Monday, February 15, 2010

The Spin Zone . . . on Meth

So you’re thinking of running for office? What should you do to brand yourself and make sure you get sufficient exposure? Raise some money for commercials, visit community sites, engage in debates. Nah, those are all wrought with the potential for negative press coverage. Here’s a better idea – become a media personality yourself. That way you can spin all the news to your own favor and do “exclusive interviews” for the very company that employs you. What are the chances that station would have a negative story on your campaign? Probably a lot lower, eh? And you can use that platform to not only prop up your credentials and ideas, but to slam your opponent and their party. On top of all this, you will now be given the stamp of authenticity and seen as a provider of unbiased "truth," thus helping sell your platform and stump speech (together with their revisionist version of history and bold faced lies).

Most have obviously heard that Fox News hired Sarah Palin even as almost everyone knows she will be running for office in a couple of years. Fox also has former presidential candidate Huckabee and Next Gingrich who both are considering runs in 2012. And they are not alone. CNBC star and Teabag hero Larry Kudlow is considering a run for the Senate, as is ex-Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. of MSNBC and Lou Dobbs, who left CNN in the Fall. Former Fox analyst Angela McGlowan is running for a House seat in Mississippi and one can remember Pat Buchanon switching back and forth between TV and campaigns for President (Chris Matthews also seriously considered a Senate run in Pennsylvania).

In a New York Times article today, they make the point: “'It makes sense for candidates to seek out positions in niche cable, because it is a direct pipeline to voters,” said Jonathan Wald, a former senior vice president at CNBC and an adjunct professor at Columbia’s journalism school. 'It’s an automatic affinity group.' The benefit to the viewers is less clear. Some experts say the arrangements can cloud the objectivity of the news organizations." (www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/business/media/15candidate.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print). Um, you think so? Could it be that Palin slamming Obama for everything he does might come across as less than objective? As TV pundits deconstruct the news, is it possible they are skewing it to their interests?

Objectivity in media has always been an obvious façade, used to give news the imprimatur of accuracy and truthfulness. The interests of the companies that report on the news always inflect what is reported, how it is reported, what is left out and what is ignored. This is most obvious on cable news stations like Fox and MSNBC, but it is true across the board. The picking of experts is one obvious place where this occurs (see Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, and Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media?), but decisions are increasingly made by huge media conglomerates with all kinds of conflicts of interests that even transcend their profit interest. Do we really need future, or even prior, politicians pretending to be “journalists” to make the point even more obvious? Journalism is in danger of completely abdicating its responsibility to inform the public and hold individuals and groups accountable. Thank God for the Internet, the only place where old school journalism seems to happen these days . . .

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