A Little Late? Media Freezes Out Threat To Corporate Owners... John Edwards!

[DaLittle Kitty]

Who's Afraid of John Edwards? The Fascist Controllers of this American Republic... That's Who.... :eyes: :think:

Media freezes out a threat to corporate owners

BY TED RALL
JANUARY 30, 2008

http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A3...

John Edwards isn't just the most electable Democrat—he's the best choice. But the media is starving him of the oxygen campaigns require in order to thrive: coverage. Shortly after placing second in Iowa, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that John Edwards received a puny 7 percent of national media coverage. Clinton and Obama got between four and five times more; their poll numbers were nowhere close to that much higher than Edwards'.

"The media goes to this very engaging story about a legitimate woman candidate and a legitimate candidate with an African-American heritage, and that drives up their fund-raising numbers," Elizabeth Edwards told Time. "Then the media folks say, 'See, that proves we were right to focus on these two candidates'... It's enough to make you tear your hair out."

But there's more to the Edwards story (and non-stories) than reporters dazzled by Clinton and Obama—contenders who, though they don't seem likely to make political history, add a bit of demographic flavor. There is no precedent in memory of the news media freezing out a major presidential candidate to this extent.

The New York Times' own public editor conceded that his paper had shortchanged Edwards. "In Iowa ... John Edwards is close behind Clinton in the most recent Des Moines Register poll," Clark Hoyt wrote on Nov. 18, "yet The Times has given him comparatively scant coverage. Clinton and Obama have been profiled twice each on the front page since Labor Day, but Edwards not at all this year. Throughout the paper, The Times has published 47 articles about Clinton since Labor Day, only 18 about Edwards."

"I don't track our coverage by quantity," campaign editor Richard Stevenson responded. "In a qualitative sense, we've covered him pretty thoroughly, and there is more to come."

There wasn't.

What's really behind the media animus toward Edwards," Jeff Cohen wrote for AlterNet, "is his 'all-out courting of the liberal left-wing base' (ABC News) or his 'looking for some steam from the left' (CNN)."

When the media gets tough, read the overseas press. Kevin Drawbaugh, a reporter for Reuters, knows what's up. "Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients," he writes for the British wire service, "and the answer is almost always the same—Democrat John Edwards."

Drawbaugh quotes Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at the Stanford Group think tank: "My sense is that Obama would govern as a reasonably pragmatic Democrat ... I think Hillary is approachable. She knows where a lot of her funding has come from, to be blunt."

Edwards, on the other hand, is "an anti-business populist" and "a trade protectionist" who "would be viewed as a threat to business," he said. :think:

We Are Indeed... FUCKED! :nuke: