The Decline of the Media

For many years, it has been a conservative mantra in the United States to complain about the "liberal bias" in the media. When Republicans control the White House, the media rip into the presidents with relish, clearly demonstrating this bias they say. (When the same media ripped into Democrat Bill Clinton for 8 years, that was fact apparently. I guess it's only unfair bias when it is targeted at Republicans.) These conservatives are not far from the truth, their error being their focus on themselves as the only victims. The media have become increasingly driven by ratings and sensationalism, anything to grab our attention. The myth of "objective" news is rapidly falling away. It is getting so bad that sometimes the "news" is outright fiction.

The latest clear example of this is coverage of Paul Bremer's departure from Iraq after the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. Newspapers such as the LA Times were highly critical of Bremer for not even giving a speech. I just queried the LA Times web site and could not find this article, but here is a quote from their article quoted by blogger Roger Simon: "L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country - almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." I think it is quite obvious this is a biased statement. It is also erroneous. Numerous bloggers from Iraq, including Iraq the Model, and elsewhere were commenting (admiringly) on Bremer's farewell to Iraq, given partially in Arabic no less, days before the Times published is critique of Bremer. (The Iraq the Model blog posting was on 6/29, the LA Times article on July 4.)

As I said, I was unable to find the original article on the LA Times web site. I did find a throw away comment from the Times addressing this coverage on July 8. They do acknowledge Bremer did something before leaving. Not that they made a mistake, though. The mistake was by Bremer because, while he taped a speech, it was only given to Iraqi media and not publicized to Western media. It's not like media covering Iraq could possibly be expected to watch Iraqi news to get news about Iraq!

No more sarcasm, I promise.

John Leo has other examples of the the creative forces working at the LA Times. The best/saddest is their report on how unknown and unpopular the new Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is, despite polls published days earlier by the Washington Post showing a 73% approval rating for Allawi. Not wanting facts to get in the way of their storytelling time, the Times chose to not bore its readers with such information and did not publish the poll results.

Pretty pathetic.