Posted by chicagomedia.org on September 05, 2008 at 07:29:40:
Everyone loves to hate the media
So I tuned in to the Republican National Convention the other night to size up Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and enjoy the political theater, and you can imagine my surprise to find out she and Sen. John McCain are campaigning against Barack Obama, Joe Biden and ... me.
Me and everyone else in the media. We stink.
Some have suggested Palin and the GOP are merely playing to their base, but I'm not so sure. This may be their way of reaching across the nation's red-blue divide.
True, conservatives hate those of us in the media because they see us all as liberals, always trying to take down the establishment, as in our Iraq coverage. But liberals hate us, too, because they see us as the tools of conservatives, never adequately challenging the establishment, as in our Iraq coverage.
We may even hate ourselves, judging by the number of people fleeing--or being shoved from--the news business lately.
I could give you the standard disclaimer about how I'm making these observations independent of my own political beliefs, whatever they are at the moment, but I'm in the media. Who's going to believe me? I accept your scorn.
To hear former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Palin's warm-up act Wednesday, we media-types may not even be legal voters.
"We, the people, the citizens of the United States, get to decide our next president, not the left-wing media, not Hollywood celebrities, not anyone else but the people of America," said Giuliani, who once was married to a TV news reporter and presumably would know.
For all the positioning against the media, one might forget the revered "Dutch" Reagan's stint as a sportscaster, or Palin's brief TV sports career for that matter.
Hard to say what she saw or took part in during that span in the late 1980s that so soured her on us. But it must have been traumatic enough to still sting as reporters dug around in hopes of explaining to Americans who had never heard of her a week earlier--and still might mistake for Tina Fey--how she could rise so far so fast.
"I've learned quickly these last few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone," Palin said, drawing boos of approval from delegates. "Here's a little news flash for those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion."
That's shrewd because--and this isn't a news flash to anyone who has ever watched cable TV news, especially MSNBC in recent weeks--a lot of those reporters and commentators don't even have good opinions of each other.
She ripped the pollsters for writing McCain off too early, saying "the voters knew better."
Makes you wonder whom she thinks the pollsters were polling, but it's clear that even as we shrink, the media remain a huge, popular and increasingly wobbly target. We're everywhere, including those small towns run by mayors who may have greater ambitions. Community weeklies ruffle feathers just as easily as big-deal TV news, probably easier.
A wise man once said everything you see in the media is true except for those things of which you have personal knowledge. Come to think of it, he might have been talking about newspapers only and I have no idea how wise he really was.
The larger point is that running against the media is likely to resonate with every one of the 37 million or so who watched Palin on their favorite TV channel, scoffing at the rival channels, and when the Democrats figure out this anti-media thing has traction, look out.
Someone better call Paul Begala at CNN and Karl Rove at Fox News to come up with a campaign strategy so we in the media don't embarrass ourselves any more than we already have.
(ROSENTHAL/trib)