Halperin Discovers Moral Outrage
Time's Mark Halperin has found his moral compass. According to Alexander Burns at Politico, he's decided that
"media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history.""It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."
If the quote is accurate, Halperin overlooks the Swift Boat coverage of 2004 and the Bill Ayers-fest. According to Burns' piece, the sole example of bias that Halperin gives is the comparison between a "vicious" NYT slash-and-burn job on Cindy McCain compared to their puff piece on Michelle Obama.
Jake Tapper in his ABC blog comes to the aid of his former boss with another example: what he calls "perhaps the most unfair and negative TV ad run during the entire campaign, by either side"--a Spanish-language Obama ad accusing McCain of hostility to Mexican immigrants. If you follow his links, you can decide for yourself. It's a fool's game, in the end, this business of what's "most unfair," though the "perhaps" perhaps softens the blow. What interests me is that after all the writing that's been done on media lapdoggery in behalf of the Bush crowd (start with Eric Boehlert's book Lapdogs), mainstream eminences now rush to apply the label "disgusting" to--Obama.
Halperin is a cretin.
November 24, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Revisionist History.....
Thanks to TPM fpr documenting the "Tire Swinging", and showing up hacks like Halperin.
November 24, 2008 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it amazing how the other side always picks up the arguments of the Dems - and then gives them a 180 twist?
November 24, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher made a good start at debunking Halperin; surely there are more disgusting journalists who will soon add to Greg's short essay on Halperin Hypocrisy.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
November 24, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
From Tapper:
Is he freakin' serious?
November 24, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
God this really pisses me off.
Here's what Halperin and Tapper should do. Go back and read all the archives of Daily Howler. I would recommend starting with the coverage of Al Gore.
November 24, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary,
you beat me to that post, as I was reading my way to the end the posts I was going to refer to Somerby's comments on the Gore campaign.
November 24, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
They have a video over at Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/24/11302/306/554/665591
Halperin should go back to writing for The Note:
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200704030007
Instead he gets recirculated as a Time pundit...
November 24, 2008 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
TIME thinks media coverage was slanted. The WaPo has admitted that their own coverage was slanted. and the Pew study--I think it was Pew--says that media coverage was slanted.
but here, in TPM land, "Halperin is a cretin."
TPM readers may be the only remaining people in America who still think the MSM showed absolutely no bias in favor of Obama. all I can say is, you guys are smoking something better than I am, and I want some!
November 24, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm happy to recall a comment from Al Franken during his campaign against Norm Coleman -- "You say my campaign is negative? My campaign is based on my opponent's record. Therefore it is negative."
The claim of 'bias' in reporting seems to assume that both candidates and both campaigns have an equal quantity of 'negatives' to be reported and that all such negatives are of equal relevance and weight and can be measured in column inches and airtime.
That notion seems highly flawed from my perspective on the presidential campaign.
November 24, 2008 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTJ,
excellent observation.
November 24, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
gretz,
I think McCain's choosing Sarah Palin, his monumental flip flops like his kissing Jerry Falwell's ass, to his fumbling facts (sunni/shia), to his admitting to not understanding economics, to his constant support of all things Iraq, to Joe the Plumber, to his hugging (literally and figuratively) Bush, and any number of other things added to the number of negative stories about McCain.
Negative stories appeared about McCain because McCain was constantly creating them.
November 24, 2008 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I actually am not disputing the notion that the press coverage was biased. Just the notion that that is somehow a new thing.
November 24, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
What was missing was more considered coverage of the Obama tire gauge issue. It was such a missed opportunity. I'm sure if the media had been up to it, Sarah Palin would have treated us all to a very thoughtful political discussion, demonstrating her incredible abilities to direct the national conversation in a healthy, constructive way.
November 24, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
All reporting is "slanted" to some extent or another, and for one reason or another. MSNBC's evening crew was slanted for Obama. Fox New's coverage was slanted for McCain. The New York Times favored Obama a little. The New York Post was John McCain territory.
The hypocrisy is pretending any coverage is "fair and balanced." The reader has a certain responsibility in all of this. If a reader wants to read left leaning or right leaning crap all the time he can, but luckily there is no economic or logistical reason we can't read different points of view. That is the wonder of the internet. It is also the reason reporting bias is less of a problem than it was back in the 1980s.
November 24, 2008 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hypocrisy is only partially applicable. Certainly advocates for a position frequently pretend that favorable coverage is fair but in many cases we're so committed towards our candidate that we're not pretending, we sincerely believe our side's propoganda is fair and balanced.
To some extent your comment reflects the same syndrome.You're so committed to your position -that all coverage is slanted - that you "prove it"with a selection of notoriously unfair coverage.
It would have been useful if you had included Jim Lehrer's News Hour in your selection of commentaries. Is it hypocritical to characterize Lehrer as fair and balanced? I think not.
November 24, 2008 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The outrage is that Halperin is still employed wasting space on the pages of time and polluting our public discourse.
November 24, 2008 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The worst thing that I saw was a blog that mentioned that when asked if David Gregory is a "buffoon" or not, Halperin meekly responded "define buffoon." That seems to be pretty damn servile to me. I removed Halperin's webiste from my bookmarks after that. I think I'll ask him how he justifies that meek response sometime.
November 24, 2008 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ gretz,
I'd be interested in hearing some details about biased media coverage towards Obama. I heard Halperin say that the coverage of Cindy McCain vs the coverage of Michelle Obama was biased, but Michelle Obama did not have a husband who cheated on her, did not get addicted on drugs, and did not raid her own charity to get those drugs. Miss McCain did.
I also heard another example about how the Obama campaign had more negative ads and that the media did not show this. The Obama campaign did not have racial propaganda putting McCain's face on foodstamps with a bucket of chicken and watermelons on it. They did not accuse McCain of being a traitor or call him a socialist. The McCain camp did that to Obama though.
The last example I heard was about how Obama broke his word on campaign financing. That's true, but on the other hand, Obama was raising a lot of that money from small time donors on the internet. The media also did not spend any time on the Keating 5 either. They spent far more time covering Bill Ayers.
Lastly, Fox news was obviously biased (one pundit calling for Obama's assasination, and then the "terrorist fist jab" and then calling Michelle Obama "Obama's baby momma") and right wing talk radio was biased. They're the media too. So, what's the case for Obama media bias?
November 24, 2008 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
My first reaction is, Halperin is auditioning to be Fox's "left" guy.
I will say one thing for him, he set the bar accurately at the Iraq War for when the mass media went AWOL.
November 25, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Different discussion, but I did think Saddam had WMD. I was opposed to the war at the time and I still thought he had WMD. Saddam acted like a man trying to reconstitute his WMD program. So the media wasn't just bought off or pandering in believing that he did have a WMD program.
November 25, 2008 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink