DougJ has already talked about it, but this quote from the Tapper paean just cracked me up:
Of course Tapper — who in his early days worked for Handgun Control, Inc. and Salon — is somewhat taken aback by the idea he’s rooting for the Right.
“It’s always nice to be complimented — if that’s what that was,” he tells National Review Online. “Believe me, I don’t doubt there will come a day when Mr. Limbaugh and National Review consider me once again to be part of the ‘MSM,’ either too tough on Republicans or insufficiently tough on Democrats.”
Still, he admits that there has been a clear bias in favor of Obama. “Certain networks, newspapers, and magazines leaned on the scales a little bit,” he told Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media critic. However, while covering the 2000 election for Salon, Tapper was also quite public about his feeling that the media were “refusing to shine a light on the things Bush doesn’t seem to know or understand.” Obviously, Tapper doesn’t think the cure for bias in one direction is to be biased in the opposing direction. (He says he doesn’t vote in presidential elections, to help preserve his objectivity.)
Virtually every single ridiculous meme circulated in the right-wing wankosphere during the election found its birth with Jake Tapper. Whether it was the nonsense about the teleprompter, which Tapper was pushing in February of 2008, or the “ZOMG HE CALLED SARAH PALIN A PIG” which came to us courtesy of Tapper, or the time that Jake Tapper mysteriously decided to work late and tell us that an innocuous statement from Obama was an allegation of racism directed at the McCain campaign (Rick Davis loved this title, Jake: “Did Obama Accuse McCain of Running a Racist, Xenophobic Campaign?”. He liked it so much we got treated to a week of Republicans running around to every media outlet accusing Obama of playing the “race card.” ), or the time when he decided to plant the meme that Obama is a liar because Jake thought he smelled smoke on his breath, or, of more recent vintage, when he got the vapors over a stupid joke from the Tonight Show.
Again, almost every BS storyline the Republicans and the McCain campaign ran with during the election, with the notable exception of the tire gauge affair (and if I remember correctly, to his credit, I think Tapper corroborated the Obama story about the Afghan Captain in the Army), either saw its birth with Tapper or was heavily promoted by Tapper before hitting the Drudge wurlitzer and making it bigtime. Yeah. It is a real mystery why people might have the impression Tapper is a tool for the right. I just can’t figure out why they would think that.
*** Update ***
I was wrong and am being unfair to Tapper- it was the Politico where the lipstick idiocy started.
TenguPhule
Has anyone see Tapper and Drudge in the same place at the same time?
Balconesfault
As I implied in my earlier comment – I don’t think Tapper has any ideological bent whatsoever. He’s pure opportunist, in a media that’s set up to promote attacks on Democrat politicians, no matter how specious or venal.
Sad thing is … if it weren’t Tapper, it would be someone else being paid for the same fluff. I’m sure that helps him sleep at night. It would not shock me at all to find out that he’s one of the 90% or whatever of reporters who … as right wingers always scream … vote Democratic.
ed
he admits that there has been a clear bias in favor of Obama
Yeah, remember when the beat reporters brought Obama a box of his favorite donuts? Or when they all took a vacation at his tire swing ranch? Remember?
“Certain networks, newspapers, and magazines leaned on the scales a little bit,”
Which ones? Put up or shut up, Tapper, you asshole.
Bootlegger
The entire MSM is pure opportunist. The only bias they have is fame, for people to listen to them, watch their shows, and hover over their tweets. Their bosses want them to make money, they want fame, the two are highly correlated, and the result is the Village we see today.
Greenwald and Amy Myers were on Moyer’s show laying out why the MSM Village is going down the drain fast. Moyers seemed to squirm a bit like when he said "Russert was a friend of mine," just before Greenwald laid a heavy critique about Russ. To Moyers credit he seemed to get it.
It’s worth watching.
As is this interview with William Black regarding the criminal conduct of the financial firms.
The Moar You Know
I’ll say it again:
Here is the horrible truth: they won. The right-wing has absolutely won this battle, and the media, as far as America is concerned, is "liberal". Media sucking McCain’s shrivelled dick for BBQ? Hey, they’re liberal for not asking for second helpings of McCain Sauce. Media performing hagiography for five days straight over Reagan’s corpse? Fuckin’ liberal media, they should have done it for a month straight. Media insists on reporting Obama as a native-born American as there is a birth certificate, witnesses, and applicable laws? FUKKEN LIBERAL MEDIA WON’T RECOGNIZE THAT BLACKS AREN’T CITIZENS.
And so on. The fuckers won this one.
DougJ
It really is a function of the fact that being liked by the right is a big career plus for a DC journalist.
DougJ
I agree completely.
It’s why I beginning to think that mass bankruptcies of media companies might be a good thing, provided that there’s some way to reconstitute local newspapers.
The Moar You Know
@DougJ: I agree with the first part; it would be just peachy if all the media companies went down the toilet. However, the right-wing has successfully poisoned the well – we Americans need some sources of information, and they’ve managed to convince most everybody that regardless of the source, the information they’re getting is biased towards liberalism.
I don’t even begin to know how you fix that, but it is vital to our survival as a democracy that a way be found to fix it.
Balconesfault
As a UT Austin prof said at a lecture I attended a few years back …
In what alternate universe would a media that’s operated by rich people, who are directed by rich people, whose main goal is selling advertising space to rich people … produce a liberal bias?
My argument is that the "liberal bias" canard only exists because corporate America is largely cool with a number of relatively liberal social positions (if you can make money for them or buy their stuff, they don’t give a shit if you’re raging queer or a bed-hopper or whatever else sends James Dobson into apoplexy). But the debate over economic issues in the American media largely ranges from center-right to extreme right. Anyone espousing economic positions that polling data supports as majoritarian – for example, publicly guaranteed healthcare – is treated like Trotsky’s spawn.
Athenae
I don’t care that he’s a tool for the right, I care that he’s a tool. His work is trivial and lazy and the fact that he doesn’t vote means nothing. The possession of opinions or preferences does not constitute bias. The EXPRESSION of those opinions through dishonestly in the work constitutes bias.
ETA: DougJ, those media bankruptcies aren’t ever going to touch starfucking columnists, who are the real problem here. Tapper and Klein and all those other assholes will always find work. The only people the bankruptcies are truly hurting are the ones doing honest work in their communities. Nobody big enough to be on Tapper’s level will ever miss a meal. Many of my friends, however, will, and they’ve never covered an Obama or McCain rally in their lives.
A.
Rainy
Jake Tapper is probably one of the most annoying journalist in the country. I read somewhere that he used to be a gossip reporter. Tapper and most of the White House press corp are annoying jerks.
DougJ
That is true. But the important thing local papers do is cover local issues which aren’t easily seen through the lens of liberal/conservative.
In Rochester, our Republican county government is trying to do a big urban-renewal transportation project which is probably best described as the in the style of 60s liberal excess (it’s very expensive and it’s very government-knows-best). Most liberals I know oppose it because they think it’s better to revitalize through small businesses (with some kind of incentive from the county and state). So it really doesn’t track as conservative or liberal and the media has no reason to favor or disfavor it based on that (the reporting on the issue has been pretty good).
If coverage of stuff like that goes away, a lot of areas will be hurt. I know this one will be.
DougJ
You’re probably right.
Danton
A seventeenth-century Englishman or woman used the word "jake" to refer to an outhouse.
Balconesfault
@Danton: Come to think of it … "Jake Tapper" wouldn’t be a bad porn name for someone in gay flicks.
The Moar You Know
@DougJ: You’ll get nothing but vociferous agreement from me that local news is vital – it is grossly undervalued by all Americans. Rarely do things at the national level affect me directly, but things at the local level affect me every single day.
