Most of my television time is consumed watching sports or children’s programming, but I try to get in a little MSNBC, too. And I haven’t seen any hosts on that network who are in favor of punitive airstrikes against Syria. I remember when Bush wanted to go to war and MSNBC starting firing anyone who wasn’t on board. Back then, Chris Matthews thought that George W. Bush in a flight-suit had a “sunny nobility” about him.
I’d like to think we’ve made some progress in terms of how the press treats the government. In other words, we now have a media with a much healthier skepticism about what the government says and what they want to do.
But, still, why all the deference to BushCo.? Why aren’t left-leaning journalists lining up to get the president’s back? Is it war fatigue? The fear from 9/11 has worn off? Obama doesn’t scaremonger effectively enough? Only Republicans get to start armed conflicts?
Or is it simply that getting more deeply involved in Syria’s civil war is a transparently bad idea?
In any case, I’m not sure it’s really a double standard, but the press is behaving much differently this time around. And, yet, still they are being too deferential.
I assume the contemporary media is always too deferential. Take George Carlin on the Gulf War:
And I don’t take very seriously the media or the press in this country who in the case of the Persian Gulf war were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense and who most of the time, most of the time function as kind of unofficial public relations agency for the US government. So I don’t listen to them, I don’t really believe in my country and I got to tell you folks, I don’t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them to be symbols and I leave symbols to the symbol minded.
Speaking of The Great One .. Digby posted this earlier today:
Sometimes I think that I was naturally a left-winger, but then I look back at my childhood/teenage years:
George Carlin, non-stop, since I was 10
Rage Against the Machine
Jon Stewart every night since 8th grade
And then I think, “Hmm, I guess I did have some influence, even if I didn’t realize it at the time…”
Since symbology is how humans think and communicate I guess he doesn’t do a lot of either.
I haven’t really watched any political shows since around the time the NSA/Snowden/Greenwald bidness began.
I def haaven’t watched any of them lately with the Syria business and honestly, I’ve decided I’m done commenting on the whole business, here and elsewhere, I’ve said my piece and I’m done.
I wasn’t around when all the liberal blogs and stuff started up (like you guys and DKOS and such) during the Bush years, so the constant daily, post after on the same subject is a brow-beating.
So anyway, I haven’t watched much of any politics based programming.
Although, I believe I read somewhere that the new “format” for MSNBC is not really translating into better ratings, even programs like Maddow is suffering.
I know the ratings went down before, but dumping Schultz seemed to accelerate the decline. I wonder what the ratings will show now that he’s back.
yeah, I know people like Chris Hayes, and I guess I get why the replaced Ed with Hayes, but it’s been brutal for Maddow’s rating and for that whole block of shows.
I’m still not sure why they figured putting Shultz on weekends would work, but IDK.
Oddly enough, I know people like to hate on Rev Al, but his show and I think Tweety’s show actually are doing well ratings-wise. I’m not sure what they’ve been since Tweety went to once a day, but then I think it’s only been like 2 weeks, so I’m guessing it will take some time to see if the Shultz, Sharpton, Tweety intro to Hayes can help Hayes ratings and stuff.
Well the ratings are bound to shoot up now that Alec Baldwin has joined the lineup! ha!
I know some people were upset on the Twitter machine that another white guy got a show on MSNBC .. and I was like “It’s 10pm on a Friday night!!!!” Friday nights are TV wasteland!!
I’m with you. Maybe we can talk about the Summers appointment or the impending “My God, finally” start of the exchanges.
Or the NFL starting tonight.
I’m actually into college football. In Seattle, folks are excited – for the first time in many years – about the University of Washington. Brand new stadium, and they opened it last weekend by annihilating Boise State – a phrase no team in college football has been able to claim for a very long time. And people are over the moon about the first really good Seahawks team since the Mike Holmgren days.
Syria? Who’s he play for?
I’ll be watching my first NFL game with my NOLA family controlling the remote (please Lord save me…lol) on Sunday.
Still go SAINTS, let’s beat those “Dawty Birds”!!!
Also too, I’m giving up on responding to or posting about Syria, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve been having some really dark thoughts and snarky comments that I don’t really want to put out into the ether. So instead, I’m just taking myself out of the whole commentary equation.
I’ll wait and see things as they unfold, and that’s it.
I’m with you. It’s just depressing. I was going to add something else, but then that would be getting into it.
Snowden and Syria. To think if it was any Bush, McCain or Romney. It would have been FY all.
The media is corporate owned. The “left-leaning media” is no deeper than the ratings that the executives hope to generate to suck in more money from advertisers.
Left-leaning journalists in corporate media know their limits. And those who support the President likely are thinking that this is one of the most boneheaded things the President has done. That’s where Schultz seems to be on this.
