Victor Davis Hanson: 'The End of Journalism'

Victor Davis Hanson is a well regarded scholar in military history, fellow at the Hoover Institution and a registered Democrat. I always love his columns because they are cogent and persuasive. In every single piece that I have read from him, he usually goes in detail through his arguments, providing solid evidence backing his points. That's why I find his piece about media bias in this Presidential election particularly interesting. Call it a "scholarly researched" version of Michael Malone's illuminating piece. Please read it here,

"There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.

.....

Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked."

CNN's King: 'Whining' Media 'Out of Touch' on Election Coverage

Read the whole story here,

"You know media bias has reached epic proportions when journalists are criticizing their own colleagues for a lack of professionalism in covering Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin."

Are the MSM suddenly realizing that they have crossed a very dangerous line that might lead to their extinction given the new emerging media?

Obama's Campaign Cancels Future Interviews With WFTV

I just read this at the Orlando Sentinel,

" Why did Barack Obama's campaign cancel an interview Jill Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden, was going to do with WFTV-Channel 9?
.......
The Obama campaign earlier Friday suggested that future interviews with WFTV were unlikely before Election Day"

Please watch the interview and decide for yourself. Of course, it goes without saying that had Sarah Palin been the person interviewed by Barbara West, this would have made the national media.

Big Brother: Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber

I have stated several times that I am no friend of conspiracy theories. I found it laughable when Naomi Wolf said that the US was in the process of becoming a totalitarian regime because of the anti terror laws enacted after 9/11. That comparison was then insulting to those who really know what a true dictatorship is all about.

Surprisingly, the "US is becoming a dictatorship" in the MSM ended quietly after the November 2006 election that gave the Democrats the control of the US Congress. Which takes me to the the public lynching of Joe the Plumber by the MSM. We've seen public lynching of individuals involved in controversial political issues before. What made this case different until yesterday was that those individuals who were lynched by the MSM were, by their own choosing, public political figures in one way or another. In my 8 years in the US I don't remember the MSM lynching a private citizen "just for" asking a question to a politician.

Adding perilous insult to injury, yesterday we learned from an Ohio newspaper that, "State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

Note that from the article, it's a given that Joe's private info was accessed from government computers and shortly after he became famous because of his encounter with "The One". Those are facts nobody questions. What the Ohio authorities are investigating is whether that access was illegal. Ms Wolf, don't you think that this is a much more serious invasion of privacy by Big Brother than whatever fantasies you had in your mind before the 2006 election? (That was a rhetorical question). Another rhetorical question: where are the MSM when we need them; how is that this isn't highlighted by them as an issue of more relevance than Sarah Palin's wardrobe?

Michael S. Malone: Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

I first learned about Michael S. Malone last year when I was recommended his book about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. I ended up buying the book, getting emotional while reading it and attending one of his talks about his portrayal of Bill and Dave at a Mountain View bookstore.

Since his name was new to me, I did a bit of research about him prior to attending the event; I learned that he was a household name in high tech journalism. A former HP employee like myself, although he had had the privilege to work with both Bill and Dave, he had been a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News before writing for the biggest household names in the news industry such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, ABC News. Further, from his presentation I came under the impression that he was a strong supporter of the media, especially the liberal media. I remember him defending the San Francisco Chronicle existence in the middle of the crisis that has affected newspapers main source of revenue, that is advertising, now that they have to compete with the new Internet media. That's why, I was completely shocked when I was reading this article of his today repudiating the way the media has handled this Presidential campaign.

I have been living in the United States for only eight years. Up until this past September and this, about to end, October I had an overall good impression of the US media. Not that I was convinced that all media were "fair and balanced" but at least I got the impression that when it came to reporting news, most respectable sources tried their best to present both sides of controversial topics. Not anymore. And it worries me a great deal. Nothing of what I saw in the Presidential campaign of 2004 comes close to the systematic lynching and humiliation that I have witnessed this time around regarding anybody who dares challenge, let alone criticize, "The One".

See, for those of us who come from places like Spain where all media have been behaving for years in the same way the MSM have been behaving during this Presidential campaign, it was refreshing to be able to tell the people who still live there that the New York Times mocked Spanish newspapers such as El Pais by calling them "pro-government newspaper". Is the US in the process of becoming a country like Spain?

How the hell did it came to this? While I was thinking these past days about the issue, I said to myself, well, maybe this is the way the US media were before 9/11 and I just didn't see it because of the special circumstances we lived after that horrible tragedy. That's why, reading Michael S Malone's article was so refreshing. After all, it seems that even he thinks that the media has gone too far this time. I'll reproduce some of the most interesting quotes but I really, really encourage everybody to read his article completely.

"The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game.
With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate."

"But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist."

"But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign."

"But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather - not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake - but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election."

"I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage."

"No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so."

"Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?"

It's Official: Coverage of McCain Twice as Negative as Obama

We already knew this, but having it confirmed by the The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism is akin to having it proved. Shame on you, MSM (or should I say Obama's propaganda arm?),

" John McCain received nearly twice as much negative press coverage as did Barack Obama. According to the report, 57% of the stories about John McCain during the period between September 8 and October 16 were "clearly negative in tone," compared to 29% for Obama. Conversely, stories that were "clearly positive in tone" favored Obama over McCain by a factor of more than two to one, 36% for Obama to just 14% for McCain."