Mr. Rosenberg, one form the fight back is already taking is the large number of people turning away from traditional media. The decline in the print media is well-known. It will carry over too to the broadcat whores. And it will continue. With the exception of the right-wing extremists, the media bears perhaps the greatest responsibility for the American decline. We have a press which is both controlled and self-controlled and it has given us one-party rule, Iraq, FEMA, torture, outsourcing, the decline of the middle class, a divided nation, religion-in-government,...

Apparently so has TPMCafe. Stop it, will you?

Right. Kerry is not articulate, but what's everyone else's excuse? What you see today is what you'll see if the Dems take the House. They don't have guts to change course in Iraq because they are petrified of having their words twisted -- and words are a long way from action! They can't speak the truth because the truth is politically incorrect. Are the kids who don't have the money or preparation to get into flagship state U paying the price for this war? Hell yes! But you can't say it. No, better they die than should Americans be asked to contemplate the inequity of their sacrifice.

CNN has been running a clip by one of its reporters, I saw it on Blitzer's show and on Dobbs'. Its a woman reporter reporting on the Republican view of what happens if the Dems take over, who will get the Committee chairs. They show Alcee Hastings,
Charley Rangel, John Conyers, and Henry Waxman. The reporter describes each in an unflattering way, "liberal" being the most mild, almost what a Repug would say about them. This woman seemed like she was reading a Republican script. This wasn't "news", it was an editorial. I was livid, I sent them an e-mail for whatever good it did.

On Dobbs show they showed the film then the woman reporter came on live. Dobbs said all the liberal conservative thing is nonsense, and suggested that the "Conservatives" now hold the Chairs. The woman reporter replied that the Democrats mentioned were much farther outside the Democrat mainstream than the Republican chairs were outside their party's mainstream. It was the old, "yeah but, your crooks are MORE crooked than ours."

How the hell they can broadcast shi* like this and call themselves a news organization is beyond me.

By the way; Wolf Blitzer's big question was "Now that Kerry apologized will the controversy end?" Is Blitzer so dumb he doesn't see the irony in his idiotic question? Might I suggest someone ask Wolf that question?

John Boehner just blamed the troops.

Where is the apology? 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Damn good question. Kerry was misunderstood but there is no misunderstanding what Boehner said.  Where is CNN on this one, are they all over it?

I went to CNN.com this morning
In the section proudly labelled "ONLY ON CNN" I saw the following headline: "Would Alex P Keaton support Michael J Fox on Stem Cells?". Even fictional conservatives get to weigh in on issues on CNN. Given the fact that Keaton was a sitcom character, I now understand why hiring Glenn Beck made sense to CNN. MSM's ability to put events into context and provide true balance is a lost art.

Exactly. I blogged about Halperin here, and there are links to Glenn Greenwald's thorough evisceration of him in the comments to my post.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/ohiomeister/2006/oct/31/mark_halperin_of_abc_idiot_appeaser

Also, Fox News has a broad reach into households that have some Dems in them, including Union voters, social conservatives but economic populists, and low info voters. I always see it on in the Akron, Ohio airport, which just kills me.

At least they concluded that he would have!

As I said over in the Elections 06 table (I think, don't know if posted yet) the Dems need to repeatedly, consistently, and vociferously call out the bias. Let's face it, terms like "liberal-media bias" and "death tax" only entered common parlance because they were used at EVERY opportunity.

Every time a Dem says something about the media, it should be, "the conservative media."

On a related note, with the election day as the over/under, when will we get the "well, maybe we did overdo the Kerry coverage" stories? I'm betting the over...you know, after any damage is done.

Have you been following the recent spectacle of Mark Halperin ABC political director genuflecting before Hugh Hewitt (even willingly (gratefully?) subjecting himself to an examination of his father's political views by Hewitt the kingmaker). Can there be any clearer example of the depravity of the broadcast news. The old Marxist criticism of the "bourgeois media" was that it was an arm of the ruling class; maybe that wasn't so far off the mark; it cannot be any clearer that ABC is "owned by" and functions for the benefit of the Republican Party (albeit the role the GOP assigns to ABC is somewhat different than that assigned to FOX, the official voice of our one-party system.

"So, how does blaming our problems on the media help there? It makes us look weak."

