Pundits discuss Democratic candidates
The mainstream media has a double standard for Democratic candidates. INCONCEIVABLE!
Jameson Foser writes (italics mine):
Cavuto suggests it's hypocritical for Edwards, a wealthy man, to want to eradicate poverty. That is essentially what Beck and Cafferty and Tucker said, too. And it's what The Washington Post's Bill Hamilton suggested when he justified front-page treatment for the article about Edwards' house sale by pointing out that it involved a "presidential candidate [who] just happens to be a millionaire who is basing his campaign on a populist appeal to the common man."
This is simply insane.
It is no more an example of "hypocrisy" for a rich man to want to help the poor and middle class than it is "ironic" to experience rain on your wedding day. That just isn't what the word means.
Now, here's what hypocrisy really means:
An example of hypocrisy would be a politician who claims to care about the poor and middle class while pursuing policies that line the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of the nation. A "compassionate conservative," for example. That's hypocrisy.
A rich man who says he cares about poverty and pursues policies designed to fight it? That isn't hypocrisy, that's empathy.
John Edwards has made his universal health care proposal one of the cornerstones of his campaign -- and said he would pay for it by raising taxes on himself, and very few others. Yet the media present this as some sort of moral deficiency and behave as though Edwards' focus on poverty and health care and economic proposals intended to help the poor and middle class means his personal finances deserve special scrutiny. This seems exactly backward. As we wrote to the Post's ombudsman after Hamilton defended the article on Edwards' house sale, "[I]t would seem that exploring the personal finances of wealthy candidates who support policies that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy would be a better use of the Post's resources."
Is there a way we can impeach the media?
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The mainstream media exist to make a buck by pleasing their customers -- the corporations that write them checks for advertising. The media do their job very well.
Big media isn't there to serve the public. Haven't you noticed you can watch an hour of TV news and learn only what the weather outlook is? (Okay, in the LA area we have fires, I should give them credit for reporting those.)
The LA Times canned Robert Scheer and now the Sunday Times takes me half as long as it used to to read everything of interest. Most of my news comes from outside the US.
Yes ... but who would cover it?
Yes ... but who would cover it?
Bloggers. FireDogLake provided the best reporting of the Libby trial, better than any of the traditional media sources.
It is another version of a strategy that has been successful for Republicans; that it, paint the Democrats as elitist. Never mind that Bush and Cheney were pretty darned elite before they were elected.
The shame is that the press bought this; they did not recognize it as propaganda.
We cannot impeach the press, but we can try to replace them.
They're doing a pretty good job of burning their credibility down around themselves (the only thing that matters in journalism). We just have to take advantage of it.