Their bosses love Bush-Cheney. That’s why they are deferential. What about the Sunday John McCain show escapes you as to what is up with even the “left-leaning” media?
No doubt, Chris Matthews still misses Commander Codpiece.
Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria
This made my day. Thank you.
The Onion is a national treasure, and at times like this I really do think the writers there should be making all our foreign policy decisions.
I bet with a little PR work we could make this a reality.
Ed Schultz made the recommendation himself today, only he limited it to a group of 6 senators. He was serious and meant it as a group to talk to Assad directly and impress upon him that he needed to make some changes.
MSNBC is not a fair measure of the evolution (if any) of major media over the last decade. It’s a different format now. In 2003 they had a format that was much more explicitly a mixture of different political ideologies (Morning Joe being a holdover from that era); it was the success of Keith Olbermann in 2005-06 that led them to go all (well, mostly) in on a progressive lineup and branding. And Olbermann succeeded, and they’ve more or less stuck with that approach, precisely because there was a niche for it – nobody else was doing it. It’s not like GE is ideologically motivated itself, the way, say, News Corp. is.
A fairer measure is consistently “paper of record” type outlets like the NYT, WaPo, or CNN, and while there’s a little more room for skeptical voices this time (especially at the NYT), I don’t think it’s changed that much. The Village is still a pretty insular bubble.
What has changed a lot is the rest of the media environment. The Internet and blogs were in their infancy in 2003; Internet video wasn’t accessible in any practical way for most people, and people who did use the Internet were much less likely to know about or seek out foreign or alternative reporting. Social media meant MySpace, which had just supplanted Friendster and was still all about people’s social lives. It didn’t have anything remotely like the volume of political networking Facebook now does. Twitter was something giggly girls did. The ability of people to fact-check or deconstruct official pronouncements in real time, to a sizable audience, that can then make it go viral, is exponentially greater now.
To the extent Village media has shifted, it’s because of the presence of so many other venues where the Emperor’s nakedness can be shown to all. Much as they’d like to (and often pretend to), Villagers can’t entirely ignore the media environment they operate in. That’s what’s different in 2013.
Has Obama done any “scaremongering” at all? I haven’t noticed anything of the kind. And it’s to his credit that he hasn’t. It’s probably driving down the degree of support for action, but what would you rather have, a testy discussion about the relative weighting of risks and international principles, or a lot of booga-booga about how the reason to act is because The Terrorists could strike us tomorrow if we dither?
just him saying it wasn’t time sensitive is an improvement in this type of discussion that is beyond measure
While I’m opposed to the proposed “limited military action in Syria” and I also actually think that Obama sells his case better than Kerry, I find myself more sympathetic to the administration because the GOP is overwhelmingly opposed…..and why? It’s not like they think we should spend all those dollars to help the jobless and the poor and the uninsured. They’re the ones wanting to fund the MIC and now they don’t want to use it? Give me a break! Then the gall of Rumsfeld et. al. to go on Fox and claim that Obama is not behaving like a Commander-in-chief. Sorta made my partisan vibes come to the fore.
I’ve mostly given up on American media. I don’t have cable. I don’t expect American “journalists” to be able to get to some semblance of journalistic independence (or integrity) away from their corporate owners in my lifetime. Media ownership is in so few hands these days.
I read the Guardian, Der Spiegel, an Indian paper, the Chgo Sun Times. The only TV news I watch are via a broadcast I get of Mhz Worldview: BBC, Deutsche Welle, France 24, Japan, Al Jazeera.
Apparently a new wrinkle this evening:
I actually do like this idea quite a bit, but am sure that PDQ someone’s going to enlighten me as to why this is impracticable, undoable, or wimpy.
Status of CWC
Also the CWC doesn’t appear to cover use within one’s country.
There was a report that Somalia has recently signed and ratified the CWC. According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Somalia signed May 29, 2013, and ratified June 28, 2013.
It’s not just for Generals anymore.
Vietnam sucked. So when Iraq invaded Kuwait the DEMs were agin it. The media spoke of Iraq’s “battle-hardened army, 4th largest in the world”.
Well the Gulf War turned out to be low in American casualties and Kuwait was freed. Those ‘no’ votes looked pretty wimpy come next election day.
Not gonna make that mistake for Iraq II. Ambitious DEMs weren’t gonna lug around another ‘no’ vote hung around their necks. The media had their Shock and Awe on.
We know how well that turned out. So here we go again…
(No, I’m not saying a raid on Syria is an unquestionably solid move. I am saying we voters don’t get much quality out of our politician’s decision-making process. And Lord knows we don’t get quality from our news media.)
William Rivers Pitt: It’s Not A War, So Stop Saying That