Any of a number of recent books tell the story of right wing intimidation of the media. It\u2019s been a coordinated campaign since Spiro Agnew complained about the nattering \u201cnabobs of negatively.\u201d Since Goldwater\u2019s defeat, the right wing has systematically intimated the media, accusing it being liberal and biased against conservatives. Even if you think there was some truth to it 40 years ago, the right wing\u2019s campaign has turned it around 180 degrees \u2013 and then some. Today, the media is intimidated, bending over backwards to prove they aren\u2019t liberal. <\/p>\n
The result has been a free ride for much of the right wing agenda the last couple of decades. The media was merciless towards Clinton, but rarely challenged Bush until the Democratic presidential campaign heated up.<\/p>\n
An argument made by The Washington Post\u2019s Dana Milbank on MSNBC <\/a>points out that part of the reason is that Democrats had lost their voice for so long. Now, with the wimps getting a backbone thanks to Howard Dean, the press has begun to ask Bush tougher questions.<\/p>\n So expect more columns like Charles Krauthammer\u2019s in today\u2019s Post<\/a>. He chides Democrats for being negative. This from a Republican, the party of Lee Atwater, one of the first mudslingers the GOP has employed over the years. It\u2019s been Bush and company who have suggested opponents to the Iraqi war are treasonous. Krauthammer accuses the Democrats of playing to the camera. Bush rarely faces a tough crowd, favoring delivering his lies to any camera he wants. No president has held so few press conferences in the post World War II era.<\/p>\n Another example of intimidation is today\u2019s Wall Street Journal column<\/a> that claims a double standard at work within the fourth estate. Many journalists have been either unusually silent or outright hostile to Robert Novak\u2019s claim that he is protecting his sources by not revealing who told him that Joe Wilson\u2019s wife, Valerie Plume, was a CIA operative. For no apparent journalistic reason, Novak included in his column criticizing Wilson, who publicly questioned the Bush administration\u2019s claim that Iraq was buying uranium to build the big one, outed Plume. Whoever told Novak may have committed a national security crime. <\/p>\n So the Journal\u2019s op-ed page, influential but very conservative, thinks there is a double standard because not every journalist is coming to Novak\u2019s defense. If a law was broken and the value of the fact was superfluous to the column, some think Novak should come clean. It\u2019s fair to wonder if journalists are inconsistent. But one thing I can assure you: If it were a Clinton White House staffer who revealed a CIA agent\u2019s identity, the Journal and every other right wing pundit and politician would be calling the journalist who reported the identity a traitor and demanding that he or she patriotically fess up. That\u2019s the double standard here. <\/p>\n The Krauthammer and WSJ columns will be just two of many accusing the media of an anti-Bush or liberal bias. And I fear, as in the past, it just might work because if there\u2019s ever a thin-skinned group, it\u2019s journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any of a number of recent books tell the story of right wing intimidation of the media. It\u2019s been a coordinated campaign since Spiro Agnew complained about the nattering \u201cnabobs of negatively.\u201d Since Goldwater\u2019s defeat, the right wing has systematically intimated the media, accusing it being liberal and biased against conservatives. Even if you think… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}