More emphasis on that is desperately needed. My hope is that it can be done without turning into the same kind of shit-slinging contest that it has become nationally, because let’s face it – when people distrust their news, it benefits certain people hugely.
I’ve been realizing over the last few weeks that this is probably the most important issue of our time – how do we fix the media? Citizens don’t trust it, and for good reason – they’ve either bought the line, repeated over and over again for thirty solid years, that the media is liberal when it demonstrably is not, or they realize that it has become nothing more than a propaganda channel for the monied interests. We need a working, functional, truthful media, and we need one now more than ever. And we don’t have it.
Calouste
The right-wing learned from the favorite operations manual, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that just having people saying certain things, like in the Soviet show trials, isn’t enough. They need to have the inner conviction to make their message really effective, just like Big Brother did by brainwashing. And the right-wing upper class found out that the best way to do that is to create media personalities exactly like themselves: get people into a position of wealth and power that they don’t deserve on their own merits, and they will become as reactionary as hell to preserve that wealth and power. So instead of promoting journalists on merit, journalist get promoted on mallability. The one kind of journalist you really don’t want in a good position from that perspective is one who would have got there on their own merits.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@DougJ:
I have to say, this is so far out of contact with reality, I cannot believe other than that you are still up to your old spoofing tricks.
The "media" haven’t won anything. Their track record is worse than the frickin Detroit Lions.
If the media have won, then we must have just watched Rudy Giuliani beat Hillary Clinton for president.
Honestly, you are at the level of being silly now. Except for a photo finish that got called wrong by the race officials in 2000, and a war-tilted close election lost to a weak candidate in 2004, the GOP hasn’t won convincingly at the national level for at least 20 years.
The "media" are despised by the public, in all political corners. A 2008 Sacred Heart University poll reported on a righty site had nearly 80% of respondents not believing all or most of what the media reports, and generally believing that the media is left-leaning. Fox got 48% "believers" among righties, less than half, and only 27% of these people said Fox was accurate. Traditional news outlets scored much lower.
What exactly do you think the media are winning? They appear to be preaching to a suspicious, and shrinking, choir.
Zifnab
@DougJ:
I couldn’t disagree more. Go ask one of the hundred million Gore voters or Kerry voters how liberal the media is. Go ask anyone that works for Air America. Go ask any liberal blogger.
The media has been calling itself liberal for decades and, it being a massive organ of information propagation, has managed to convince everyone else that everyone else thinks the media is liberal. But this is like the "sinking" Obama approval numbers or the Iraq War support or the Terri Shaivo game – it’s only "popular" until someone takes a serious poll. It’s only receiving "support" from the same clown car of GOoPer policy makers that proposed it in the first place.
I think there’s a declining love for MSM because it has grown increasingly more vapid and less trustworthy. When you pick up a copy of the Washington Post and read about torture at Gitmo, then open to the Op-Ed section and read Fred Haitt’s boys loudly proclaim America doesn’t torture… when you learn all about Iraq War failure after Iraq War failure in the same NYT that gives column space to Kristol and Wolfe and any other cheerleader that goes to the right cocktail party… when you flip on Wolf Blitzer talking to a hologram and Sean Hannity screaming about fake birth certificates and Keith Olbermann giving a verbal tongue lashing to Dick Cheney right before he goes to a segment starring skateboarding puppies…
No one takes the MSM seriously anymore. You’ll lose days hearing about a shooting in a small town in New York as though the entire rest of the world isn’t continuing to turn. You’ll hear obsessively about the DOW – it’s UP, it’s DOWN, Obama made it do loop-de-loops by giving the Queen an iPod – while you get laid off from your job. Then you’ll hear a dozen different news anchors berate you for being a social parasite.
It’s all so dumb. Liberal and conservative has nothing to do with it.
Chris Andersen
Tapper was an early success story of the internet. He got his name working for Salon, and then moved into the MSM. But it appears he made the transition by the usual suck-up route that many MSM journalists follow.
