Note to the Media: It's the Republicans, Not "Washington", that Screwed Up America

In his book, The Big Con, Jonathon Chait talks about how the media tries to put a bi-partisan spin on its criticism of politicians, even when the problem that is being discussed is really being caused by just one political party. He points out that this form of journalism favors Republicans because it gives the impression that both parties are equally to blame for the partisan bitterness in Washington. He points out that studies show that the Republican Party has moved much further to the right over the last three decades than the Democratic Party has moved to the left, yet the media often gives the impression that the Democratic Party is as liberal as the Republican Party is conservative.

An example of this tendency is seen in this Febraury 24, 2008 column on crime by David Broder of the Washington Post. He points out that Americans are far more worried about crime than international terrorism, yet most political candidates aren't talking about crime. He then goes on to make the following observation about Federal funding of anti-crime programs:

...The bad news comes from Washington. For exactly a century, since Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation creating what is now the FBI, the federal government has recognized its stake in fighting crime. In the 1990s, with the controversial passage of the Omnibus Crime Act, it pumped billions into hiring, equipping and training police; building prisons; and stiffening sentences. Between 1994, the year that law passed, and 2001, violent crime declined 26 percent and the murder rate fell 34 percent.

But in this decade, Washington has gone into reverse. The report notes that "the Bush administration has cut the major Department of Justice programs by 56 percent from fiscal 2001 to the present." One result is an actual decline in the number of local law enforcement personnel.

Let's see, which political party was in control of the presidency in the late 1990s? That would have been the Democratic Party. Which political party controlled all three branches of government from 1/20/2001 to 1/1/2007? That would be the Republican Party. Yet, while Broder is willing to put responsibility on the Bush Admnistration, he doesn't point out the obvious, which is that the Republican Party, not "Washington", is to blame for the cutbacks in Federal funding for Justice Department programs.

Part of this is the result of the fact that American reporters pride themselves on being "objective". This means that they will strive to be "even-handed" in their reporting even when the facts don't really back up such an approach. Another problem, though, is that too many of them refuse to admit how much the Republicans want to cut back the power of the Federal Government.

Bill Clinton suppsedly told his staff after the Republicans took over Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections that every American election is a debate over the role of government. The Republicans in Washington have one vision of the proper role of government, Democrats have another. Reporters need to acknowledge such differences so that Americans can decide what political party they want controlling government.

AFL-CIO Shows How Grassroots Organizing is Done

David Broder of the Washington Post has a column in the November 11, 2007 edition about the efforts of the AFL-CIO and their "Working America" project. This project, started in 2003, has added two million to the ranks of the AFL-CIO. The program works like this, according to Broder:

So instead of organizing at the workplace, Working America reaches out to people in their neighborhoods. On a typical evening, Nussbaum said, she has about 150 paid organizers going door to door in working-class communities, often in the suburbs and exurbs.

Using lists of union members, they skip the households that are already unionized and knock on the doors of their neighbors. The message: We know you're not part of a union, but you probably have the same concerns we do about jobs and schools and health care. We work on all those issues. Would you like to become an individual member of the AFL-CIO?

"Astonishingly," Nussbaum said, "two out of three people we talk to join." And they are immediately recruited to write a letter to a member of Congress or some other official on an issue about which the labor federation is lobbying. "One out of five writes to their congressman that night," she said.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House, the late "Tip" O'Neill, once said that "people want to be asked and they want to be thanked." All the internet connections in the world aren't as effective as actually going out and banging on doors. People who want to form political organizations and bring about political change in America should learn from the AFL-CIO's experience.

Why Pundits Hate the Internet

Because when they write nonsense like this, readers can check them out like this.

Why Media Doesn't Like Al Gore or John Edwards

Over at Talking Points Memo, Reed Hundt, who was on the FCC during the Clinton administration, has a post about how Gloria Borger and Gwen Ifill on the PBS show "Washington Week in Review" or whatever it is called now were dissing Al Gore.

Over at Daily Kos this past week, there was a post about how the media is attacking John Edwards for his supposed hypocrisy because he wants to help the poor and lives in a big house. That followed the attacks on him for his haircut and the attacks on him for consulting with a New York hedge fund.

These attacks are happening because Gore and Edwards are attacking the traditional media (Gore) and the way America treats the rich compared to the poor (Edwards). This makes the major corporations which own the media companies very unhappy. This in turn is going to be known to the reporters who work for those media companies, which will lead to negative stories about Edwards and Gore. Such stories will, ironically, prove Gore's point that he made in his book "The Assault on Reason."

The traditional media realizes that it is under attack from the left. Reporters are used to being attacked from the right, but these attacks from the left are really ticking them off. Just look at the reactions of people like David Broder of the Washington Post to bloggers. People like Broder realize that more and more readers are using the Internet for news and leaving traditional media like the Post.

The Post, for example, is suffering a decline in readers even though its only competition in D.C. is the Moonie paper, the Washington Times. Its not that the Times is picking up readers at the Post's expense. More than likely younger people, and Washington is a pretty young city demographically, are using the Internet and not the Post for information.

This lost of readers to the Internet threatens the Post's parent company's bottom line, which impacts Broder's salary. It also threatens the self-image of the Post, which prides itself on being one of the nation's premier papers. The Post's self-image, in turn, is probably important to Broder's self-image. It is hard to maintain that self-image if the Post is losing readers to bloggers.

There will be more such attacks in the future. Any politician, like Gore, who is seen as supporting the use of the Internet in public discourse runs the risk of being the subject of such attacks. Maybe what Democrats should do is create a website where such attacks are listed and any candidate who is not being attacked by the traditional media shouldn't be supported by Democrats.