Beltway Journo: We wish we could cover John Yoo's torture memos instead of Obama's bowling

[BurtWorm]

but no one cares about John Yoo or torture. Isn't that what those media fuckers always say? This is according to the Atlantic's Megan McCardle, responding to Glenn Greenwald's outrage over the disparity between the media's almost total lack of interest in the former, compared to the latter. Greenwald responds to McArdle here and here (scroll down to item (9) ).

It's truly wondrous how dishonest McArdle sounds, but I get the sick feeling she means every word she says:

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/i_blame_the_media.php



Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president. Indeed, if one in ten Americans had even heard of John Yoo, I would be shocked, because most people don't care about minor government functionaries, no matter how pivotal their role may be in screwing up the world. I live in Washington DC, the throbbing heart of political trivia, and my sister works for HUD. Nonethelss, I had to look up the name of Alphonso Jackson, the HUD secretary, when allegations surfaced that he had grossly misused his office to help friends. After being forced to step down, he garnered slightly more Nexis hits than John Yoo's name in the last month. But both lost out to Jamie Lynn Spears, who ooh! might be secretly engaged.

This is not because journalists are insulated from their readers. It is because readers buy more papers with headlines about Jamie Lynn Spears than they do with headlines about Alphonso Jackson or John Yoo, since as I think I just mentioned, they have never heard of either person. You can lead a consumer to stories of vital national importance, but you cannot make him care. You can just make him pass over your paper in favor of the Enquirer.

It's all very well to say that journalists should cover the more serious stories, and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, and maybe occasionally me, make such complaints all the time. But even really successful bloggers on things like economic and foreign policy have fewer daily readers than a struggling local paper in a moderately sized midwestern city. Now imagine those readers evenly distributed across a nation of 300 million, and then ask yourself why their concerns do not headline every paper. As well to wonder why they aren't all carrying stories on fire response times in the Syracuse, NY area.

Obviously, I think John Yoo's adventures are a matter of slightly greater national importance. (As indeed do our nation's media, who--aside from the Syracuse Post-Standard--ran virtually no coverage of the topic over the last month.) But voters can't do much about John Yoo now, other than choose a different type of president. Maybe they should do that by eagerly scanning Obama and Clinton and McCain's platforms--though I am at a loss to think how one might have divined a John Yoo from the anodyne folia of the Bush 2000 campaign. As far as anyone can tell, however, this is not how voters decide. Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them. If there were a millions-deep wellspring of interest in the topic, some enterprising publication would already have tapped it dry.

[redqueen]

1. How sad.

Just lame excuse after lame excuse after lame excuse.

Do they really think that we don't know that "BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL MAY FACE WAR CRIMES CHARGES FOR RATIONALIZING THE USE OF TORTURE!" in huge whatever-point letters on the headline would generate a more than a little interest?


And how about that... what was it... $20 Billion in credit card charges? Including charges for lingerie, online dating services, etc.

That's not a story? But the checkwriting scandal... was? :crazy: