Sunday, October 25, 2009

I've Got A Theory (Sing That To The Tune Of The Beatles "I've Got A Feeling")

Just in case you miss me and my blog stylings, head over to Stubborn Things where I have been giving a disquisition (I admit it) on the state of journalism.

In the course of giving my argument I came up with the following suggestion:

[T]he real complaint about Fox is not HOW they are covering stories, but THAT they were covering stories other MSM editors deemed to be non-stories. I'd like to be shown HOW Fox's coverage of Van Jones signing a truther petition was egregious. I would argue the complaint was really that they were covering it at all. (And never mind that a large group of news watching people were interested in the story. What do those bozos know! They probably all eat mayonnaise sandwiches!)

And really that is the rub of it. What we really have here is a battle between two ideological visions - not left vs. right really - but elitist vs. democratic. The editorial board of the NYT operates as if it is their God given right to set the agenda for whats "important" in this country, and they get pissed off when there are party crashers. "What's THAT? A concern of the right leaning blogosphere? oooh how gauche. It simply is NOT what the right sort of people are discussing at the correct sort of cocktail party in Manhattan or Washington. Someone please tell them to go away."

Once the elite has decided (in Kaus' terms "been convinced") well then that obviates the need to present another side of the story. This is why ABC felt perfectly comfortable to give a WH an hour long infomercial on their health care plans without allowing for any dissenting opinion to be presented. The elite had been "convinced" and this was simply an extension of their new found conviction.

The truth of this can be seen in the differences in the way "right of center" memes are travelling compared to "left of center" memes. I'd argue that ROC memes, if you traced their origin, do not often start on O'Reilly or Hannity or Beck, let alone on the Fox news programs. I've found, from reading the blogosphere that I've known about certain issues long before they ever make it onto the airwaves of Fox. (For example, the Van Jones truther story was dug up by Gateway Pundit originally.)

LOC memes, on the other hand, tend to be "top down" affairs. This explains why, as you have noticed, the MSM is highly "selective" about how they cover things like protests. By definition those are rarely examples of elite driven action, so of course they don't care about them...unless they can highlight them for other purposes. (Like those vile and hateful "Christians" who "protest" funerals for gays and what not - Why is it that that handful of imbeciles and lunatics get covered so often by the MSM? And I don't think this will be covered by "it bleeds it leads.")

I'm not surprised you haven't found my work [this and this] "conclusive" - is this your way of telling me you wont be funding my content analysis project?? :-) - it couldn't be conclusive. It was meant to show there was another way of looking at things that is coherent and at least worth considering. Which, come to think about it, is exactly what I find so lacking in Kaus' vision of the world. He looks at Fox and sees nothing he ever needs to consider. Instead he rails against the loss of elite prerogative.

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