Re: Only “150% in the tank”?
- 09.24.2008 - 11:15 AMJennifer Rubin notes that the McCain campaign has gone to war with the New York Times, charging the Times with systemic and deliberate bias.
This is something very new. Politicians have been complaining about specific news stories since modern media first developed in the 1830’s and 40’s. And they have complained about individual organizations that made no secret of their biases, such as the Chicago Tribune under Robert R. McCormick in the 1930’s and 40’s and its campaign against FDR and the New Deal.
But I can think of no instance when a campaign has taken on a news organization as nationwide and as powerful as the New York Times, and publicly accused it, in effect, of journalistic prostitution
That the McCain campaign has decided that is a net plus for them to do so is, perhaps, a sign of just how much less powerful the mainstream media have become in the last decade as the Internet has broken their monopoly as gatekeepers of information. And it is certainly a sign of the decline of the New York Times from its once unquestioned position as the world’s most powerful newspaper to its present sad state.
I imagine the Gray Lady is not happy being called merely a dishonest version of Arianna Huffington.
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