Midway-2006 Media Version

[Lemur]

Well you started out good but became asinine. I take it you're trying to add a twist to the "bad, right wing bias"?

I assume you're saying that my post was asinine -- you don't know me nearly well enough to decide I'm a jerk. I haven't had a chance to be an ass in person!

I was attempting, however clumsily, to counterpoint the initial post, which had as its base assumption the idea that modern media would reflexively undermine any war effort, due to liberal bias. If you will recall, Clinton's warlet in Bosnia received a withering level of contempt from the right-wing media at the time, as well as denunciations from the Republicans in Congress.

And if you will recall, the media in the U.S.A. was as rah-rah as possible during the initial combat phase of Iraq War 2, a fact that came back to haunt them when the sequel turned out to have a complicated plot.

The thrust of the initial post was that modern media (which is controlled by the Liberal Elite, and possibly the Jews and Commies) are not only partisan, but anti-war, and possibly a fifth column of treachery. This is a trope that has been running on blogs and talk radio for decades. A countering position was warranted, even if I handled it clumsily.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The thrust of the initial post was that modern media (which is controlled by the Liberal Elite, and possibly the Jews and Commies) are not only partisan, but anti-war, and possibly a fifth column of treachery. This is a trope that has been running on blogs and talk radio for decades. A countering position was warranted, even if I handled it clumsily.

Sadly you will be able to find some who take this position on the media for the "tinfoil hat"-type reasons you suggest. There are a few morons who are convinced that all of Wetern history is a plot authored by the Rothschilds and the Rosicrucians. Sadly, many of these individuals continue to breed.

I do believe that much of the media are partisans of secular progressivism. They attack with glee any political/public figure whose views do not line up with this macro goal. I do not, however, believe this to be an overt strategy for most media figures, but a product of their training/intellectual orientation. Most of them hold, personally, views which are strongly secular-progressive in character and they naturally feel more comfortable taking this stance -- even though most make at least some effort to be objective. So this influence is only partly be design.

The media is anti-war only if the conflict lasts longer than two news cycles. After that, they want another story so the war gets labeled as "a quagmire" or "unusually prolonged." The "major combat operations" portions they adore and are very happy to report in rah-rah fashion. These happen quickly and provide great pictures/copy. This is exceedingly short-term thinking, but that is part of the nature of the media used. I think a lot of the parody that starts this thread for this reason. Under modern media guidelines, I think FDR and the Navy would have been catching grief for not having done more concrete things to "turn around" the Pacific by June of '42. Six months is an eternity for the modern media.

A fith column of treachery? That's wishful thinking for people who would like to be able to blame a single discrete target. TV may have had that kind of public opinion leverage in 1968 with Cronkhite, but 15+ years after the advent of talk radio and the internet this kind of thinking is a bit wishful to say the least.