Movietime Blues

This is Michael Barone's analysis of the politics of what's called the blogosphere:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...n/21barone.htm

ceilirose

Conservative writer, conservative spin.

He paints the Democratic liberal sites as all hateful, presents as fact that Dean contributed to dailykos which is a stretch and not true and describes the Republican sites in a positive light. I can name Republican sites which are characterized as hateful and wish liberals all to go away permanently...sometimes in an illegal manner.

My opinion is that some of the MSM (main stream media), RWSM (right wing sound machine or SCLM (so called liberal media) are more than a little anxious about the influence that blogs have. They're getting readership and attention while the traditional media sources aren't doing that well.

Barone fails to mention that while Kos received money to do web design for Dean (fully disclosed) conservative writers like Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher received taxpayer money to push Bush's programs. More importantly they did not disclose this to their readers.

More importantly bloggers brought the story of Jeff Gannon to the front. It's not in the MSM (obviously) but here you have a man with no journalistic background, who works for a news organization whose backer is major Republican activist organization, gets one day passes to the WH briefing room for close to two years without security clearance and just asks softball questions to the President and Press Secretary. Did I mention that Jeff Gannon is not his real name and his previous work experience includes posing for gay porn sites? How about the fact that he claims to have had access to confidential CIA documents that involve outing a CIA operative?

Maybe this writer and his organization should be focusing on investigating that instead of writing slanted pieces. Remember this is the media that went into orgasmic delight over the thought of Monica's stained blue dress. Where's the outrage over Gannongate or is that just reserved for Democratic administrations?

WalkingOnSunshine

Ummm, I think that site painted itself as hateful with the above mention. I mean I do not go to dailykos.com as it is a voice of/for the left. And now seeing the above comment that was made I would never go to that site. It is just sickening to me that someone could say that about something so horrific.

That is because this is about bloggers, period.

Oh yes the Clinton adminstration was so badly treated and the media is treating the Bush adminstration with respect & honor. Please. Clinton always had the media eating out of his hand. And, it made for a good time for the mainstream/liberal media. Since Bush has been elected, the mainstream/liberal media has done nothing but try to get him defeated or discredited. The article was right about one central fact about the liberals in regards to Bush - their hatred for him overshadows many things, including at times the truth.

TokyoNiGHTS

Is that really any different from conservatives liking of Bush overshadowing the truth? That's the big problem with biased articles, they love to avoid their own parties hypocrisies.

Milt Palacio

Free Republic is the most hateful website I've ever read. It's like a big organization of neo-fascists.

TokyoNiGHTS

I went there a few days ago and read an article they had on Chris Rock. The responses there were quite disturbing.

ceilirose

You're making comments about something you’ve never seen. At least I’ve read some of the hateful comments of the right on freerepublic and redstate. Again Barone leaves out the context in which that comment was made. Surprised? I’m not. His intent was to paint the right in rosy terms and he left out context.

You’re missing the point. The MSM is pointing fingers at bloggers when they themselves have some grave ethical problems. They need to clean up their own act unless they want half the country to think they are all on Bush’s payroll and just repeating his propaganda.

That’s a good one. All of the events leading up to the Clinton impeachment were only covered by Fox News and no other media outlets, right?. Whitewatergate, Travelgate, the haircuts at LAX, etc., etc. never were covered by the evil liberal media. Never. Monica’s stained blue dress? Never any liberal media coverage on that at all. The so called liberal CNN ignored it. CNN ignored it all. You’re seriously saying that the whole Clinton impeachment story wasn’t covered by the press? All of us weren’t inundated by it 24/7?

Is that similar to the hatred that conservatives had for Clinton? It overshadowed many things too..including reality and the truth. Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and many others hated the Clintons and never made any bones about expressing their opinions. But of course they were just speaking the truth I guess.

Again you talk a lot about the mainstream liberal media hating Bush but you never give examples. Why don’t you give us examples of how their hatred overshadows the truth.