I don't disagree with everything you say but it really does sound too simplistic to me. There are two big problems (at least) here and they interact. Namely that Democrats appear weak and that the media is out to get the Dems. In my opinion, both have a great deal of truth to them. Let me expand. You say that blaming the media makes Dems look weak. I would say first of all, Dems appear weak because they are, to a great extent, weak. What proves the point EVERY BIT AS MUCH as blaming the media is the response of numerous Dem candidates who publicly accepted the Administration's lying "story" that Kerry was referring to soldiers, not Bush et.al., as dumb. Similarly when Durbin is "forced" to apologize (by the press, Republicans and fellow Dems uncomfortable with the fallout) for noting the similarity of Administration sponsored torture, rendition, etc to Nazi tactics, the image of weak Democrats is reinforced.

As I predicted in another post(on another topic), there is no coverage of the statement that Boehner (R-OH), a member of the GOP leadership, made directly to CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer blaming the generals for the mess in Iraq and exonerating Rumsfeld.
I agree with martingautier above, Democrats are going to have to point out the biases in reporting. Arianna Huffington did this when a CNN anchor refered to Lamont as the terrorist's candidate, reading directly from GOP talking points. The anchor was forced to aplogize (belatedly).
Look for MSM to attack the Democratic Party for not coming up with a cure all plan within 48 Hours of the new Congressional session if they succeed in winning the House or Senate. Also look for MSM to say the election wasn't a vote for the Democratic Party but a vote against the GOP and GW.

This comment's made me chuckle each time I've returned to the thread -- so thanks, VLaszlo!  Virtual 4!

You don't have to watch FOX to hear Rush. CNN, MSNBC, and to my horror and amazement, NPR this morning played his brilliant take on Kerry's boo boo. They even included a caller's comments about how disgusting Kerry is!

This is REPORTING?

Jan Knaus

Re: pointing out bias within MSM
If contradictions are pointed out tactfully they could have an impact
Ex: Kerry fouled up the delivery and punch line of a joke meant to criticize GW. Boehner directly blames the military for the situation in Iraq. That statement being a continuation of the pattern begun by Rumsfeld's response to a troop asking about Humvee armor: "You go to war with the army that you have, not the one you wish you had." Gentle confrontation may over time change lazy MSM work habits. It would also undercut the "liberal bias" argument that the GOP uses to negate some reporting that runs counter to conservative/neocon spin.
Of course, in some situations, like Foleygate, it's best to stand back and just let the GOP form a circle and shoot at each other.

What you see today is what you'll see if the Dems take the House.

Of course. But the subject under discussion is whether the MSM is biased against us. Except for the usual suspects it's just doing a day's work.
We don't like it , the other guys don't like it.

That's the way the old ball bounces.

That was part of the problem. He should have been prepared to tell his fellow Democrats to step off and get bent. He should have called them down on it.

It was absolutely disgusting that Democrats like Hillary Clinton piled onto a Republican Gang Bang. It doesn't excuse Kerry's lack of guts, but it sure does drag her through the mud.

More evidence today for my post above:

"Fox News ratings
take a steep tumble

Its audience is down 24 percent from a year ago

By Kevin Downey
Nov 2, 2006

October was the 10th anniversary of Fox News, and in that 10 years it has risen to the No. 1 cable news network, riding on the tagline "Fair and Balanced."

Yet Fox News is showing serious signs of aging, led by steep audience declines.

Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the past year, to 1.3 million viewers from 1.7 million, and its key primetime audience, viewers ages 25-54, was down 7 percent in October on a year-to-year basis, to an average 363,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data. "

The rest of this article is also very interesting:

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_8294.asp

Now my question is: Mr Rosenberg raises the question of fighting back. Does anyone have an idea how to accelerate these trends?

The GOP certainly has media friends. So do the dems . By chance I know a guy who was the publisher of one of the country's most influential papers. In his personal views he was a friend of the dems but he would have scorned using the news -or op-ed-sections to advance their prospects.

Even the WSJ allows its new section to report news with dire implications for the party to which it devotes its editorial page (hearsay , since I stopped reading the WSJ the day after Vince Foster's death when it published a sick
editorial defending its earlier attacks on him)

Are there right wing media that behave less correctly ? Sure. Some left wing versions as well but fewer I think.

But failing to distinguish between the responsible media and the Foxites increases the chance that the non committed public will just tune us out when we have a valid complaint..

Whatever.