Powerline highlights from a forum post:
... one only has to understand what Hamilton refered to as the "Ignorant Masses" and their susceptibility to the old media's influence to identify one of the greatest contributing factors to Republican losses.
I've encountered a lot of people in my travels and I must say that I find it depressing how astonishingly ignorant most are in regards to all things political. I also find it amazing how readily these people parrot conventional wisdoms and clichés created by the mainstream media regardless of any factual basis....
.... Not only is the old media still more powerful, but they are - in my opinion - doing an effective job at marginalizing the new media. Conventional wisdoms created by the old media include: Fox News is a right wing news service, Talk radio consist of a bunch of mean spirited right wing nut-jobs, and the blogosphere is comprised of a bunch of pajama wearing wannabes that don't have any more credibility than any other source on the internet.
John Hinderaker notes:
I think he's mostly right. In my view, the old/mainstream/legacy/drive-by media have taken the gloves off, and have become more nakedly partisan than ever over the last two election cycles. I think this has a lot to do with the Democrats' victory on Tuesday.
From The American Thinker:
Can you imagine this election with an evenhanded media? The GOP would still be in control of Congress. Our foreign policy would still be robust, rather than maidenly. Our enemies abroad, like Ahmadinejad and Chirac, would not be having a good day today. And the constant revision of history—such as the “no WMD” slur—would not be crystallizing into received truth even now.
The New Media have not yet beaten the Old. They are making a difference, but the Old Liberal Media have protected their power, at the cost of major alienation from millions of America. Over time, the Old Media will continue to move to the Net, but the political debate will continue. The New Media have a voice, but not as powerful as ABCCBSNBCPBSNPR....
.... The media is the core institution of the Left, and it is striking that no Old Media outlet has moved to the Right—or even the Center—in the past fifteen years, while losing credibility and audience. So the Left has protected its existing fortress in the Old Media.
From Brent Bozell III at Townhall.com:
If we rigidly applied truth-in-advertising laws to the national media in their coverage of the 2006 campaign, we would have first declared that the stuff between the commercials wasn't "news" as much as a boatload of free infomercial advertising for the Democrats. The news reports should have led with the sentence, "I'm Nancy Pelosi, and I approved this newscast"....
.... I will say this unequivocally: In 25 years of looking at the national media, I have never seen a more one-sided, distorted, vicious presentation of news -- and non-news -- by the national media. They ought to be collectively ashamed. They have made a mockery out of the term "objective journalism" and a laughingstock of themselves at the idea that they should be considered objective journalists.
They distorted the record time and again with a blame-everything-on-Republican-misrule formula....
.... This was not an election campaign like 1994, when the networks spent weeks exploring how "bombastic and ruthless" Newt Gingrich would burn Washington down with the Contract With America should the GOP capture the House....
.... You think their coverage of Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi was fair and balanced? Then consider this jaw-dropping fact: Since Pelosi was elected as the House Democratic leader in November of 2002, all the way through to late October of 2006, the networks have not once described her as a "liberal." You read that correctly. Not once. That's not news coverage. That's a four-year masquerade party. In 1994, Gingrich was the "national poster boy for resentment and rage." In 2006, Pelosi was "a mother and a grandmother" who was "known for her trademark smile."....
.... The 2006 campaigns are over. It will go down as the year it was almost impossible to discern where the negative political commercials against Republicans ended and the news coverage began.
