Posted 12:46 PM by steve

It's delusional to think that token gestures such as CBS's new 'nonbudsman' blog will do anything to keep repeats of 'Rathergate' from occuring...

The reason is that the liberal MSM sees nothing wrong with using their print and broadcast platforms for advancing the liberal agenda (part of which is to make Bush look bad). Following journalistic 'norms' is less important to the MSM than having people read and hear the 'right' story. Getting 'caught' peddling a false or misleading story only triggers a "how did we get caught?" examination, not a "why were we doing this?" look into MSM practices.

And hiring some schmuck, giving him a title and a column every now and then, whether at CBS News or at the NYT, will do nothing to keep stories such as Rathergate or the hysterical blame-Bush stories in the aftermath of Katrina from showing up in the future.

The only thing that will change the dynamic is for the suits that control network TV and the major print outlets to decide that they're losing money as a result of the antics of their news departments.. and for their shareholders to revolt. Until then, like whites afraid of speaking out on racial issues, the suits will keep quiet for fear of triggering newsroom cries of 'censorship'. Interestingly, even though both network news and the news departments of every paper are net losers on the P&L, they avoid the day of reckoning due to creative accounting, which allows the profits from the primetime advertising and classified advertising to shelter the losses incurred by the respective news departments (shareholders in no other public company would indulge a department which loses as much money as does the news groups... yet the MSM, for a combination of reasons, gets a free pass).

Which means that we'll never see real changes in the way the MSM presents the news.

Which means the GOP needs a strategy for going past the MSM to reach the people directly. It's what Reagan did so well and every GOP leader since then has been so bad at (and it's largely responsible for why Bush's ratings are in the toilet).

Now, despite the enthusiasm of the right side of the blogosphere, bloggers are not capable of doing it on their own. Their readers are basically from the same choir, they don't reach the critical masses of middle America. But blogs can serve a valid role in providing the evidence to conservatives and other MSM skeptics who do have the platform to respond.

For example, why (other than his incompetence) hasn't Scott McClellan been quoting blogs and independent reporting to counter the misperception created by the liberals in the MSM? Why isn't Bush (other than his incompetence) been in front of a microphone every day talking up what's been going right, instead of appearing to sign on to the notion that everything's been screwed up and that the federal government was the biggest screw up of them all? Why (other than his incompetence) didn't Karl Rove set up a quick response team, using material that is oh-so-available, to rebut the hysterical claims of those on the other side of the aisle?

An aside: last night, I was talking with someone who wasn't aware that the law provides that local and state governments have responsibility for both evacuations and the initial response to natural disasters, nor was she aware that New Orleans had hundreds of buses that could have been used to evacuate peope but didn't do so. It's understandable that she wasn't going to hear any of this from the MSM... so why wasn't the GOP out front in presenting that message to the American people? In fact, has a single GOP personality been on TV who wasn't griping about everything going wrong?

Bush failed to present a scorecard for what is going on Iraq.... so now the American people (and not just those Democrats who were against it from the beginning) have gone sour on Bush's not-so-amazing-adventure. Bush failed to present a coherent argument for why we need to reform Social Security.... so now it's dead. Bush has failed to present a strong argument for what the federal government is doing right in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.... so now the American people think the federal government is doing nothing right.

And it's his own darn fault...

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