Charles Peirce: Media Irresponsibility Put On Trial
Last night while standing in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown, David Shuster had Charles Peirce on to discuss Liz Cheney's reluctance to say Obama is a citizen when she was pressed on her thoughts when she appeared on Larry King this week.
It was clear, as Nicolas Graham of the Huffington Post pointed out (see here), that Shuster wanted to turn the segment into a beat-up on Liz Cheney and the Birther movement; however, Peirce, a journalist for a newspaper, quickly changed the discussion to the mainstream media's tendency to give people like Liz Cheney and other conservative pundits the soap to stand on.
Shuster was not having any of it. See here.
Shuster seemingly fails to comprehend that each day media outlets like MSNBC or CNN go about talking about the Birther movement they are giving it validity and inadvertingly allowing it to continue and spread. There is no need to invite Cheney 2.0 or any other wingnut to defend an irrational position, whether it is the Birther movement or "government take over of healthcare" .
And yet for three days now the topic of Obama's birth has been a recurring segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews.
The obsession of the traditional media outlets to cover and dedicate precious time to these kind of stories is just further evidence that these outlets have forgotten their responsibility to provide news, and have instead settled on providing entertainment for a segment of their ideological base.
To a certain extent we are all at fault. I enjoy the occasional ideological beat down of a Republican congressperson on cable television every now and again; however, with healthcare reform about ready to be put back on the shelf for who knows how long, it is not the time to engage in meaningless cable chatter.
Shuster staged a high-pitched nutty, didn't he? He must be too used to being considered "one of the good guys." And he was so blind to what pierce was saying, that he thought claiming over and over that cheney had declined to come on his show as a winning argument. Sheesh!
July 25, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The most ironic thing is that Obama can stop all this in a matter of minutes.
All he has to do is show them the full version of the birth certificate (not the short version his campaign posted).
Unlike the short version, it would show the name of hospital where he was born or the name of the physician.
The reason people get excited about this topic is because Hawaii can issue a legal birth certificate on the basis of the parents' affidavit, for example when a baby was delivered at home without an attending physician.
But none of that would be shown on the "short version" that the Obama campaign produced.
And the reason it matters to the "birthers" is because they think Obama's mother could have easily claimed him as a US citizen in case of custody dispute with his father in Kenya.
But again - Obama needs exactly 10 minutes to stop this.
July 25, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lalo, this whole controversy started because the Obama administration released the "certificate of live birth" in the first place.
What's to say if the administration does release the birth certificate it only furthers "birthers" conspiracy.
The best thing to do to shut this up is to ignore it, and not have folks like Shuster continually bringing up the story.
July 25, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink