In 2006, the Washington Post went on a witch hunt against George Allen, and then Deborah Howell wrote a column kind of/sort of admitting that they had been unfair to Allen. Of course, Howell wrote her column after The Post’s biased coverage had already helped Allen lose the election. Anyway, I think that this is The Washington Post’s MO–give completely unfair, biased coverage throughout the campaign in order to help your candidate win, then give some watered down mea culpa afterwards.

By the way, I wrote a diary back in August, that dealt, in great detail, with how the WAPO and other news organizations were extremely unfair to Allen, and how they treated Barack Obama drastically differently in similar situations. The link is below.

Frank Rich is an Awful Person

the lettered news stations except FOX and that has it limits with me as well. I pick up my news from the internet and I tend to ignore AP and NY TIMES articles unless I want to use their stories to belittle them….so if we all do the same I predict DEATH TO THE MSM in no more that 10 years and probably sooner!

They are simply bereft of true journalism and should die the death of a thousand cuts of paper!

smagar – perfect, scathing analysis. I don’t even know where to start in amen-ing this diary. Absolutely, absolutely true.

This is why, to me, it is a personal vendetta. I want the Treason Media DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.

And I am willing to go to considerable lengths. I think the major media are the CHIEF NUMBER ONE enemy of America. Period. Bigger than Al Queda, bigger even than the Democratic Party (who would be a pitiful minority bunch of Marxist oddballs without the Treason Media).

I submit that Redstate can do some damage to the MSM, by repeating loudly and often the many, many slimy things it did during this election.

If we can get the blogosphere to chattering about the MSM’s 2008 election foibles, the MSM won’t be able to just walk away from the story. At some level, it will have to deal with it.

It’s important that the Howard Kurtzs and Deborah Howells of the MSM not be allowed to be the ones “holding the MSM to account.”

Howard and Deborah are there for CYA.

WE need to be the ones to hold them to account.

WE need to keep the MSM on the defensive. In so doing, we can cut further into their market share.

People don’t subscribe to newspapers or news magazines written by shallow-thinking partisans.

We can make that point. Again and again and again.

In response, the MSM can do…what?

Say that it was OK for Ifil to be the VP debate moderator?

Claim that the SF Chronicle did the right thing by downplaying Obama’s threat to bankrupt new coal plants, or his “warning” that energy prices would necessarily skyrocket in his Administration.

What rational human being would NOT want to know that a Presidential candidate had said such things about energy policy during his campaign?

Or, more importantly, NOT expect a professional reporter to say something about it out loud?

I’ll write another diary on this later this week—but I think we have a good opportunity here.

We can pound the MSM, over and over again, in an ongoing narrative on how they’ve lost America’s trust.

We have plenty of weapons to fire and tons of ammunition to use.

And the MSM can’t run away.

All the MSM can do is hunker down and hope we run out of ammo before too much damage is done.

That’s the classic definition of siege warfare. Steady, persistent pounding that slowly grinds down your opponent.

I, for one, am willing to lay siege to the MSM. I hope the rest of the blogosphere is as well.

A diversity program to equalize the number of conservatives in the news staff with the number of liberals.

That addresses a structural problem which exacerbates natural human bias.

IMO our energies would be better spent by loudly insisting that the WaPo follow through with her remedy. She has given significant ground and we ought to fortify and attack from this new vantage. Sigh.

I recently read about newspapers in the 1800s. They were just as partisan but at least they weren’t all supporting the same political party. I always get a kick out of Rush’s audio montages where he illustrates the silliness of 10 or more talking heads on TV using the exact same phrases and buzz-words in their stories that would make you swear their scripts were written by the same person.

What really burns me is that our own party does such a lousy job at countering the Democrat propaganda machine in our press and public schools. Where are the conservative newspapers? Can anybody name ONE? We used to claim Fox News as our own but their gushing over Obama in this last election cycle was disgusting and as a result, I don’t watch them much anymore.

First of all, thanks to all of you who read this diary. It’s nice to be Recommended again.

Here are some things we can do, to wound the MSM:

1) Take some of the examples of MSM bias and make stories out of them. Do some research, dig into them and give them the public airing the MSM sorely wishes they won’t get. Examples:

a) Obama online credit card fraud. Yes, much has been written about that story already.