If you want a useful contrasting story may I submit that of Josh Marshall? He arose to prominence on the internet at about the same time as Tapper (they both made names for themselves covering the Lewinsky crapfest). Yet, instead of selling his soul to the establishment press, Marshall decided to take the much riskier route of establishing his own publishing vehicle (Talking Points Memo). He succeeded because he produced good stuff that significantly impacted the world we live in (I consider him to be the greatest hero of the fight against Bush’s Social Security privatization plans).
What journalism has Tapper ever done that comes even close to what Marshall has accomplished?
Cris
Umm, the 1994 midterms were less than 20 years ago by my count.
dslak
Something that’s often overlooked in why the media is considered to be "liberal" by so many is because it is obsessed with consensus. Perlstein talks about this a bit in Nixonland. Mainstream media outlets prefer to paper over deep disagreements (a solid stand on those would reduce sales). This in turn which requires excluding voices outside of the designated mainstream, whether left or right.
As for why that should lead to the assumption that the media is liberal, maybe conservatives feel more entitled to recognition than their liberal counterparts, or maybe they have simply had better PR.
jake 4 that 1
To quote Terry Pratchett (and pick up on Limpbag’s fanny fetish), Tapper is a misery wrapped in an enema.
And I move that we call him Fapper. Also.
Jay B.
Tapper used to date Lewinsky — which was his ticket to the dance. He was at the DC City Paper, I believe, when it started and since he had some inside juice on the woman, he turned a neat trick.
And this is the kind of shit that drives me fucking insane:
How fucking incapable does one have to be in order not to have an opinion? Because that’s basically what he’s saying here. "Can’t vote, because that would be biased." — but unless he doesn’t actually have a SINGLE OPINION ABOUT ANYTHING (which, admittedly, is possible given the depth of the man), what does it matter if he votes or not? He still has a bias. Everyone does. Every sentient being, that is. But effective journalists can still have biases — and call ’em as they see ’em. They’re not so hung up on superficial denial or "hometeam rooting" that they can’t look at something from a normal perspective. What a hack.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Cris:
I’m talking about presidential elections. Congress tilts back and forth, but if we are going to talk congress, then just put the last 100 years of American government in the blender, mix it up, and tell me what you see:
Progressive policy on a march for several generations. Progressive labor laws, the advance of government protections in more and more health, safety and safety net vulnerabilities, pretty much everything but general healthcare coverage in the United States (but everywhere else). So New Gingrich and his potatoheads had a good year in 1994. That congress was the exception that proved the rule of the last 100 years, was it not? And actually that little blip did us a favor. It basically took "welfare" off the table as a rightwing wedge issue by advancing welfare reforms.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Amen to all that. For a democracy trustworthy news sources are like oxygen, but what we’ve got now is mostly carbon monoxide and methane, with some acid rain thrown in for weather.
The 4th Estate is the largest (unelected) branch of our govt., and in some ways it is the most powerful of all the branches. It sets the agenda, it keeps the score. Only during a rare event like a high interest POTUS campaign can anybody really break through the layer of smog created by our toxic media; we saw last year the sort of once-in-a-generation combination of rhetorical talent and confluence of events that takes. Which leaves small comfort for the other levels of govt. and off-year elections which are the norm.
What I don’t understand is why our news media are so resistant to change. Their business model is obviously and very publically broken. How many outlets have to fail before they get the point? You’d think the profit motive would kick in at some point and they’d try some new directions (at least on an experimental basis, just to see what happens), but noooooo…
Zifnab
It’s all bullshit anyway. Who’s going to even call him on it? You’re going to follow Tapper to the polls? You’re going to go through his mail? It’s a bunch of showmanship. And now, in the center ring, we give to you a wonder rarely found in the modern world. He leaps, he dives, he contorts in amazing shapes. All for your amusement, ladies and gentlemen I give you the UNBIASED MAN!
