"The essential problem is that we all give the press the power to run our politics, both during campaigns and after. We applaud them when they go after those we hate and excoriate them when they go after those we like. And so does the other side. In the end, the media remain in the driver's seat, ginning up controversy and indulging their passion for worthless speculation and scandalmongering. We give them their power by not holding them to a common standard.
I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but I regret it. They are always going to be harder on Democrats than Republicans because there are corporate pressures as well as institutional and social pressures to do so. And frankly, DC Dems just don't have the killer instinct or the establishment clout to put the same kind of "pressure" on the press as the Republicans do. Until the press is reformed it remains an albatross around the neck of the American body politic."
The corporate Media, in all their hideous incompetence, were left unscathed by the fall of Bush in the election of 2008. They were left untouched by the political storm that followed as a consequence of bad policy on every front in the Bush Administration.
The Media were at fault in electing Bush (and defeating Gore). The Media were complicit in promoting the War in Iraq. But, more than anything else, the Media have prevented real scandal and moral outrage from having more of a political effect.
Media reform is critical to the country having a functional political discourse.
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