But I think this is a subject that can be explored further and expanded upon. And, this will resonate with average Americans.

Think of it—a presidential campaign that took affirmative action to enable credit card fraud. What kind of worthwhile leader does such a thing? What kind of example does that set?

And what kind of MSM looks the other way?

I think we can own this discussion.

b) Obama’s unreported pledge to “bankrupt” coal companies and make energy prices “skyrocket.”

Where was the Pennsylvania and Ohio press on this? Aren’t there professional reporters in that state? Wasn’t someone in that state’s MSM interested in telling the people of their state the Democratic nominee’s position on coal?

Or…were they interested in burying it until it was too late? Let’s find out…whaddya say?

What about the national MSM? Why didn’t a professional MSM find and air such a shocking statement by a soon-to-be President? Why did NewsBusters have to do it?

c) Gwen Ifil’s choice to be VP debate moderator.

Why didn’t she recuse herself? Why didn’t her internal code of ethics as a journalist compel her to back out, to avoid an appearance of impropriety?

Why isn’t the rest of the MSM upset by the actions of Gwen Ifil?

Why should we Republicans ever trust them again?

Folks, we have all of 2009 to lay siege to the MSM, on these and other issues. We can pound away at their credibility.

They won’t change the way they do their business. They’ll try some facesaving gestures, like hiring more conservative opinion writers. (Although, it wouldn’t surprise me if the WaPo is a bit shocked at how deranged Kathleen Parker has turned out to be).

But, adding a conservative pundit here and there does nothing to mitigate the widespread liberalism amongst those who report the news—and choose what news items to highlight and which ones to ignore or bury.

Redstate editors, I hereby enlist as a soldier in the First Redstate Heavy Artillery. Once Little Smagar and CINCHOUSE return to Arizona, my time to write will be a bit more constrained. But I’m ready to do my part.

I await further orders…

First of all, thanks to all of you who read this diary. It’s nice to be Recommended again.

Here are some things we can do, to wound the MSM:

1) Take some of the examples of MSM bias and make stories out of them. Do some research, dig into them and give them the public airing the MSM sorely wishes they won’t get. Examples:

a) Obama online credit card fraud. Yes, much has been written about that story already.

But I think this is a subject that can be explored further and expanded upon. And, this will resonate with average Americans.

Think of it—a presidential campaign that took affirmative action to enable credit card fraud. What kind of worthwhile leader does such a thing? What kind of example does that set?

And what kind of MSM looks the other way?

I think we can own this discussion.

b) Obama’s unreported pledge to “bankrupt” coal companies and make energy prices “skyrocket.”

Where was the Pennsylvania and Ohio press on this? Aren’t there professional reporters in that state? Wasn’t someone in that state’s MSM interested in telling the people of their state the Democratic nominee’s position on coal?

Or…were they interested in burying it until it was too late? Let’s find out…whaddya say?

What about the national MSM? Why didn’t a professional MSM find and air such a shocking statement by a soon-to-be President? Why did NewsBusters have to do it?

c) Gwen Ifil’s choice to be VP debate moderator.

Why didn’t she recuse herself? Why didn’t her internal code of ethics as a journalist compel her to back out, to avoid an appearance of impropriety?

Why isn’t the rest of the MSM upset by the actions of Gwen Ifil?

Why should we Republicans ever trust them again?

Folks, we have all of 2009 to lay siege to the MSM, on these and other issues. We can pound away at their credibility.

They won’t change the way they do their business. They’ll try some facesaving gestures, like hiring more conservative opinion writers. (Although, it wouldn’t surprise me if the WaPo is a bit shocked at how deranged Kathleen Parker has turned out to be).

But, adding a conservative pundit here and there does nothing to mitigate the widespread liberalism amongst those who report the news—and choose what news items to highlight and which ones to ignore or bury.

Redstate editors, I hereby enlist as a soldier in the First Redstate Heavy Artillery. Once Little Smagar and CINCHOUSE return to Arizona, my time to write will be a bit more constrained. But I’m ready to do my part.

I await further orders…