Half-Court Press

This campaign season has become a laboratory in which Americans can measure the willingness of the elite media to cover each candidate fairly and thoroughly. And as I've commented before, the press isn't fulfilling its end of the bargain. Back in mid-May I asked: "Have the NY Times, the Wash Post, and the networks finally overplayed their hands? September 11 didn't change everything -- nothing does -- but it did reduce Americans' appetite for jejune, narcissistic displays by morally challenged elites." I was writing about the moral equivalency drawn between the beheading of Nick Berg and the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

But in order to draw such odious equivalences, you must first cover a story. As a close read of the New York Times and Washington Post will reveal, neither paper has broached the Kerry/Cambodia story to date. Instapundit has done superb work on this, and Hugh Hewitt has also been indispensable. Naturally, talk radio has addressed it, and the Fox News Channel continues to follow it. Some newspapers (via Instapundit) are beginning to show interest. But the two major players in New York and Washington continue to ignore the story. At best that makes them look sloppy (like Sandy Berger, I guess), but more likely they're just covering for their boy.

It's become a commonplace that the blogosphere and talk radio are forcing to the frontlines stories that would otherwise go unreported by the elites, and the Kerry/Cambodia non-story offers further proof of just how true this is. But let me put forward another element of this story that's easier to miss. Because conservatives (and libertarians of the non-paleo variety) see the elite media as partisan and willfully blind, their use of blogs and radio reveals more than simply a recourse to media that fulfill their needs. So blatant is the partisanship of the elites that anyone who relies on them for information on vital issues will necessarily be ignorant of crucial facts. If stories aren't merely slanted but entirely missing from coverage, how informed can consumers of these vehicles be?

In other words, conservatives have turned to alternative media because they see the mainstream outlets as dumbed-down. No one whose curiosity extends beyond simple-minded party rallies can be intellectually satisfied with what passes for coverage of even major issues. That is, I don't mean coverage of pet stories that, while key to small constituencies, don't enter into the larger picture. Rather, I mean the larger picture itself and the ways the willful ignorance of the elite press can distort it beyond recognition.

I addressed this back in June in response to a Pew study that purportedly demonstrated that today's news consumers are more partisan than ever before. As I said then, that's because conservatives have choices available to them now that didn't exist in earlier years. Everyone in the country loves vanilla ice cream best until you introduce chocolate (and strawberry, and peach -- let us praise variety) and then, voila, people become partisan in their choice of flavors.

That same Pew study showed that Rush Limbaugh's listeners follow hard news more closely than that of any other broadcast outlet on radio or TV. While correlation isn't causation, this looks like a case in which at least a key part of the causation is clear: Real news hounds are dissatisfied with the coverage from the elites because it's too thin and partisan. The best-informed consumers of news know when they're being misled by sins of omission, and they vote with their loyalty (and time & money) to go to other, more balanced, sources.

Here's an exercise you can perform at home: Try watching the News Hour with Jim Leher (or network news) or listening to Don Imus interview, say, Bob Schiefer. Are you as struck by what's left out as by what's said? Does you feel like you're touring the charming village of Potemkin? Can you complete this assignment without cursing? If contemplating this task doesn't make your hair hurt, you probably aren't reading this sentence.