Gabriel Sherman's New York magazine piece on cable news (10/3/10) has an important insight into the Fox News' success:

Fox's rightward flanking maneuver, capturing a disenfranchised part of the audience, was only part of its strategy. The news, especially political news, wasn’t something that happened. It was something that you shaped out of the raw data, brought out of the clay of zhlubby, boring politics, reborn with heroes and villains, triumphs and reverses, never-ending story lines--what TV executives call "flow." And the beauty of it was that the viewers--the voters--were the protagonists, victims of evil Kenyan socialist overlords, or rebels, coming to take the government back. There was none of the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand relativity crossfire that mirrors the journalism-school ideal of objectivity. All the fire went one way. The viewers, on their couches, were flattered as the most important participants, the foot soldiers in Fox's army; some of them even voted.

I sense in New York's account the traditional corporate media assumption that politics is an activity best left to the professionals--that there's something untoward about journalists encouraging citizens to take an active role in their nation's decision-making. That, of course, is exactly what they should be doing.  The problem with Fox News is the story that it's telling is naturally a conspiratorial one: The way to present the corporate powers-that-be that Fox speaks for as being on the same side as the middle class is to invent a conspiratorial elite in league with a sinister underclass that is the enemy of both top and middle. Tides Foundation, meet the New Black Panther Party.

The New York article presents MSNBC as having grasped the essence of Fox's model of journalism, while CNN hasn't gotten it yet. "Fox figured it out that you have to stand for something in cable," the piece quotes MSNBC president Phil Griffin. But, really, MSNBC doesn't get it either. If it's all about "targeting an audience" and "brand is everything," as various NBC brass say, then why does MSNBC start its day with Morning Joe, hosted by moderate conservative (and former Republican congressmember) Joe Scarborough? Fox puts Fox & Friends in that timeslot to launch the stories that will dominate the channel's "straight news" and "opinion" shows all day long.

MSNBC doesn't do that, ultimately, because its owner General Electric doesn't want it to do that--because the natural storyline for a progressive media outlet is corporate power vs. the rest of us, and in that narrative GE is a major villain. GE would much rather be telling the story that Fox is telling--"We have to be more conservative then they are," NBC CEO Robert Wright told NBC News chief Neal Shapiro after September 11, New York reports. In fact, MSNBC tried to outflank Fox on the right long before 9/11--and didn't give up on the idea until it had repeatedly failed. Eventually the cable channel realized that Fox had dibs on the right-wing sector of the audience--but GE's corporate interests prevent it from really going after the progressive slice of the pie.

I tuned into C-SPAN on Friday night and caught part of a panel discussion hosted by Arianna Huffington. One of the panelists was Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes, who is perhaps best known for advancing the bogus theory that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda were in cahoots.

And oddly enough, the discussion turned to misleading political advertising, and the efforts to factcheck such political lying--an effort that Hayes cheered:

HUFFINGTON: What else can the media do, Steve?

HAYES: I think one of the upsides to the proliferation of information sources is that you can go to places and find out whether an ad is truthful or not. I mean, you certainly--whether it's Politifact or whether it's local reporters who have teamed up with national media outlets that are fact checking these things almost on a real-time basis.

Ultimately as a believer in free markets, I think if you put out good information that follows bad, if you can identify blatantly misleading political ads, and call them on it, I think that  people will learn that it doesn't pay to run those kinds of ads.

Hayes went on to say:

But I do believe that if you provide people with good information, provide them with places to get that good information, they will ultimately use it.

I guess Hayes thinks some people should be factchecked.

If you listen to CounterSpin this week (and you should be downloading the podcast EVERY WEEK), you'll hear this item:

USA Today ran a version of an AP story September 29 about the outrageous and depressing fact that not a penny of the $1.5 billion the U.S. pledged to Haiti for rebuilding after the devastating earthquake nearly nine months ago has actually been delivered. It's the sort of news that might make readers sad, but it should make them angry. Trouble is, you have to get to paragraph 10 of the 12 paragraph piece before you learn why the money hasn't moved: Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who is holding up the authorization bill on purpose because he believes it includes one unnecessary staff position. One, as his spokesperson unashamedly declares.

Part of the strategy behind these Senate holds is that you can sort of get away with it without anyone noticing that you're being a creep. Of course, this works even better if the press plays along.

I mention this mainly because last night, after recording this week's CounterSpin, I tuned in to the Daily Show to see Jon Stewart had a very similar take. (His was, I should say, funnier.)  And it featured Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman. Watch it here..