't shut up about this stuff!

[Derek in Iowa]

12. Of course they were.

The MSM only know one way to cover a story: "A says X, but B says Y." If you try to point out that what B is saying is insane and impossible, the MSM's heads explode in unison. Disrupt their comfortable routine (false equivalence-paycheck-false equivalence-paycheck) and naturally you are going to find yourself persona non grata. IMHO that's why we need public media: so reality-based voices like Mann and Ornstein can't be completely silenced by the corporate-owned, corporate-directed MSM.

[DFW]

8. Norm Ornstein is a friend

He is also the token sane person at AEI. I don't know how they put up with him or WHY he puts up with them.

Norm is one of the funniest guys I know. He is also one of the most realistic. When he talks, even some of the ones who know they won't like what they are about to hear still listen.

"unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science" I'd say that's about as accurate as one can get in describing today's Republicans.

[KoKo]

10. Thanks for that personal insight about Ornstein.

Through the years watching them when they appeared on C-Span in interviews I always found his humor engaging.

But, I felt that Thomas Mann was the more liberal of the two when the Q&A's would come if they were on a Panel Show, it was Mann I gravitated to in the replies.

It was an interesting article. I read it over at Common Dreams and it's always nice to see Dan Froomkin doing an article. I miss his column at the WaPo and worried when he went to Huff Post.

Anyway, nice to see you post it here on DU.

[DFW]

13. It's different when you know some of these people personally, I realize

Norm has always tried to keep a level head and an open mind. Maybe the fact that the extreme right labels him "liberal" and some of the left label him "conservative" is an attest to this. Despite his humor, he is a very keen mind, and extremely analytical. One time, I was in an off-the-record threesome with Norm and Howard Dean. Needless to say, there wasn't much I could contribute to the conversation, and I did a LOT of listening. Talk about two insiders!!

Howard was DNC chairman at the time, and Obama had JUST announced for the presidency. Howard was wondering why Mark Warner hadn't made any noises about running, and Norm had some inside knowledge about Warner's domestic life concerning problems with Warner's (then-) teenage sons that precluded him from being able to devote his full attention to the grueling task of running for president. Norm was no stranger to that either, although things have improved a little there. He has health issues in his family right now (not his immediate family, fortunately), so I don't know if I'll be seeing him when I'm in the States in a few weeks, but he is one of THE most engaging guys you could want to spend time with in DC, believe me. By the way, he's originally from Minnesota--Al Franken land.

[KoKo]

14. Again...thanks for that view....

I think it's complicated and if we "out here" had more personal relationships with those who are power brokers we might learn to have more "empathy" from the personal experience and come to know them as "real people" with family obligations and the rest in the context of their lives.

But...as it is...we get the views they represent according to who they are affiliated with and so judge from the TUBES from a C-Span Think Tank view.

I trust your judgement on this. Still....it does become a "friends and insiders" thing that we out here in America are becoming increasingly detached from being able to participate in or to know those involved, the human element and therefore to have the compassion we might if they were friends of us or even just aquaintances of us with a remote connection.

BTW: GO HELEN THOMAS! (I love her!) Just wanted you to know that your posts are valued here by many of us and I do understand where you are coming from and value your insight into folks that most of us out here will never have the option of knowing. Your "insider view" makes it all human and down to earth and food for thought.

Thanks!

[DFW]

19. Living mostly in Europe now, I get a chuckle at being thought of as an "insider."

In these days of email and instant, cheap transatlantic phone calls, I guess DC isn't as far as it once was. If I get up early enough, I can be there any day I want to. My father was a prominent, if not nationally famous, DC print journalist for 50 years, and I am a regular at the Renaissance Weekend New Year's gatherings in Charleston, SC. I grew up in the northern Virginia-DC bubble. Yes, I know people. Joss. Luck of the draw if you will. But I've been "out here in America," as you put it (and now beyond there), since my late teens. Sing a chorus of "Both Sides Now." I don't get C-Span here, so I don't have much of a grasp on what its significance is.

Norm doesn't consider himself so much a "power broker" as an observer of them. He tries to be as astute an observer as he can, and is one of the more respected ones. Helen, in her own way, is much the same. Helen is starting to feel her age (at 92, she's allowed). I have had a fall schedule from hell, and have not spoken to her in a couple of months, an unusually long gap for me. I will try to see her when I'm in DC in January. She calls her dinners with my brother and me "hot dates."

Norm and Howard have personal lives like the rest of us. Howard in particular guards his family life very closely. That's his right, and I have no aspirations as a gossip columnist. I very much understand your point about not having a personal connection to this kind of people. In a country of several hundred million people, it's a necessary fact of life. A French friend of mine was once traveling in Mali. In some night club, he got to talking with some guy, and said he was a student in Paris, and asked the local what he did for a living. He said he was the Minister of the Interior. Things like that do not happen in the USA, obviously. Although, last year, at a small provincial airport on Massachusetts, I saw a tall gawky woman approach the terminal. She had on some thick dark-colored glasses. I thought to myself, she must be doing her best to look like Rachel Maddow. Funny thing about that. It WAS Rachel Maddow. I said hi, and she said, "Hi, I'm Rachel." Just like that (like I wouldn't know who Rachel Maddow was!). Plenty of famous people are still real people.

[Warren Religion]

9. In other words...

we are doing exactly the right thing by continuing to watch MSNBC!

[stevenleser]

11. My response to someone on FB talking about this...

I realized how far the GOP had gone when 8 months or so ago they started actively attacking fact check organizations. These organziations go out and find the facts and measure the truth of each statement. When those organizations become your enemy, you have really gone off the deep end. If you are a journalist determined to be balanced, and there are only two parties to cover, one being reasonable and the other off the deep end, how are you supposed to be a balanced journalist? Are you actually supposed to treat the crazy party the same as the reasonable one? That is what happened. Fortunately, I advertise which views I support up front so I dont have to deal with that ethical dilemma!

[KoKo]

16. But, by focusing on just the "EVIL/IRRATIONAL" of the Repugs...you

fail to recognize that sometimes we Dems can be just as bad joining with the Repugs on so many issues so that true fundamentals of what "We the People" need get co-opted by the merging of the Repugs and Dems on Unions, Health Care, SS/Medicare/Wall Street Banks (Too Big to Fail) /America's Future, i.e. the Jobs we Lost to ASIA now are gone and folks are supposed to just get "Re-Educated" (FOR WHAT?) and the decline of America in survitude to Wall Street which began under Reagan and continued through Clinton and now Obama.

You ignore this? Or, if you don't...what are the SOLUTIONS that you would advocate?

[stevenleser]

18. I disagree with your original premise.

I don't think Democrats are ever "just as bad"

[KoKo]

20. Let me rephrase: We Dems can be compromising with the Repugs to the Detriment of

our principles.

I think that clarifies what I meant and perhaps you might agree with that?

[spanone]

15. NOTHING was bungled. the mainstream press did all it could to get republicans elected.

they just signed on to a shitty party with a ridiculous candidate.

[KoKo]

17. You are going for the "Simplicity" rather than the "Complicated."

I wish I could be like you...and not have the nightmares I have and the urges I have that I wish I could have done more...and all I tried to do...it just wasn't enough. All that WE here TRIED and WORKED so HARD to do.

But...I would hope to get to your view so that I could sleep better at night and not go to my grave thinking that...I missed some stone unturned and something else I could have done when I worked and tried hard to keep my State from going down the terrible path it has.

My state is the state where the Dem Party Convention was held. Obama lost in my state. It wasn't because of the Progressive Democrats...it was because of the lack of support for us after the Dean/Kucinich movement.

you won't want to hear that...but, an on the ground Dem..is telling you this. A worker in the Dem Party...who worked to get NC Ballot Reform and the Machines out of as many precincts in NC that we could after 2004... An Activist....An Activist for the Dem Party.

We Dem Progressive Activists worked and worked but the DLC worked also. It wasn't a successful mix.

I remember shaking Emmanuel's hand at a big Dem Poo Bah Thingy at the Raleigh, NC Hilton. What a DUDE HE WAS...how confident and how secure. His "security" and
"handlers" in the background but close enough to protect him.

You have to realize that many DU'ers have been out there involved in our party and we are not clueless or easily manipulated.