On the Contrary

Okay, I admit it.  I am a news junkie.  Usually while I work in the afternoon I alternate between MSNBC and CNN depending on which one has interesting guests, or is not engaging in banal banter, or is not giving me advice about my health or my money which I don’t have any of.  Fox News I avoid like the plague because it does really represent a very biased point of view and the amount of miss reporting far exceeds the other two.

But in a New York Times article on Monday I find I am fairly out of step. The gist of the article was that with MSNBC tilting left, and Fox right, CNN, who they claim holds the middle, is losing viewership.  What was shocking if we look at the April numbers is that CNN has been fourth. Fox has 668,000 viewers; MSNBC has 300,000; and CNN has 271,000. HLN has 277,000.  Fox has over double the numbers of MSNBC.  So let’s do some critical thinking here.

First, is CNN really in the middle?  They get this label by claiming that they give both sides a fair hearing.  But as pointed out in yesterday’s blog and by Fareed Zakaria and others, we have 1 ½ political parties and the ½ are the Republicans.  So if you give the Flat Earthers the same credence in a debate with Round Earthers, isn’t the debate slanted?  If you are giving the Republican No Machine the same footing with the policies put forward by the Democrats, are you not actually giving more weight than is due to their arguments?  By not being aggressive enough at challenging these Republicans and their ideas and having the two pundit debate, CNN is actually more conservative leaning than middle of the road because they are lending credence to the arguments having equal weight.  Besides, remember where Glenn Beck came from, that Lou Dobbs continues to bash immigrants, and the business interviews are decidedly conservative and the net result is a right leaning news organization.

My point here is that if you are conservative you will watch Fox News, and if you are independent or liberal, you are probably going to watch MSNBC where old thinking is challenge by new thinking from Rachel Maddow, David Schuster, and Keith Olbermann.  Instead of just accepting their guest’s statements, they are well informed and ask penetrating questions.  CNN is really competing with Fox News for viewers.  Now in all fairness, this does not apply to CNN’s international reporting, which I don’t think anyone does a better job.  Lets just hope they continue to hold on to these reporters and journalists because they do a great service for us.

The article implied that one has to pick a bias to gain readership.  Is MSNBC really that left leaning or has the middle shifted which leaves CNN looking conservative?  I will give you that Keith Olbermann does very definitely have a bias, but Rachel and David reflect more what I think the younger nation is thinking.

But there is something else to consider about these numbers.  News junkies are old like me but the majority of our nation is younger and does not watch these shows.  What the 2:1 ratio of Fox watchers to MSNBC watchers tells me is that we have an older generation that is mostly conservative watching these shows.  Old people find change much more difficult to deal with and Fox reassures them that nothing is changing and the old ideas still are viable.  It’s a lie of course, but in the world of making money, it is profitable.  In the world of let the market place decide, if lies, shrillness, conflict and misinformation sell better than truth and rational consideration of reality, then that is what we get.  But some of us still like to use our brains, and MSNBC usually is better at questioning the conventional wisdom so it is my choice, the exception being Chris Mathews.

I was watching CNN on Monday trying to find out what was going on in Georgia with the invasion by the Russians and what I got was John McMean looked more Presidential today than Barrack did as he released a get tough paper on Russia.  Let’s see if I have this right:  Russia has invaded Georgia and I, probably like a lot of people in this country, have ignored the politics over there and now I would like to know what the background is that led up to this invasion.  And what I got was an analysis of how this event could work in John McMean’s political favor because he can show off his foreign affairs credentials and a discussion of who looked more Presidential, McMean in suit and tie framed by flags, and Barrack on vacation in Hawaii, in a casual shirt.  The stand-in for Wolfe Blitzer turns to the Republican shill and asks if this doesn’t help McMean.  Does anybody in the nation not know what his answer will be?  This is news? This informs the American public?  Are we really that stupid?

But Keith Olbermann on Countdown actually had someone on his show that knew the history and intimated that we had emboldened the Georgians to provoke the Russians.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next couple of days as we look at our policies in that region and the helpless state we are in right now to do anything about it.  But CNN is showing John McMean with his forceful statement and describing how presidential he looks.  Uh, wait a minute.  Do you guys remember when Barrack went to Europe and the McMean folks were all over him for being presumptuous about acting like a President?  Does it occur to anyone that in a developing crisis maybe we ought to let the President be the President and maybe John McMean was well, being presumptuous, and also undercutting the sitting President?  Oh I am sorry those would be Republican complaints about a Democrat, not an observation about Republicans.

But did our media even notice?  I only witnessed Olbermann pointing out these obvious hypocrisies.  A real press would have informed us of the history that led up to this invasion.  It would have informed us about our arming of the Georgians.  It would have told us about the Georgian’s earlier aggression that started this fray. It would also inform us about the fact that we are powerless to do anything about the current incursion by the Russians because the policies of the Republicans have tied our hands and stripped us of our influence.  The Russians are rich with oil money and they can do just about anything they want.  It is sad to see them reverting to the Soviet Union of old.  But then again we looked in their eyes and knew them to be men of virtue didn’t we?

So while this is going on, the lead stories were of course more discussion of John Edward’s indiscretions, Hillary’s followers threats to disrupt the Democratic convention, and stories about some of the infighting that went on in the Clinton campaign about how to tar Barrack un-American.  I don’t know about you, but I already feel better informed about tax policy (McMean issued an ad that was totally false, but the press was too busy looking under John Edward’s bed to notice), health care, our crumbling infrastructure, a real Iraq policy, what to do in Afghanistan, how to handle our energy future, or what we are going to do about global warming.   Actually what I am better informed about is who made payments to Edward’s girl friend.  Is this a great way to run a country or what?  And we are surprised that the voters continue to make colossally bad choices on their ballots?  Maybe that is why drill, drill, drill sells.  Our press is no longer redeemable.  They are just pretty faces without any gray matter to look beyond the statements of their guests.  Anybody have a blow dryer?

One last thought:  If you look at John McMean’s six point plan for dealing with the Georgia situation (i.e. dealing with Russia), it is the old isolation is punishment approach.  My first reaction was, “Yeah, slap those guys back into place.” But it hasn’t worked in the past and one might wonder if just maybe we need to be engaging them more in the world so they are less estranged and less inclined to act like the old Soviet Union. Another point of view (instead of John McMean’s knee jerk reaction) showed up from ex-President Gorbachev in the Washington Post.  It will make an interesting topic for discussion of policy in the future if we can finally focus on what is important instead of what is salacious.  What do you think the odds are we will actually have that discussion?

Tuesday Update:  It is not getting any better.  There has been some recognition that just maybe we encouraged Georgia to move boldly and foolishly against Russia so maybe we will have an adult discussion of this problem.  But then Nancy Pelosi said on the drilling issue that she might consider a vote on limited drilling if we put a lot of other things on the table, and CNN’s blown dry hair set’s reaction was, “Flip-flop”, and “score one for John McCain”.  With this kind of press characterizing a move to try to compromise and find middle ground as losing, why would politician dare risk ever compromising?  They are all scum and should apply to Entertainment Tonight where their limited skills might be better suited.  There was one bright spot:  David Schuster stood in for Chris, I’ll never let you finish your answer, Mathews on Hardball and knew his subject so his interviewees could not dodge their perveracations.  It was refreshing.  He is diffinitely a candidate to host Meet the Press.