Media bias is a pet peeve of conservatives, but it has a good side. Namely, relentless negative coverage can weed out bad candidates. Political junkies like us have long been less than happy with George Allen, a mediocrity who once seemed likely to cruise to reelection and then perhaps to the presidency.
Matt Continetti has documented the saturation of coverage over Allen’s gaffes, and why it’s revealed Allen to be a lousy candidate:
There are a variety of reasons Allen’s encounter with Sidarth has become the defining moment in his campaign. One is the increasingly important role technology plays in fashioning our politics. Sidarth’s video gained an audience when he posted the “macaca” clip on YouTube, an Internet video clearinghouse. It was a group of loosely affiliated liberal bloggers who brought the video to the attention of traditional reporters. And the video lends itself to television, where a viewer can’t help finding it strangely compelling: the absurdity of a professional politician mocking a twenty-year-old campaign volunteer; the goofy, triumphant grin on Allen’s face as he welcomes “macaca” to America; the casual, unknowing ease with which Allen moves from committing a potentially career-ending gaffe to a canned discourse on fighting terrorists.
A second reason is the incredible amount of coverage the Washington Post devoted to the controversy. According to the Lexis-Nexis research database, prior to August 15, 2006, the only mention of “macaca” in the Post occurred in a June 2003 “Travel” piece that mentioned the famous monkeys of Gibraltar. Between August 15 and September 18, however, the Post mentioned the “macaca” incident some 44 times. During that time, “macaca” appeared in seven front-page (A1) news articles. It appeared in six front-page “Metro” (B1) articles. It appeared in no less than three editorials and one op-ed column. This sort of coverage is what reporters mean when they say “flood the zone.”
But a significant reason “macaca” took on a life of its own was the Allen campaign’s clumsy damage control. At first, the campaign ignored the story, then it said the publicity devoted to it was evidence of liberal media bias. The campaign said Allen might have been referring to Sidarth’s silly haircut, then said the senator had never heard the word before. When asked in a recent televised debate whether, growing up, he might have heard his mother say “macaca”—everyone seems to think that in North Africa “macaca” is an everyday word—Allen said, “I hope you’re not trying to bring my mother into this matter,” and ignored the question.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine a Democrat getting this kind of treatment. But since this piling on has very likely destroyed Allen’s presidential campaign, it means that better candidates, like Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, will get more exposure. It also means that candidates with ideas, like Newt Gingrich, won’t have to compete with the Allen’s anti-intellectualism. If Democrats got this kind of treatment, does anyone think that Keith Ellison, Mr. Nation of Islam, would have won his primary? It seems fair to say that the media’s bias against conservatives has ironically helped them by knocking off bad candidates like Allen, while protecting bad liberal candidates like Ellison.
Unfortunately, Media Bias usually looks like this
Still, media bias is a mostly bad phenomenom. Michelle Malkin wrote about the Associated Press’s problems:
On April 12, I learned from military sources that an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, Fallujah native Bilal Hussein, had been captured in Ramadi in an apartment with insurgents and a cache of weapons. This was news. I asked the AP for confirmation. Corporate spokesman Jack Stokes informed me that company officials were “looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time.” After reporting the alleged detention on my blog (michellemalkin.com/archives/005941.htm), I followed up several more times with AP over the past five months for status updates on Hussein.
No reply.
On Sept. 17, the Associated Press finally acknowledged that Hussein was being detained. The AP’s overdue revelation was likely part of an attempt to drum up sympathy for Hussein, who has made critical public statements against our troops in Fallujah, and undermine Bush administration interrogation efforts involving military detainees. The AP article not only confirmed Hussein’s capture, it also revealed (buried deep in the story) that it knew of Hussein’s capture from at least May 7 — when it received an e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner revealing bombshell details:“The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. ‘He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,’ according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.”
In fact, the Pentagon said on Monday, after three separate independent reviews, the military had deemed Hussein a security threat with “strong ties to known insurgents . . . involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country.” Hussein “tested positive for traces of explosives.”
Let me repeat that: An Associated (with terrorists) Press journalist gets caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tests positive for bomb-making materials. That. Is. News.
The AP responded:
Michelle Malkin’s incendiary Sept. 20, 2006 column about Associated Press is filled with innuendo, distortion and factual error. This is not surprising because AP has found numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Malkin’s online blog references to AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been detained in Iraq for more than five months by the U.S. military without being charged. Malkin would deny Bilal due process and the rule of law by trying him in her column and assuming his guilt by mere association.
Yet the AP felt no need to detail the “numerous inaccuracies.” It’s reminiscent of this old lightbulb joke:
Q: How many Straussians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. The light makes itself conspicuous by its absence.
Malkin noted in a follow up column:
What does the AP have to say about its five-month blackout on the news of Hussein’s detention, first reported on this blog and covered extensively in what it derisively calls the “so-called blogosphere”?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about the questions raised by National Journal’s Neil Munro over a dubious Hussein photo taken in October 2005 of a purported funeral image outside Ramadi disputed by the U.S. military?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about questions raised by milblogger Bill Roggio concerning another suspicious AP/Hussein-photographed scene in Ramadi of a favorite staging ground for terrorists?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Cori Dauber’s scathing critique of old AP television footage used to spread bogus reports of a fake “uprising” in Ramadi in December 2005?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Clarice Feldman’s post at the American Thinker on an Iraqi intelligence document that bragged about “one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency”?
Nothing.
This, unfortunately, is why media bias is usually a bad thing. In an ideal world, the media would be impartial, opposed to evils left or right. As it is, we need to be vigilant, and Michelle Malkin is a one-woman-truth-squad.
Posted by Hubbard in Iraq, Journalism, Politics and the English Language, Those Wacky Foreigners