Burying The Lede
By Mitch Berg
The Gawker – which serves as a model and poster-child for the dumbing down of the alternative media – notes that Fox News sandbagged Jon Stewart.
And how do they know this?
Fox News has generously placed the full, unedited conversation between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart online, so we can see precisely how unfairly and deviously Fox edited the interview in order to weaken Stewart’s case: A lot!
News flash; opinion shows edit things to reinforce their dominant opinion.
But here’s the interesting question – and perhaps the Gawker, whilst still in full dudgeon over the abuses heaped on Stewart, can be inveigled to ask this one: since Fox made the raw footage available, when will ABC and CBS make the full footage of the Gibson and Couric interviews with Sarah Palin available?
If “Faux” can actually do the right thing, while ABC and CBS cling to the fiction of their institutional detachment on the one hand while stonewalling the truth on allegations that they did to Palin pretty much what O’Reilly seems to have done with Stewart, what does that say about the mainstream media?
(Other than “nothing that hasn’t been amply proven before”, I mean).
Hunch: If I asked a reporter, perhaps one of those talking media heads on “On The Media”, I’d expect some laborious treatise on how the “serious” media need to keep their footage secret to uphold the standards of the “profession”. Or something equally ripe.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am
The Gawker piece is written as though Stewart is a newsman. Stewart has never worked as a journalist.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:16 am
I fully agree with you Mitch that CBS and ABC should make the full footage available online. Absolutely!
Be careful what you wish for though- it may not prove what you want it to show, if the campaign staff that prepped Palin for the Vice Presidential debate is correct in their statements about her ignorance.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Be careful what you wish for though- it may not prove what you want it to show, if the campaign staff that prepped Palin for the Vice Presidential debate is correct in their statements about her ignorance.
Which they weren’t. The staff’s accounts have been at the very least contested. They had other dogs in the fight, if you will.
The “Palin is teh stoopid” meme is pretty standard issue leftymedia boilerplate, except that the MSM made it especially vicious, since Palin was an apostate; the dominant meme is that women are supposed to be liberals. Any woman, black, hispanic or gay who gets all uppity and conservative must be destroyed.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I have no great hopes that the raw CBS footage of the Palin-Couric interview would show that Palin is a genius. I suspect that what it would show is that CBS edited it to push the storyline of Palin as ignoramus.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
and don’t forget Arlen Spector’s treatment of Bachmann. all I can say is what would NOW or LWV (League of Women Voters) have done if a male republican senator/congressman was as much of an ass to a liberal female congresswoman/senator as Spector was to her.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Exactly. She needn’t be a genius, but I strongly suspect that the editing will have been done with express dishonesty.
February 8th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Terry Says: “I have no great hopes that the raw CBS footage of the Palin-Couric interview would show that Palin is a genius.”
Maybe CBS is afraid that the raw footage would show that Couric if very far from being a “genius”. The pathetic ratings her news show gets probably demonstrate that fact.