The MSM vs. McCalin/Palin
By SusanUnPC on October 10, 2008 at 4:54 PM in McCain/Palin 2008, Media Bias, Media Handling of Story, Obamedia
There is constant chatter across the MSM spectrum about vicious, racist attacks on Obama at McCain/Palin rallies. The incidents are now reported as “fact.” Thing is, the entire brouhaha about conduct at McCain/Palin events — that even merited a stern NYTimes editorial — began with one Dana Milbank, whose reputation for “truthiness” is, well, less than stellar, writes Bob Somersby for The Daily Howler:
The Times refers to this “sketch” by Dana Milbank, a highly unreliable chronicler. But in fact, Milbank only described one person at Palin’s rally shouting one epithet at that TV crew member. (“One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man.”) … Read more.
In “The Power of One” at City Journal, John Leo reports a very similar story of how the MSM has, overall, blown the TRUE story out of all proportion:
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers.
Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to the dismal interview. …
[...]
Milbank’s report triggered Democratic rage across the Internet with his charge that “Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness.” Some in the Clearwater crowd, he wrote, shouted abuse at reporters. Someone yelled “Kill him,” apparently a reference to Ayers; and one person shouted an epithet at a network sound man (apparently the N-word, though Milbank didn’t say) and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
Two shouting extremists in a crowd of 4,500 are two too many, of course. The question is whether these outliers offer sufficient evidence for a clearly hostile reporter to demonstrate that Palin’s rallies have gotten ugly. Florida reporters did not see the event that way. The St. Petersburg Times ran a benign story on the Palin speech. William March of the Tampa Tribune told me, “They booed Obama and the press, but that just makes it a normal Republican rally.” March admitted that he was standing further from the speaker’s stand than national press reporters, and therefore heard less, but he maintains that the rally was no hate-fest.
An early web version of Milbank’s column was headlined, “In Fla., Palin Goes for the Rough Stuff as Audience Boos Obama.” Rough stuff? There’s no evidence that Palin did anything more than challenge Obama on Ayers. …
Read all of John Leo’s commentary.
So, we have two sophisticated observers of the event at odds with the blogosphere’s and mainstream media’s hysterical reactions to this isolated occurrence.
It comes as no surprise to any of you readers that the MSM and liberal bloggers have blown this way out of all proportion.
We who supported Hillary Clinton know especially well how she and Bill Clinton had to walk on eggshells to avoid raising any ire amongst the MSM and bloggers all aimed at getting her out of the primary races.
What is MOST disturbing to me, personally, is that the media have failed to do their job when it counts, and when lives are at stake.
The media served a cheerleaders for Bush and Cheney’s unwarranted war in Iraq, only to turn on him after several years.
Writers like Bob Woodward wrote pro-Bush books as long as that was a profitable venture, and then he turned and wrote anti-Bush books when that put more money in his fat bank accounts.
And now the media are swooning all over Barack Obama while glossing over his extremely thin resume and poo-pooing any references to his dubious choices in friends, mentors, political benefactors, and employers.
Yes. None of us is surprised that one or two hecklers at one event become THE story about the McCain/Palin ticket (that is, when there’s not some new tidbit to blow up over “Troopergate.”)
So it goes. If Obama wins, I feel safe in predicting that the MSM will report that his every statement and move will be considered brilliant. And that it will take a small minority of reporters to tell us the real story of what will transpire. And it will be awful, just as we found out about George Bush, far too late.
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