The Right Fears the Left

Ross Douthat at NYT:

Let me try to elaborate on what this right is seeing. The initial promise of the internet era was radical decentralization, but instead over the last 20 years, America’s major cultural institutions have become consolidated, with more influence in the hands of fewer institutions. The decline of newsprint has made a few national newspapers ever more influential, the most-trafficked portions of the internet have fallen under the effective control of a small group of giant tech companies, and the patterns of meritocracy have ensured that the people staffing these institutions are drawn from the same self-reproducing professional class. (A similar trend may be playing out with vertical integration in the entertainment business, while in academia, a declining student population promises to close smaller colleges and solidify the power of the biggest, most prestigious schools.)

Over the same period, in reaction to social atomization, economic disappointment and conspicuous elite failure, the younger members of the liberal upper class have become radicalized, embracing a new progressive orthodoxy that’s hard to distill but easy to recognize and that really is deployed to threaten careers when the unconvinced step out of line.

...[The} spread of online conspiracy theories has encouraged liberals in a belief that the only way to safeguard democracy is for this consolidated establishment to become more aggressive in its attempts at cultural control — which is how you get the strange phenomenon of some journalists fretting about the perils of the First Amendment and demanding that the big social-media enterprises exert a kind of prior restraint over the American conversation.

Rigged! Trump Contradicts Giuliani

Jake Sherman and Steven Shepard report at Politico:

The American electorate has turned deeply skeptical about the integrity of the nation's election apparatus, with 41 percent of voters saying November's election could be "stolen" from Donald Trump due to widespread voter fraud.

The new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll -- conducted among 1,999 registered voters Oct. 13 through Oct. 15 -- shows that Trump’s repeated warnings about a “rigged” election are having effect: 73 percent of Republicans think the election could be swiped from him. Just 17 percent of Democrats agree with the prospect of massive fraud at the ballot box.

The public sentiment is beginning to reflect Trump's campaign message. Over the last week, the GOP nominee has intensified his criticism of the U.S. electoral system, much to the chagrin of elected Republicans, who think it threatens the peaceful transfer of power. Trump calls the process rigged, and has said the media is colluding with Hillary Clinton to throw the presidential race in her favor.

When Jake Tapper asked about allegations of "rigging," Giuliani said:

When [Donald Trump] talks about a rigged election, he's not talking about the fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. 

What he's talking about is 80% to 85% of the media is against him.

On Twitter, Trump then contradicted Giuliani:

The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016

Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2016

'Vilifying" HRC?

Howard Kurtz writes at Fox about a New York Times piece about the GOP's oppo on Clinton, led by American Crossroads.

But the headline sounded like the Times was offended: “The Best Way to Vilify Hillary Clinton? GOP Spends Heavily to Test It.”

Vilify?

As in, use bad-guy methods to blacken her reputation?

The dictionary definition says it means to “defame,” to “slander,” which kinda sorta implies that it’s unfair.

Do the mainstream media talk about Democrats vilifying Republicans? Or just attacking them, going negative against them, or holding them accountable?

...

So let’s fire up the Google machine and see how the Times handled it when Priorities USA went after Mitt. Here’s a piece that said the group was “highlighting a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and suggesting that Mitt Romney’s plans would raise taxes on the middle class while cutting them for the wealthy.”

Here’s another one on how the Priorities commercials —“including the ‘coffin ad,’ featuring workers laid off from a plant acquired by Bain Capital, Mr. Romney’s former firm — helped define Mr. Romney early in the campaign.”

See? Romney wasn’t vilified by a liberal PAC, he was “defined.”

...
The story did spotlight an interesting note: “One problem in developing negative messages about Mrs. Clinton, Republican strategists have found, is that she and her husband have survived so many controversies by dismissing them as partisan attacks. So the Republican organizations are seeking to develop lines of attack that resonate more deeply or raise unsettling questions about Mrs. Clinton’s character.”

If the Times Has Lost Jon Stewart...

Josh Feldman writes at Mediaite:

Jon Stewart tonight failed to see exactly how Marco Rubio‘s traffic tickets and financial issues warrants front-page attention in The New York Times, and he proceeded to mock the paper for asking such probing questions.

Stewart reacted to Rubio’s financial issues by crying, “You bastard! Paying off law school loans? How dare you. At long last, senator, have you no sense of insolvency?”

He asked “how this is front-page news?” and kept just going after the Times for defending this “inconsequential gossip” instead of doing something crazy, like “exercising editorial control.”

VIDEO HERE

Harpootlian Explains That He Meant to Make a Sexist Attack, Not a Racist One

USA Today reports:

While he was chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian was known for his "pithy and pungent comments." Now, he's trying to apologize and clarify such a remark he made last week about GOP Gov. Nikki Haley.

Harpootlian said he hoped South Carolina voters next year send "Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from" -- a comment that many Republicans believed was racist because of Haley's Indian heritage. Haley, South Carolina's first female and minority governor, is up for re-election in 2014.

"I'm the grandson of immigrants. She's not from India," Harpootlian said Tuesday on MSNBC. "She's from Bamberg, South Carolina, where she was an accountant in her parents' clothing store called Exotica. All I'm suggesting is she needs to go back to being an accountant in a dress store rather than being this fraud of a governor that we have."

No Surprise: Romney Takes a Beating in the MSM

The Project on Excellence in Journalism reports:

The one media platform where the tone of the discourse changed markedly during the last month, and where a candidate managed to generate more positive than negative treatment, however briefly, was in the mainstream news media.

Here, in a sample that also includes cable and talk radio hosts, Romney fared somewhat better during his convention week than Obama during his.

The week of the GOP convention, 36% of the stories about Romney studied in the mainstream media outlets was positive compared with 15% negative-a margin of 21 points. The week of the Democratic gathering, 32% of the stories about Obama were positive compared with 22% negative-a gap of 10 points.

Since then, Obama's coverage has turned somewhat negative, but is still far better than Romney's. In the week following the conclusion of the conventions, September 10-16, 20% of the stories about Obama have been positive compared to 24% negative.

For Romney, the majority of stories (53%) that week were negative. Strikingly, of the 130 stories about Romney examined from the mainstream press that week, researchers found none in which positive assertions about Romney outnumbered negative ones by a ratio of 3-2, the threshold used to determine a story as having a clear tone. But 47% of the stories that week were mixed in tone, meaning that the assertions about Romney were fairly evenly divided.

The mainstream press has also given more attention to Obama during this period, even with the negative publicity associated with Romney's video. From August 27 to September 16, Obama was a bigger newsmaker than Romney, the focus of 667 stories compared with 477 for his rival. [1] And while the number of stories about Romney exceeded those about Obama by more than 30% during the Republican convention, Obama was the focus on more than twice as many stories as Romney during the Democratic convention.

TV and Republicans

Mediaite reports on CNN coverage of Sarah Palin, which began with the song "Mean Stupid Girls": 

CNN anchor Randi Kaye teased the segment by saying, “Sarah Palin is apparently hungry for chicken and controversy.” Palin stopped at Chick-fil-A to show her support in the midst of national attention on its founder’s anti-gay stance and the chain’s donations to anti-gay groups.
NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard highlighted the musical choice earlier today, saying there would be “outrage” if a similar song was used to “introduce any female Democrat.” HotAir adds that the song selection is generally the job of the production staff, so if there was any “malice aforethought,” it was from one or more individuals on the crew, not Kaye herself.

UPDATE: A CNN spokesperson gives this statement to Mediaite.
“The music selection was a poor choice and was not intended to be linked to any news story. We regret any perception that they were planned together.

The Wrap reports:

The song choice comes eight months after "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" apologized for Fallon's house band, The Roots, playing Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch" as Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann walked onstage.

Also read: NBC Apologizes for Bachmann for Roots' Song

And in the "pure coincidence" department, note the text that CNN repeatedly ran during an interview with RNC communications director Sean Spicer on July 25:

Media Coverage of the Presidential Candidates

At Politico, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen write:

On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding. The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.

Only days earlier, news surfaced that author David Maraniss had unearthed new details about Barack Obama’s prolific, college-age dope-smoking for his new book, “Barack Obama: The Story” — and the Times made it a brief on A15.

No wonder Republicans are livid with the early coverage of the 2012 general election campaign. To them, reporters are scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience – and once again downplaying ones that could hurt the president.

“The New York Times has given Obama the longest wet kiss in political history, and they have done him a favor again,” former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said. “The New York Times does a huge expose that Ann Romney rides horses. Well, so does my wife, and a few million other people. Watch out for equine performers!”

Republicans cry “bias” so often it feels like a campaign theme. It is, largely because it fires up conservatives and diminishes the punch of legitimate investigative or narrative journalism. But it also is because it often rings true, even to people who don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh – or Haley Barbour.

And the imbalance can do slow, low-grade but unmistakable damage to Romney: Swing voters are just getting to know him. And coverage suggesting he is mean or extravagant can soak in, even though voters who took the time to weigh the details might dismiss the storyline.

It’s certainly hard to argue that the Romneys’ horse-riding habits today are worse than the Maraniss revelations, which have gotten little mainstream coverage.

And the horse-riding story came a few weeks after a second story that made Republicans see red – another front-pager, this time in the Washington Post, that hit Mitt Romney for bullying a kid who might have been gay, in high school nearly a half-century ago. The clear implication to readers: Romney was a mean, insensitive jerk.

Maraniss works for the Post and his pot-smoking scoop, which included details of Obama’s college-era dope-smoking club and waste-no-weed rules for inhaling it, never made the front of his own paper.

