Snow Jobs

One way to tell a crisis is on us lies in how "in the tank" the older media is for the outgoing Thesis. (To the right is John Snow, formerly Treasury Secretary, now mouthpiece for Cerberus, which took over Chrysler today.)

This has always been the case. Mainstream newspapers were very reluctant to cover youth culture in the late 1960s. They went along with the recession denial of Herbert Hoover (it’s just a little depression) in the early 1930s. They were used to create a pretext for war in the late 1890s. They were owned by the various political factions in the 1850s.

So it should be no surprise that the established media is now completely "in the tank" for the Bush framing of the Nixon Thesis, the idea that "mainstream politics" extends from The New Republic to The National Review, that Democrats opposing the war are somehow taking a risk, or that trade agreements which don’t account for labor, environmental or political liberty issues are somehow "free."

But still, people, do you have to spin when the truth is sitting in front of you? Do you have to deny reality to this extent? Do you have to perpetuate lies?

• Reporters go all  googly that Bush is "doing something" about the environment, but bury the fact that the regulations he wants written won’t be ready until he leaves office.
• Reporters take at face value the idea that Cerberus "is buying Chrysler for $7.45 billion," but bury the fact Daimler is actually giving it $680 million net to take the thing off its hands.

This is pure malpractice. This is embarrassing. This should get an "F" in a Journalism 101 class at Abnormal State University, let alone the graduate programs at Columbia or Medill. If the desk wants to print just what the source says, in just the way the source says it, then just have them send a press release and don’t waste money on a reporter.

To the left, Joseph Alsop, a liar from the 1967 generation of the 4th estate. (From NNDB.)

The media always pays a high price for these periods of excess, when it
goes in the tank for failure and simply refuses to do its job. We’ve
now had 40 years of conservatives decrying the "liberal media" because
the culture wasn’t being covered then. I hate to think it will take 40
more years of "they’re in the tank for the right" to fix things.

That’s not going to happen. In fact, what will happen this time is what
happened in the past. New media will arise to do what the old media
refused to do. The Washington Post can blather all it wants about how unfair bloggers are, but you can find the facts here that the Post won’t print, and you will find analysis here the Post won’t consider.

In previous eras, this meant a dip in credibility, a slight reduction in the market, for major newspapers. This time, it means the end. Tob Grubisich, memorize the path to the unemployment office. Because no one on this side of the media divide is interested in your act.

When the hammer comes down, when it becomes obvious today’s Bush event
was a head feint and that Cerberus just got the green light to gut the
weakest of the former "big three" (while a second, Ford, just succumbs
to losses and the third, GM, becomes a shadow of its former self),
well, you read it here. (Who’s going to prove whether a private company
actually puts the promised $7.45 billion into Chrysler after the ink
dries? Who has the power to do that? No one.)

You didn’t read it there. You had to read it there.

Which is all the evidence you need to know that there is no longer any there, there.