Glenn Reynolds is a Libertarian, Bill O’Reily is an independent, Lou Dobbs is a Catholic, and Jack Tapper is unbiased. You know its true because they all just said so.
Laura W
@Jay B.:
Imagine my dismay when I heard that Keith Olbermann, who makes no efforts to hide his biases, adheres to the same insane line of non-reasoning. I don’t think "symbolic gesture" means what he thinks it means:
"I don’t vote," Olbermann said, saying it is the only thing he can do to suggest journalistic objectivity. "It’s a symbolic gesture."
Balconesfault
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
How much money did Bush’s tax cuts net the folks who are the largest shareholders in media outlets over the last 8 years?
I’ll bet the number dwarfs any losses in the value of their enterprises.
John Cole
@Laura W: That is just absurd.
When Tapper was talking about people tipping the scales for Obama, the first thing I thought of was MSNBC, which was openly rooting for Obama in the general (their night time line-up, at least).
Although that isn’t what he was talking about- he was talking about everyone in the media being infatuated with Obama- the same kind of BS that Rick Davis and those guys spin.
Malron
@ Laura W
Apparently Olbermann and Tapper are paranoid enough to believe that everyone will know who they voted for – even in a secret ballot system. Although I admire Olbermann and love to watch Countdown I found his confession on "The View" disappointing.
@DougJ
I appreciate someone finally calling out Tapper’s lapdogging for the right with all his memes. Crooked businessmen have their seedy money launderers, the GOP has people like Tapper for meme laundering.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Laura W:
I don’t agree. Not voting is a form of voting. Declining to vote is certainly a form of expression. It absolutely qualifies as a symbolic gesture. Whether it is effective, or accomplishes anything in particular, notwithstanding.
The fact that some people may not agree with it doesn’t make it into something it’s not.
Ray Radlein
This sentence is exactly three words too long.
John Cole
The thing I don’t understand is why they do it. They are obviously smart people. You’ve all seen them speak- they aren’t stupid. But why do they insist on pushing all these BS memes?
Balconesfault
@Malron: I can understand it, from a silly "I don’t have to admit liberal/conservative bias by admitting I voted for x in the last election".
Basically, that’s like saying "I’m bad at what I do, since I can’t fairly assess a politician I support". It’s admitting that bias will influence your work from the get go.
Does anyone out there question who Glen Greenwald voted for last November? Paul Krugman? Yet I’m not seeing either of them have a problem with some fairly aggressive criticisms of Obama.
Malron
Oops!
DougJ, my apologies. I didn’t realize John wrote this blog entry. The second part of my prior post was in response to him.
Cat Lady
The press is winning irrelevancy, due to their establishment sycophancy, and there’s nothing to do except watch them like you would watch the dinosaurs after the meteor hit. No one under the age of 60 I know watches Charlie or Brian or Katie to get news. The kids (up to 30) are getting their news from blogs, and Jon Stewart. The kids, if they care about anything nationally, do not care what Broder, Will or Klein think about anything, if they even know who they are. They know instinctively that the broadcast MSM is full of talking preening hairdos. The Sunday shows are increasingly becoming an anachronism. I’m in my 50’s and look at the panels, and say to myself, really, they can’t find anyone other than these old hacks to opine week after week, year after year?
DougJ
I know that. What I’m saying is that the right has won the battle to turn the media into its messengers.
nikita
@jake 4 that 1: Seconded. Also bonus points for the Pratchett quote.
JL
According to the NYTImes/CBS poll released today Obama is viewed positively by 66% of those polled. On the other hand
Rush has some work to do!
mutt
"Of course Tapper — who in his early days worked for Handgun Control, Inc. -"
Well, there you go right there. That outfit & its various name changes is a prep school for mendacity……
Jay B.
I don’t agree. Not voting is a form of voting. Declining to vote is certainly a form of expression. It absolutely qualifies as a symbolic gesture.
