After countless encounters with the American media's vapid political journalism, it's fair to assume that ABC News' online coverage of last night's conjurings is about par for the monotonous course:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, famous for rarely mincing words, prescribed a dose of tough medicine tonight in his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, telling party delegates and the nation that the solutions to the country's economic ills "will not be painless."
... he said his success in New Jersey was a blueprint for other Republicans.
So Christie gave it to us straight, as ABC's words and my italics make clear? Sure reads that way. What speech, then, was the NY Times editorial board listening to?
Christie ... angrily demanded that the American people learn the hard truths about the two parties, but ... he failed to supply any. He said his state needed his austere discipline of slashed budgets, canceled public projects and broken public unions, but did not mention that New Jersey now has a higher unemployment rate than when he took over, and never had the revenue boom he promised from tax cuts.
Granted, that was an editorialization of what ABC News "objectively" reported. But how is what ABC reported "objective" or balanced, when the network simply regurgitated what Christie one-sidedly vomited? How, that is, can a "straight news" source overlook or just plain miss the fact that a certain pol, famous for rarely mincing words, prescribed tough and painful medicine without charting the tough, physically painful results?
No reader or viewer expects a politician to confess all the hard truths. The politician's job is to inflate himself and his policies into a towering mass of unimpeachable virtue, and then, without anyone noticing the segue, to disgracefully puncture body and soul and essential integrity with half-truths, distortions and lies.
Gov. Christie does this better than most. At large, the GOP does it best. And political journalists? They're supposed to take note of these things.
Well, there's your problem; you're conflating "political journalists" with TV talking heads, the latter being mere tape recorders whose purpose is to replay the sound bites fed to them.
Posted by: Janicket | August 29, 2012 at 08:50 AM
They're afraid, PM. They're really afraid. Because the media is now run by corporations, the pundits and commentators have to watch what they say carefully. They wouldn't want to disappoint their bosses, the members of the board of directors, or the corporation's shareholders by telling the unvarnished truth, and they do need to keep making their million/multi-million dollar salaries per year. In a scenario of this sort, the truth becomes optional. I think this is why many in the national media are reluctant to inform the public that the Romney/Ryan campaign is based on nothing more than a mountain of lies.
Posted by: majii | August 30, 2012 at 12:26 AM