The War Against Gore
...or why I don't subscribe to a daily newspaper anymore.
The Daily Howler in its review of 2002 says:
As we reach the end of the year, we'll repeat our great mantra one last time: Democrats need to understand the way their party lost the White House. And Democrats need to understand the way their party's most recent leader has been hounded from public life. In the past few months, some pundits have finally begun to describe the press corps' odd conduct toward Candidate Gore. We continue to ask the obvious question. Why are we being told this now, instead of in real time, when it mattered?
This is the quote that really gets to me:
JOSH MARSHALL, Reliable Sources, 8/10/02: I think deep down most reporters just have contempt for Al Gore. I don't even think it's dislike. It's more like a disdain and contempt. . .And this was, you know, a year-and-a-half before the election, I think you could say this. This wasn't something that happened because he ran a bad campaign. If he did, it was something that predated it.
They had a 'contempt' for Gore? Geez! It isn't their business to have a contempt for Gore! It's their business to report the news. Not to tell me what I think. Not to manufacture news that doesn't exist. To report it.
I have contempt for them.
...via ConfluenceTheoryofTruth
Comments
It's always scary and enraging to remember that news, which holds up that icon of objectivity, is always filtered through journalists' bias. But at least it could be *ideological* bias. When it's just that they don't *like* a guy...that's way too much to swallow.
Posted by: TM(tm) | January 6, 2003 07:38 AM
When people continuously hear bad thing after bad thing after bad thing they figure--well, there has to be _something_. It doesn't matter if, six months later someone comes out and says oh, yeah, that stuff wasn't true. In people's mind they've created this idea that something, at least is wrong.
Plus, and this is one of the truly annoying things, all this emphasis on haircuts and what shirt someone wears and whether they misremembered something from five years ago means that we aren't getting information or discussing really important things like universal health coverage and unemployment and the shrinking state budgets.
Posted by: debco | January 6, 2003 12:04 PM