Of course. But they’re not Not Voting out of a sense of protest or disgust. They’re not voting out of some pretend reason that melts the second one takes it to a logical conclusion (any opinion would render one not objective and, therefore, journalists can only be ignorant or utterly disinterested in basic fact-derived conclusions in order to do their jobs correctly. It’s like hiring blind art critics who don’t want to use their hands to judge a work.).
The Olbermann thing is even funnier. He’s obviously and admittedly opinionated — so even if he doesn’t vote out of principle (rolls eyes) who is he convincing, even "symbolically", that he plays it totally straight? It’s self-delusion.
It’s the flip side to the Big Lie of Fox News being "fair and balanced", an idiotic meaningless idea that being an intellectual eunuch makes you a better reporter. The solution isn’t to lie about your biases (like fox does), or simply be contrarian toward them (like mike kinsley), it’s just to be intellectually honest. It’s beyond these people.
NonWonderDog
I don’t have a cite, but I seem to remember Olbermann saying that he didn’t vote because he would become neurotically possessive of the guy he voted for, and he wants to be able to criticize them without fighting against his neuroses.
Not in so many words, of course, but that was the implication.
Laura W
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker: The poster at #42 said what I would’ve said if I were feeling the least bit articulate or energetic tonight and believed I had even a small snowball’s chance in hell of sparring with you.
Beggin’ Strip?
That is the BEST LOL of the night so far.
Mnemosyne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Since when has that ever stopped an industry from driving themselves off a cliff? See also, Car companies, American.
tammanycall
They don’t vote b/c it gives them an "out" when
Readers say, "You’re biased because you voted for this candidate!",
Interviewing the opposing party’s candidate (could be awkward otherwise?)
Being interviewed by highly partisan publications from either side of the political spectrum (could get tense)
— they’ve probably discovered that it makes things easier to dodge that question. And he may honestly believe that he is an unbiased reporter, so it’s okay to keep his personal politics private.
(That’s not to say that Tapper is unbiased, only that he may believe that he is.)
jcricket
Recent line from Randy on My Name Is Earl:
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Laura W:
Oh, I missed that, sorry. I’ve been out and about.
I have always admired people who just refuse to vote. One of my favorites was Joseph Heller. He elevated not voting to a whole art form.
My kind of guy.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Well, I don’t know about that. I think the media imagine themselves to be contrarians, when in fact they are just favor-seekers.
I think access, which is their version of favor-seeking, is just all there is to them.
If a reporter asks a bonheaded gotcha question at a news conferece, it is just to get a notch up the pecking order higher in order to get a little closer to someone powerful who can grant a favor. Like an interview, or an invitation to something.
if you want my perfect example of the perfect access whore, it’s Bob Woodward. I think that smug motherf*cker would sell his mother for a chance to sit down with some powerful cheese guy and rub shoulders with him. And then sell his soul to the cheese guy to get to a higher cheese guy.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Laura W:
I’m actually easy to spar with. But don’t tell anybody.
I just do schtick. Just call me Comrade Schtick.
A few people fall for it. When they are not looking, I empty their pockets.
Cerberus
The reason the meme is still going is simply because the people who believe it currently run our biggest companies or make up the shareholders of those companies. Thus, it could hurt ad revenue. Given that the ad salesmen run the show in most every company, they seem to have forgotten that it doesn’t matter how many ads they run if they no longer have anyone to sell the product to and more and more people are deciding to get the news second-hand or through direct sources rather than deal with the kowtowing to rich pressure to be "less liberal".
And the irony is, these same rich companies are still fleeing, because who wants to advertise or pay top dollar for advertising in a medium on its way down and hey, it’s all "liberal media" anyways.
The problem is that all these organizations have basically done is fire sale the reputation of the institution for short-term profit and well, they reaped the complete loss of reputations hard earned and hard-won.
Since there is no rising meaningful replacement, that’s bad for all of us.