Can Mitt Romney do what Hillary Clinton and John McCain could not: overcome mainstream media (MSM) support for President Barack Obama?
Consider the MSM’s recent incontinence over Romney’s criticism of State Department cravenness in Cairo.
During the mob attack in Cairo until last Wednesday at the UN, the administration apologized for, blamed, and tried to take down an off ensive Internet video. The administration eventually admitted that the video was protected speech, but didn’t explain why until a few words in the president’s UN talk. Yet it was Romney’s criticisms of Obama’s feckless, impotent foreign policy that the MSM labeled “gaff es.”
With the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the chasm between the administration’s line and reality became unignorable, and the MSM capitulated to reality. Still their reports also often speculated onhow Romney’s reaction (speaking truth to power?) would damage his campaign.
If Romney had been president and peddled this administration’s fi ction, the story would have been about his administration’s dishonesty and would have been illustrated with pictures of Ambassador’s Stevens’ body being abused.
This time, mysteriously, the MSM showed no pictures, as they had of the American security contractors’ bodies being desecrated during the Bush administration.
Consider the news value of Romney’s tax returns and 20 years of tax information.
This year the MSM found the wealthy couple’s 14 percent rate endlesslynewsworthy. Not so in 2004 with the Kerry-Heinz’s 13 percent rate. Yet, neither is news, unless you’ve missed Warren Buff et’s decade of insincerely bemoaning his own low tax rate. The stories are classic “dog bites man.”
What’s unusual and significant, or “man bites dog” news, is Romney’s generosity: 30 percent to charity in 2011 and more than $50 million in the last 20 years. Romney is nearly as generous with his own money as Obama is with our children’s. Romney voluntarily paid $2.5 million extra in taxes for 2011 to square his rate with his previous statements.
Further, the Romneys’ effective income tax rate this year was higher than 97 percent of Americans.
This news didn’t make a headline or a lead in media reports or even a mention in last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interviews.
Consider those interviews: Hosts Scott Pelley and Steve Kroft were respectful to both candidates.
Pelley threw some fastballs to Romney, who generally answered well, although through editing or his own omission, some answers seemed incomplete. He even had to handle a couple of follow-up questions.
Kroft, perhaps having seen Obama struggle with a Univision reporter’s questioning, asked no follow-ups. He pitched softballs. He never asked Obama about the doublecounting of the $716 million diverted from Medicare to Obamacare (denied by the Obama campaign; confi rmed by the Congressional Budget Oftce) or about his administration’s refl exive blaming of America rather than Islamacist extremists for recent violence in the Middle East or why he failed to enact the legislation he felt needed for recovery during two years of singleparty rule. At least this slowpitch game was more subtle than the T-ball interviews Pelley gave during this summer’s “60 Minutes” Obama infomercials.
Bias is not new. But it has become more blatant, thanks to the relatively new concept of “advocacy journalism.” Advocacy journalism supposedly legitimizes bias. The theory is premised on the truism that perfect objectivity is humanly impossible and proceeds to the fallacious conclusion that, therefore, journalists shouldn’t even try for objectivity and balance, a nonsequitur.
Rather, they should advance their own agendas by selecting and interpreting facts and by framing the story.
Some media gatekeepers, including The Associated Press, embrace advocacy journalism. Local media outlets use gatekeepers for national and international news, and most lack the staftng to check multiple sources for those stories.
So the agendas are disseminated. And now, the MSM’s common agenda is Obama’s re-election.
Most Americans aren’t fooled. Gallup shows a record 60 percent ofAmericans distrust the media - 74 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of independents and 42 percent of Democrats.
Maybe Democrats sniff out only the rare trufi e of conservative bias.
But the con is blown. So we adjust for bias, using the Internet, talk radio (its quality varying from conservative advocacy journalism to right wing propaganda), Fox News (not the opinion shows) and a few independent outlets.
Even Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, lefties though they are, can exhibit more balance than the MSM.
The MSM gives us their version. Then we fi gure out what really happened and what it means. Therein lies Romney’s hope and the left’s fear: We no longer accept Walter Cronkite’s “That’s the way it is.” BUDDY ROGERS, A ROGERS RESIDENT, EARNED HIS DOCTORATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. HE CONTINUES TO WORK ON BECOMING EDUCATED.
Opinion, Pages 13 on 09/30/2012