Paul Krugman Nails the Corporate Media for Falling into Rove's Trap

By: Lowell
Published On: 7/6/2008 12:25:16 PM

This is so true:

Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn't scream. Hillary Clinton didn't say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn't impugn John McCain's military service.

...a true account of modern American politics should be titled "What Didn't Happen." Again and again we've had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.

The latest fake scandal fit the usual pattern as an awkwardly phrased remark, lifted out of context and willfully misinterpreted, exploded across the airwaves.

What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain's war service, though heroic, didn't necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous - especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.

Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important - not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.

I mean, seriously, how difficult is that to understand? Are people in the corporate media really that stupid that they can't understand plain English?  Are they a pack of lemmings, running over whatever cliff Karl Rove or some other political hit man tells them to jump off? Or, are they not stupid at all, but simply desperate for the latest "infotainment" and "scandal" to spew out to the masses, upon whom they look with utter contempt (except as "eyeballs" for ratings and ad revenues, of course)?

Anyway, thanks to Paul Krugman for calling the "MSM" on their wildly irresponsible misreporting of what Wesley Clark plainly said and what Wesley Clark obviously meant.  I hope Krugman's right that "the press is feeling a bit ashamed about the way it piled on General Clark."  If they're not, they certainly should be.  But don't count on it. Sadly, the level of arrogance (and cluelessness) in the corporate media knows no bounds.

Comments



Media flaws (Quizzical - 7/6/2008 4:44:42 PM)
Maybe one of these days, a corporate media insider will explain why they do this.  I suspect it is a combination of plain old laziness (pundits commenting without having actually seen the whole interview) and self-interest.


WaPo = McCain's surrogate? (bamboo - 7/6/2008 7:17:06 PM)
The Washington Post was a bigtime culprit in this episode of dishonesty and bias. They described Gen. Clark's comment as "stupid -- politically and substantively." What's their license for such distortion and bloviating? Who made them McCain's spinmeister?


Neither laziness nor "eyeballs" (Teddy - 7/6/2008 10:55:25 PM)
which raise ratings for media's infotainment is the answer to corporate media's continued pandering to Bush-Rove-McCain. No, the answer, IMHO, is that the corporate media is now the Propaganda Arm of the Republican Party, or, actually, at one remove therefore from the actual puppet masters. I refer to the Super Class of global corporate elites who have seen to it that Bushboy was put in place to accomplish their aims, that McCain is what they have to work with after Bush, and that they intend to make sure that McCain will be in place to do their bidding in the future.

I emphatically do not mean that there is some organized conspiracy, just that, like all super classes in history, they mutually recognize their common interests, and have no intention of permitting anything to derail that common interest. This new corporate feudalism is still learning to be effective controllers, so there are occasional glitches, and sometimes they even disagree among themselves here and there.  Overall, however, their control mechanisms are increasingly smooth and impressive. We are observing an interesting historical transition to a new cycle in human history.