National Journal reporter James Oliphant (5/9/14) has discovered that the Obama White House has a very powerful weapon it can deploy against its critics: bloggers.
As he writes:
When critics attack, the White House can count on a posse of progressive writers to ride to its rescue. Pick an issue, from the Affordable Care Act to Ukraine to the economy to controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi, and you’ll find the same voices again and again, on the Web and on Twitter, giving the president cover while savaging the opposition. And typically doing it with sharper tongues and tighter arguments than the White House itself.
Credit him for the scoop, I guess: Who knew that liberal bloggers would tend to support a Democratic administration?
The problem is that Oliphant thinks there’s really something important here. His first example: Some liberal outlets think Republican politicians and conservative pundits have gone crazy over Benghazi. But one doesn’t need to think much of the Obama White House to think that the Benghazi “scandal” isn’t one. Nor does a cogent critique of the conservative conspiracy theory about Benghazi mean that outlets much more prominent than any blogger will stop featuring the conservative line on their front pages (FAIR Blog, 5/1/14)
What’s more, Oliphant sees this Obama defense squad as being completely unusual:
While the bond between presidential administrations and friendly opinion-shapers goes back as far as the nation itself, no White House has ever enjoyed the luxury that this one has, in which its arguments and talking points can be advanced on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. No longer must it await the evening news or the morning op-ed page to witness the fruits of its messaging efforts.
This is nonsense. The previous administration had a 24-hour cable news outlet and a slew of right-wing talk radio hosts that it could count on to support its agenda and (quite literally) demonize its opponents. Oliphant notes that some liberal-leaning bloggers visit the Obama White House, but this is not unusual–Bush hosted high-profile right-wing talkers, too (New York Times, 10/17/06).
The previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, saw the rise of Fox News Channel during his second term; Fox‘s evening news show Special Report was conceived as a nightly update on the Lewinsky impeachment saga. Indeed, the conservative media machine built around opposing the Clinton agenda was considerable; anyone who didn’t live through the era might be surprised at the level of vitriol. Lists of murders that were supposedly linked to Clinton were a hit on right-wing talk radio, and televangelist Jerry Falwell peddled a video that made similar allegations (L.A. Times, 5/14/94).
Now that is real power–and makes Obama’s bloggers’ brigade seem pretty feeble. Oliphant sees something disturbing about the Obama-friendly “Web-based royalty,” because it aims to affect how traditional media cover the news: “The hope, from the White House’s perspective, is that progressive media elites sway the mainstream press.”
Ironically, Oliphant’s lead example–Benghazi–demonstrates the weakness of his argument. All the liberal blogging in the world can’t stop corporate media from giving that supposed scandal serious, sustained coverage–certainly to the delight of the right-wing Republicans who have decided to make it news.
It’s an awesome amount of power: The mainstream media’s amplification of Republican talking points matched with the powerful conservative media machine. Any politician in the country would take that over a few Web writers.
And then there is Fox’ counterpart MSNBC…
All I know is if the GO(t)P spent HALF the time they have on 4 Dead Americans in Benghazi, on the hundreds of millions of living Americans here back home, we might have a comprehensive Jobs bill by now. Utterly obscene.
This will be their 8th investigation. Meet the new investigation, same as the old investigation.
Over time, popular lib media has served to pull much of the left to the right, especially on socioeconomic issues (and most specifically, poverty). This, of course, has served to divide those who would have otherwise pushed back against the right-wing agenda — a worthy goal, considering how much damage that agenda has done to America’s ability to compete in the modern world. Democrats (and subsequently, most of the media marketed to libs) have promoted a neoliberal agenda that only worsened conditions. No matter how much we regard ourselves as individuals, media has a powerful impact on determining public opinion. The US has shipped out a massive number of working class jobs since the 1980s, then Clinton ended welfare aid (AFDC and General Assistance) in the 1990s. Far fewer jobs, far more people desperate for jobs. Yet today’s lib media erased our actual poverty crisis from the discussion. That’s tragic.
In what world is cheering NATO expansion and support for a regime redolent with the stench of neofascism considered “progressive”?
The same world in which a president of the United States can be called a “socialist”
And no one in the mainstream mediacrity bursts into paroxysms of hysterical laughter.
To FAIR: It would be extraordinary if you would add a category: US Poverty. It’s a profoundly important issue not only because so many are poor, but because the policies we chose are playing a powerful role in suppressing wages and growth, and increasing public costs.
As is Company Made-man Obama; so are these “progressive” bloggers “tiny turlitzer” agents of the Bush CIA.
The National Journal is a right-wing Republican-boosting outfit masquerading, with somewhat more subtlety than, say, Fox, as neutral analysts.
Its the old standard; “they” on the right want everything their way, exactly as they want it, when they want, whenever they want it.
One day the Uber-right heads are going to cave in from from the constant sniveling and boo-hoo’n that they are being abused because they can’t have it all their way. It would be too much to ask for them to grow up, since they are socially and emotionally about 5.
Hart: ” All the liberal blogging in the world can’t stop corporate media from giving that supposed scandal serious, sustained coverage–certainly to the delight of the right-wing Republicans who have decided to make it news.
It’s an awesome amount of power: The mainstream media’s amplification of Republican talking points matched with the powerful conservative media machine. Any politician in the country would take that over a few Web writers.”
What conservative media machine? Microsoft, General Electric and Comcast sure aren’t conservative. They control, jointly, most of the news content broadcast over satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcasts. Even “entertainment” in the massest of mass media, the big three television broadcast networks, is so interlocked politically that reliable liberal propagandist Dave Letterman on CBS is replaced by reliable liberal propagandist Stephen Colbert. Meanwhile, NBC replaced a somewhat centrist Jay Leno (who nonetheless took Senator Ted Cruz to task for opposing ObamaCare, calling it the “law of the land,” while failing to ask President Barack Obama why the “law of the land” seems to be altered by executive orders so frequently, it could very well be described as having been written in pencil, on looseleaf) with the much more doctrinaire liberal Jimmy Fallon.
No, I don’t think that one can describe the television most people in America watch as unduly conservative – or even remotely conservative.
No, I don’t think that one can describe the television most people in America watch as unduly conservative – or even remotely conservative.
Can I have what your smoking? The only way someone can ignore the fact that the media is standing at a 90 degree in the favor of Conservative and the Uber-Richt Tealiban is if they are so high, they are no longer in the solar system. Either that, or they are so far right they are the furthest departure from reality one can experience without drugs. Your Choice.
Corporate consolidation is natural, it usually results in lost jobs, kills competition, reduces consumer choice, leverages higher prices, and creates oligarchs with political power to game the system further. For media it results in a rapid shift to the right. After WWII media consolidation was not allowed in Germany or Japan because it would lead to Fascism. A few bloggers vs media giants is hardly a fair fight.
http://www.seconnecticut.com/media.htm