digby (1/19/10) spotted a telling moment on the Ed Show (MSNBC, 1/19/10), when host Ed Schultz asked Politico's Mike Allen "what's the next move for progressives" if the Democrat lost in the Massachusetts Senate race. Allen's response: I would remind you that when Republicans started to eat each other up, we talked about how it wasnâ┚¬Ã‹Å“t very smart. I think a lot of people will make that point about Democrats as well. digby's rejoinder: OK. Eight or nine months ago, the villagers were all saying that the Republicans were eating at each other and that it wasn't very smart. And [...]
Sep
01
2009
Way to Go, Politico!
Somehow the Drudge-friendly news site Politico managed to write an entire piece today about pressure on the White House from anti-war left ("W.H. Fears Liberal War Pressure") without actually quoting anyone who might apply that pressure. Reporter Mike Allendid gather thoughts from Matt Bennett of the Third Way think tank (a self-consciously centrist group incoherently labeled the "moderate voice of the progressive movement"), White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell and several anonymous White House officials. Bennett commented that Obama's supporters "are fighting a really serious political battle to keep the criticism under control." Theyprobably don't need [...]
May
28
2009
Supreme Court Fights: Left-Wing Media Bias Is Seldom More Imaginary
Politico's Mike Allen writes (5/27/09) The media's left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily toward the notion of how "pragmatic" Obama's legal views are and how unlikely he was to pick a liberal. So coverage of Supreme Court fights is one of the best illustrations of corporate media's supposed lean to the left? Only three of the current justices had what could be described as a "fight" over their confirmation: Clarence Thomas (confirmed by a vote of 52-48), John Roberts (78-22) and Samuel Alito (58-42); all the [...]
Apr
22
2009
Glimpsing Journalism's 'Devouring Black Hole of Corruption'
By 1 Comment
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (4/18/09) samples the response to Mike Allen of Politico's quote of "a former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush" calling the publishing of U.S. torture memos "damaging because these are techniques that work": This, from Andrew Sullivan, is a representative example of the reaction: Allen is allowing a member of the administration that broke the Geneva Conventions and committed war crimes to attack the current president and claim, without any substantiation, that the torture worked. He then allows that "top official" to proclaim things that are at the very least [...]