The Media Downplay Ron Paul

At the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tricia Sartor writes of Ron Paul:

As pundits debate whether Paul is getting the attention he deserves, a PEJ analysis of campaign coverage this year indicates he is the 10th leading election newsmaker— trailing far behind non-candidates Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and as well as floundering Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich.

From January 1-August 14, Paul has been a dominant newsmaker in only 27 campaign stories. (To be considered a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) That is less than one-quarter of the media attention generated by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (120 stories), who is the top newsmaker among Republican candidates. And he has received 25% as much coverage as Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman (108 stories).

Paul’s coverage also lags far behind Trump (94 stories), who dallied with a run before opting out in mid-May and Palin (85 stories), who has given no indication to date that she will enter the race. In addition, Paul trails longshot candidate and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman (44 stories) and Texas Governor, Rick Perry (33 stories) who only announced his candidacy on August 13.

The only significant GOP candidates that Paul is besting are former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (21 stories) and businessman Herman Cain (11 stories).

The top campaign newsmaker overall is incumbent President Barack Obama, at 221 stories.

In a further attempt to gauge the post-straw poll attention to Paul’s campaign, PEJ also used the Snapstream server’s closed captioning capability to assess the candidates’ television coverage in the first few days after that balloting.

The sample included the three network Sunday morning panel shows on August 14, the morning and evening network news programs on August 15 and four hours of prime-time cable and one hour of daytime from each of the three major cable news networks on August 15.

According to that analysis, Paul was mentioned just 29 times. By comparison, Perry was mentioned 371 times, Bachmann was mentioned 274 times, and Romney was mentioned 183 times.

At ABC, Michael Ono follows up:

The lack of coverage does suggest a conventional wisdom among many journalists that he can’t win the Republican nomination,” said Mark Jurkowitz, who is the Associate Director at the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism.
...

Adding insult to injury, Politico reported that Paul was canceled on by NBC’s Today Show and Fox News Sunday.

At The Daily Caller, Jack Hunter adds:

The day after the Ames Straw Poll, CNN’s Howard Kurtz discussed the lack of Paul coverage on his show. He explained the media’s kingmaker role, saying, “We are in the business of kicking candidates out of the race.”

But kicking them out based on what?

Politico’s Roger Simon vocally disagreed with Kurtz: “[Paul] lost to Michele Bachmann by nine-tenths of one percentage point. In a straw poll that isn’t supposed to pick winners but is supposed to tell us which way the wind is blowing, that’s as good as a win. So we had a tie for first, but where is he on the morning shows this morning? Where are all the stories analyzing what it means that Ron Paul essentially tied for first place in Ames?”

“And the reason that he’s essentially being ignored is?” Kurtz asked.

“The media doesn’t believe that Ron Paul has a hoot-in-hell’s chance of winning the Iowa caucuses, winning the Republican nomination, winning the presidency,” Simon replied. “So we’re going to ignore him.”

Do You Get the Feeling That Newsweek Dislikes Bachmann?

Huntsman on Bachmann

Male political figures have difficulty dealing with female politicians. In the case of Michele Bachmann, her own manager said that he is "every bit as attractive" as Sarah Palin. Pawlenty backer Vin Weber apologized for referring to her "sex appeal." And now, Jon Huntsman:

At New York, John Heilemann a transcript of the interview that started the micro-fracas. The questions are perhaps even more revealing than the answers:

JHEIL: What do you think of Michele Bachmann as a potential nominee?

JHUNT: I think it’s too hypothetical. I don’t think she gets the nomination. I think it’s impossible for her to get the nomination. I don’t think she’s gonna be able to bring the numbers together within the Republican tent to get the nomination. She’s off in one corner of the party. I think she’s excited that corner of the party. There are some elements that the media find appealing.

JHEIL: Irresistible.

JHUNT: Irresistible. And why not? She makes for good copy. And good photography. So why not take it for all you can get? But I think that’s way too speculative.

JHEIL: But unlike you, she is red in tooth and claw in her attacks on Obama. Do you think that in itself is disqualifying? Is it dangerous for the Republican party to dabble in such attacks?

JHUNT: You know, campaigns are about letting a thousand flowers blossom — bloom. So everybody gets to speak their mind and approach it from whatever angle of attack, and she’s chosen her own angle of attack. I don’t think it’s saleable in the end. It will certainly light up and ignite a corner of the Republican party, but not enough to do what needs to be done to win the nomination. But that’s an extension of her right to free speech.

JHEIL: But do you think she’s a serious person who should be taken seriously?

JHUNT: She’s an elected official. She’s a member of Congress.

JHEIL: Well, there are a lot of lunatics in Congress.

JHUNT: Clearly she should be taken seriously. She’s an elected official and elected officials should be taken seriously.